SaaS: Why Service Assurance is the New Secret to Success for Smart Resellers

Trust: bottle it and you have the world’s best business. 

Sticky customers, zero churn, guaranteed growth. 

Trouble is, all too often in business, trust is absent. 

Too many enterprises are dazzled by impressive promises bound-up in Service Level Agreements, only to discover down the line that they are, at best, over-blown and, at worst, empty.          

The reality is that establishing trust is as much about a culture as it is about a set of contractual deliverables.  

To add to the challenge, trust between service providers and their customers is becoming increasingly hard to build into the relationship.  

But, in a world where IT complexity continues to grow– and where commoditisation routinely stifles differentiation – it seems trust is the latest currency that really counts. 

Indeed, for managed service providers, it’s the holy grail, and here’s why. 

The challenge of trust

At its best, the service provider to enterprise relationship is one of mutual benefit and continuing growth. 

However, through a lack of communication and visibility, an initial grace period at the beginning of the relationship is often followed by a steadily declining level of trust, resulting in the enterprise moving on to another provider at the end of the contract period. 

“Without care, too many MSP and enterprise relationships become adversarial as opposed to collaborative,” says Peter Savereux, Marketing Executive at UK Service Assurance experts Highlight. 

“If trust dissolves, it can become a little like gamesmanship, where each entity is trying to leverage the available resources for their own ends. 

“For example, MSPs are often not very good at being totally transparent when it comes to the performance of their products because they lack the tools for service managers to show network data in a way that is relevant or understandable to their customers. They don’t want negativity to affect a service contract renewal.  

“Similarly, dissatisfied enterprise customers often resent the contractual constraints that prevent them from insisting on better performance from their MSP, especially when they feel that reporting from their service provider is opaque.  

“The optimal state is for the service provider to feel like a trusted additional member of an enterprise in-house IT team.  

“Sadly, in the absence of visibility and collaboration, neither entity gets that feeling.” 

Escape the commodity trap

Connectivity technology provision has become commoditised, with no time for MSPs to deliver a truly meaningful wrap. 

For enterprises, this leaves no real differentiation between providers, other than price. 

“Enterprises these days are less interested in the nuts and bolts of their network; they just expect it to support their business, as promised, all of the time,” says Richard Thomas, Highlight Founder and CEO. “Providers should not lose focus on that. 

“For enterprises, the real value is or should be, in the service that is wrapped around that connectivity 

“Promise to deliver a service, define that service in terms of how it will actually support your customer’s business and then show you’re delivering that service. If an MSP is able to do that then understanding and trust ensues. 

“And, in business, wherever there is trust, there’s the potential for a mutually successful relationship.”       

The service assurance solution

According to Martin Saunders, Product Director at Highlight, “Exhibiting trustworthiness boils down to three things: are you reliable, are you expert and are you transparent?”  

Highlight’s clever and affordable solution provides MSPs with the ability to prove the answer is ‘yes’ to all three questions. 

The service assurance platform provides both enterprises and service providers with a real-time shared view of their network service infrastructure, transforming complex network data into an appealing, flexible and readily understandable web portal. 

The transparent nature of Highlight’s output affords both MSP and customer a 24/7 ‘warts-and-all’ running commentary on delivery against SLA – just the kind of openness upon which trust thrives. 

“It’s not just about delivering on your service promises or having the skills to improve performance. You have to make sure that your efforts, expertise and successes are visible to your customers,” says Saunders.  

“Get all of that right, and trust naturally follows.” 

• Coming next: “Stop selling tin and start selling customer outcomes.” Why Service Assurance is the key differentiator in the managed service space…and how to get REALLY good at it

For more on how Highlight can give YOUR business the edge, visit Highlight.