If you were to pin down one trait that separates successful businesses from unsuccessful ones, you’d be hard pressed to find a better choice than agility. After all, the real way to determine a business’s success is how long it holds onto profits as outside circumstances inevitably blow it off course from the original vision. Sometimes this requires changes to positioning and services, and sometimes it means upsizing your scale of operations. No matter the form agility takes, though, it never happens without a communications system to match.
As much as factors like effective leadership and smart planning factor into business agility, it still takes effective communication and collaboration, both internally and externally, to actualize any changes. And with how much more quickly and effectively digital communications facilitate those processes, a well-implemented business communications platform is nothing less than the main engine driving them. All that works out nicely for MSPs, too, since as a result they become the main provider of a key element for nothing less than a business’s survival.
At least, that’s how it all should work. As we know just from looking across industries, plenty of organizations don’t function with the agility needed to survive in the long run. And obviously, the factors that play into that failure are extensive—far more than I could cover in a single article. But at the same time, no matter how much poor leadership or COVID-19 or anything else might affect a business’s agility, poor communication systems will compound those problems.
It goes without saying that MSPs ought to understand all of this. Knowing and actively communicating the direct link between communications technology and agility is a core way today’s unified communications and collaboration (UCC) providers achieve success, because this aspect of the industry isn’t simply an added feature; it’s the very foundation of success for everyone involved in it.
Therefore, it’s vital that MSPs select and build their solutions with business agility chiefly in mind. As in all things, not all platforms are created equally when it comes to enabling agility. Plenty are simply too complicated to deploy, making them unfeasible to realistically scale up or down as different business needs arise. Others don’t provide enough flexibility to change the nature of deployments on the fly. The ability to scale and alter a solution must be an essential factor in weighing the practicality of any vendor’s solution, especially for the long term.
So, what exactly should a fully agile solution look like?
Must be cloud based. Deploying a solution remotely, which is only possible through cloud-based PBXs and accounts, dramatically simplifies how any MSP may approach a given business in need of downsizing or expansion. It’s not just extra work cut off from your daily load, either; end users will always massively appreciate simply opening up their devices and seeing that their new accounts are ready to go (or have been automatically removed).
Enables you to go “as-a-service” with your offerings. Giving customers the option to simply pay as they go for accounts and services, rather than making an upfront investment, ensures they have the financial flexibility to alter business models according to changes right as they arise. Scaling up or down through this model, especially when paired with a cloud deployment, becomes significantly more convenient for the end user—and as an extra bonus, makes for a more financially predictable solution for both you and your customer.
