Partners

Empowering Advisors: The Multi-Billion-Dollar Managed Services Opportunity

By Ideas @ AppDirect / October 31, 2023

In an increasingly competitive channel, technology advisors need ways to stand out and offer greater value to customers.

In our recent State of the Union webinar, we explored ways that advisors can now capitalize on a growing managed services market with access to our first-party Network Operations Center (NOC) and VEEUE Monitoring Platform.

During the webinar, AppDirect CEO Nicolas Desmarais and RJ Chapple, ADCom’s President turned General Manager, MSP & Wholesale Business Unit at AppDirect, provide an exclusive insight into the strategic significance of this alliance. They also shed light on the value of integrating NOC and managed services, emphasizing enhanced customer value and accelerated advisor growth.

Jeff Moss, Product Sales Specialist at AppDirect, also provides a demo of new NOC services, and Kerri-Anne Beech, Senior Product Marketing Manager, shares some of the new resources available to help advisors start selling these higher-margin NOC services. Switching gears, during the webinar, Charlie Field, President and CEO of Win Win Advisors, also explores a new revenue stream through a recent successful procurement marketplace deal.

Watch the full webinar or keep reading for some of the top takeaways.

Why ADCom joined the AppDirect family

Skip to minute 4:05 of the webinar to hear more 

When evaluating acquisitions, AppDirect prioritizes two key criteria: the organization’s talent and technology. One of the most important questions the leadership team asks: What will benefit the advisor community most?

Additionally, in pursuing its “goal of becoming the foremost B2B subscription commerce platform for advisors, AppDirect seeks companies that can accelerate this vision,” says AppDirect CEO Nicolas Desmarais.

Leading with a ‘platform mindset’: Revealing the benefits of layering NOC and managed services

During the webinar, the team talks about the decision to partner with ADCom, including the company’s distinct approach to sales enablement across multiple layers. The NOC capabilities that ADCom offers also allow advisors to have better visibility into the tech consumption of their customers, which delivers more value and helps create stickier customers. By bringing ADCom within the AppDirect catalog, advisors can provide customers with a full-stack offering, everything from infrastructure as a service to SaaS.

Nicolas explains that ADCom’s ‘platform mindset’ is also innovative because it gives advisors the unique opportunity to white-label or co-brand the NOC solution as an advisor. He also believes that ADCom prioritizes the channel, empowering advisors to deliver high-quality end-client experiences.

Jump to minute 11:03 of the webinar to hear more

“The number one reason to sell managed services is to differentiate yourself. You can deliver greater business value, making yourself more competitive.” 

—RJ Chapple, General Manager, MSP & Wholesale Business Unit, AppDirect

It enables advisors to deliver greater business value to existing customers, making them more competitive.

Just how big is the managed services market? Research shows that managed services is a half a trillion-dollar business, says RJ. With customers progressively relying on managed service providers, the integration of NOC services within AppDirect presents an opportunity for advisors to bolster profitability by capturing new business through this additional revenue stream. With AppDirect, they can deliver a 24x7 team of analysts, a powerfully integrated platform, and professional services.

Top trends in the market

Jump to minute 15:50 of the webinar and find out more

The top trends that we’re seeing in the market include:

1. Convergence—Buyers seek technology advisors offering comprehensive solutions across their entire tech stack

1. Cloud solutions—The market for cloud solutions continues to rise. This coupled with AI's exponential growth, customer’s demand for computing power, spend management and optimization.

1. Platforming—As cost compute keeps decreasing, we can expect an increased number of enterprise tools growing. With that comes the need for better management of all the different solutions, such as billing, data management, security, and more.

AppDirect NOC advisor services

Jump to minute 19:36 of the webinar for more

The AppDirect NOC and VEEUE platform addresses downtime, data loss, and security breaches effectively. These capabilities maximize network uptime and the mean time to detect, understand, and resolve an issue. Jeff Moss, Product Sales Specialist at AppDirect, gave a short demo on the way our NOC services work, as well as some of the landing pages and dashboards you and your customers will have access to in the full webinar.

Tools to make your next deal a success

Learn more at minute 38:38

AppDirect has been creating resources to help you get familiar with our new NOC services so you can better serve your customers and start earning more on managed services.

There are three main resources you can now access on the platform:

1. Academy Training—To learn more about NOC, you can check out our Academy Training resources, where we have three new courses to help you sell network management and monitoring solutions. For current advisors, log in to your Marketplace account and access the Advisor Training tile. It includes three video-based courses plus additional resources.

2. Access managed services selling resources from the Customer Marketing Toolkit tile—The new managed services resources includes six new assets: A sales guide, data sheet, and resources for your end customers. You’ll find co-brandable data sheets, email templates, an overview video and a pitch deck to help you sell and provide a better service overall. 

   For all AppDirect advisors click on the new Customer Marketing Toolkit tile within your Marketplace account to quickly access resource kits for selling managed services. Simply Access this tile from your My Apps page. For those not yet signed up,  access the selling resource kit here.

3. Marketplace listing—To start offering managed services, including NOC and the VEEUE Monitoring Platform search for VNOC in the marketplace, select ‘Contact Us,’ and then fill in the quote request form. You can also reach out to your Channel Sales Manager for assistance.

Unlock profits with procurement marketplaces

Skip to minute 43:24 for all the details

Charlie Field, President and CEO of Win Win Advisors also joined the webinar to talk about the value of procurement marketplaces. He shared an experience where partnering with AppDirect enabled a customer to very quickly launch their marketplace, resulting in a shortened sales cycle of just 90 days.

For this customer, AppDirect and Win Win advisors first sold AWS through the platform. This opened up conversations around procuring Adobe for one of their clients. Charlie quickly realized that Win Win advisors could help simplify technology procurement for customers, while also creating an avenue to reclaim software sales from competitors. This approach allowed Win Win to increase their share of customer spending while delivering enhanced overall value.

What advisors should watch out for

Jump to minute 52:08 for more information

Charlie shared some key advice for advisors on procurement– start with the big names like Adobe or Microsoft. Ask your clients how they’re procuring them (whether it’s directly or through a partner) and see if there’s a way to add value. If you can prove that you can do it better and more efficiently, you will win more business and improve customer relationships. Simple questions could open up more opportunities for growth and ways to enhance the customer experience.

Why optimize procurement for customers?

Advisors should prioritize procurement optimization for their customers because it not only drives cost savings and profitability but also delivers enhanced value, making you more competitive in the market.

• Better customer retention—The AppDirect platform is a value-add on top of the expertise that advisors offer. It will encourage more customers to come back and continue to use the service.

• Reduced operational management—With customers able to manage their own subscriptions with ease, this reduces a lot of the back-and-forth and admin work that advisors currently have to do.

• Increased Customer Lifetime Value CLV—Customers are able to come back and add to their existing solutions with ease, which increases the value of the service and the support advisors provide. Once advisors are associated with the customer, if they find other things they want to purchase, the advisor gets additional revenue from those sales. This applies even if the customer is adding and managing subscriptions themselves.

For more insights, watch the full September State of the Union webinar.