IT By Design’s Top MSP Predictions for 2023

by IT By Design • Dec 16, 2022

IT By Design will celebrate its 20^th anniversary as an MSP in 2023 and over those two decades, we’ve accumulated plenty of channel experience and knowledge. It’s been our mission to instill the lessons learned from that time into our service solutions and share them through our Build IT education platform, allowing fellow MSPs to benefit from them. Experience fosters vision, so we want to share what we see coming in 2023 for the industry. 

Sunny Kaila, Founder & CEO

I believe that MSPs must focus on a critical question in 2023: How consistent is my revenue growth? Profitability will be key – especially with a recession looming and if you’re looking to be acquired. So you must think about net retention to determine and maintain the health of your revenue. I learned this from Jim Lippie, the CEO of SaaS Alerts. When you begin tracking net retention, you put a higher emphasis on your existing customer base. You can sell more to them because they trust you. 

Jim’s formula for this is: New logo sales plus expansion (selling new products to existing customers), minus churn, equals net retention. By concentrating on your existing base, you don’t have to expend so much energy on acquiring new logos – and yet you’re still generating revenue and increasing your profit. This will give you a safety net for a recession and make your business very attractive for M&A in the new year.

Kam Kaila, President

Kam Kaila, partner and president, IT By Design

With the recession coming, everything will cost more ― including your talent. MSPs will have to learn to do more with less. That means you’ll have to spend time training younger talent. You’ll probably lose some of your best team members to larger organizations who’ll throw money at the problem. It’ll be key to make sure that you’re prepared and have trained your next layer. Also crucial in 2023 will be succession planning for every critical layer, creating standard operating procedures so that you have everything documented, and investing in your younger talent with training.

Javid Khan, CTO

Javid Khan, CTO, IT By Design

I see the customers challenging their IT provider to prepare for a volatile economy. It will be critical to be creative in helping the customer do their business with more cost-effective technology. I believe that some key strategies to leverage will be automation, cost-effective talent, and the right resources in the right place while running lean. 

Dave Curley, Director of Sales

Dave Curley, director of sales, IT By Design

I believe we’re going to see a continued separation between the top performing MSPs and the ones that are being left behind. The best ones are those that are adapting to the new set of circumstances which are governing the market. They are quicker to identify and respond to their clients and their needs. They understand there’s a shift in the marketplace and that they need to keep bringing new value to the table to be more aligned with client’s demands.

Todd Billiar, Director, Channel Partnerships

The years 2020 and 2021 saw the expedited adoption of work from home (WFH) and work from anywhere (WFA). This opened many MSPs to the idea of remote (non-local) employees to fill open talent needs. While this helped, it didn’t solve the on-going talent shortage in the IT channel.

Vikram Kanitkar, chief product manager, IT By Design

My prediction is that 2023 will drive the adoption of using automation to resolve basic service tickets and complete many of the day-to-day tasks, thus freeing up the existing engineers to focus on more strategic and/or profitable activities.

Vikram Kanitkar, Chief Product Manager

The talent crunch is not going away in 2023, so retaining your best people will continue to be a critical issue for company leaders. I see more companies realizing the need for employee engagement and meaningful conversations between employees and their managers. To address this, they will look to resources like Team GPS that provide the necessary tools to connect with clients and employees as well as collect the data from which they can take effective, educated actions.

This guest blog is courtesy of IT By Design. Read more IT By Design guest blogs here. Regularly contributed guest blogs are part of ChannelE2E’s sponsorship program.