Every IT provider deals with it, MSP or not, and most do not have margins healthy enough to sustain the overhead it takes to do it well – purchasing for clients.
Who wants to deal with inventory, licensing, supply chain programs, thin margins, being tied into a specific product line, the list goes on…
In steps PaaS providers. It’s a niche being filled by a handful of firms focused specifically on providing all the back office process, people, and relationships necessary to provide your clients with the purchasing expertise they demand.
Some of the benefits to your business:
- Adding healthy margin to something you are already doing for your client
- No need to spend time trying to establish the right supply relationships
- Leveraging the combined purchasing power of multiple organizations – discounts and service beyond what you can get on our own
- Add purchasing expertise to your team without increasing head count – head count is huge for us MSPs providing a flat fee model
- Gain access to state of the art purchasing systems – tracking, inventory, etc.
- One place to go for all things purchased – no more tracking from multiple vendors for every project
- Increased service levels, HUGE, over the dell or (inserter large vendor name here) rep that manages your account – did I mention these relationship guys tend to change on you every 8 months with the large vendors
- Add a trusted resource to your team that understand your business, your clients business, and helps you build recurring revenue programs that benefit you and your clients
With benefits like this and the ability to bolt a partner on to your business to provide these services who in their right mind would invest the capital necessary to build a ‘purchasing department’?
One of the best PaaS partners we have found in the country is Axis Business Solutions and you can check them out here: http://www.axisbusiness.com/vendors.htm
As it becomes more and more important for MSPs to invest their time and energy into their core providers such as these will play a large role in allowing us to do so.
JC
