Welcome To the Post-Verticalization Era for Partners

The recent CrowdStrike/Microsoft outage raises an issue that all technology service providers should consider carefully: Are we doing enough for our clients?

Blend into that thought the dark, underlying vulnerability lurking beneath the wave of AI: the issue of copyright infringement.

As technology continues to become an even greater proportion of how we all go to business, it will invariably also become a larger component of our legal exposure. The question we must ask ourselves is what role we play in this development and its consequences.

You Can't Be All Things to All People
The age of the generalist MSP is fading fast. It's simply too difficult and too costly to maintain technical supremacy in too many disciplines. As with medicine, the "primary care physicians" are being outnumbered by all manner of specialists. Storage specialists, server specialists, network specialists, DevOps, agile and other methodologies.

Back in 2009, Microsoft made a bold statement when it introduced the "exclusivity rule" in the then-new Microsoft Partner Network (MPN). Previously, a Microsoft partner could have the same four people take all the tests for as many competencies as it wanted. In the MPN era, however, to achieve a Gold competency, four unique individuals must take and pass the required tests. Those four cannot be used to qualify for any other competencies. Back then, I was working in a company of 17 people, and we held all 30 competencies. To continue that in the MPN, we would need 120 employees.

The most important impact of this was it forced us to partner with other Microsoft partners to deliver larger projects requiring multiple competencies. The end result? You couldn't be all things to all people, but you could provide all things through partnering.

Now You Need to Provide More
When I launched my first Substack, I titled it, "The Business Technologist's Journal." I have long seen the role that partners play evolving into the "business technologist," the person who applies IT products, services and techniques to solve business challenges. I truly feel this title best describes the role we play.

Here in "The Evolving MSP" (and its predecessor, "The Changing Channel"), we have long discussed the "technology" dimension of that role. Now, however, I believe the next evolution we must go through exists far more on the "business" side.

Anyone who has pursued any vertical market will find what I'm saying here familiar and resonant. Vertical market success requires more than just technological acumen; it requires a deeper understanding and appreciation of the business and operation requirements of that vertical. If you're selling into healthcare, you must know what healthcare organizations are facing in their business. You must be able to appreciate and discuss the operational requirements in a hospital or other medical practice. Same with legal, financial or any other vertical market you choose.

Now, with technology playing a more pronounced role, service providers are realizing they need to be able to provide valid legal advice to their clients regarding the consequences of an outage such as that caused by CrowdStrike, as well as the legal ramifications of building large language models (LLMs) that include potentially copyrighted materials.

It's most important to remember that you are not a lawyer (unless you are). Fortunately, you are well-versed in proactive partnering, which should make it easier for you to research, vet and form a partnership with a well-qualified licensed attorney who can provide legal advice to your clients. It is likely you have already founded such a relationship with accountants and other professionals to whom you refer your clients when necessary.

Basically, you must now expand your project management function to include more disciplines, some beyond technology, to fully serve your clients.

The New P2P
Microsoft partners are very familiar with the acronym "P2P," which promotes very active "partner-to-partner" partnering.

To fully serve today's client, we must now change that acronym to mean "professional-to-professional" partnering. Beyond the ability to more fully serve clients, this strategy brings additional potential.

In the past, some chapters of the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners (IAMCP) created small partner groups. One chapter called them the "Fantastic Fives." These groups contained members holding various different and complementary competencies. Beyond partnering on projects, these groups went to market together, sharing customers with each other and helping grow each other's businesses.

Such a group today, in the age of "professional-to-professional" partnering, might include you and your technology expertise, a law firm, an accounting firm, an engineering firm, an architectural firm and perhaps even a marketing firm, all working together to share opportunities, share clients and grow each other's businesses even further.

Evolving
This next stage of evolution will find you developing a greater ability to provide a full spectrum of business services. While you remain focused on applying technologies to customers' operational and other challenges, your community of colleagues will be available for you to refer in as needed. More and more, you will be seen on par with these professionals.

As your breadth expands, you may want to invest some time considering how you regard your own practice, and how you refer to it. More and more of us are shifting from MSP, which becomes more limiting, to a more specific acronym, or even the much broader, more generic "information technology service provider" (ITSP).

More important than what you call yourself is how you think about yourself and your practice. Professional is as professional does. Look at your own processes, especially client-facing ones. Do you consider them to be as professional as you want people to see them as?

Please also consider responding to this article and share with everyone what you think makes you a professional. Not only are we evolving, but our entire industry is.

Posted by Howard M. Cohen on August 27, 2024