How AI might shake up the managed services model, including what MSPs charge for their services, dominated discussions at the Global Technology Industry Association’s (GTIA) ChannelCon EMEA this week.
In an interview with IT Channel Oxygen, GTIA CEO Dan Wensley came out as a “pure optimist on the topic”.
But did the MSPs at the London event share his bullishness?
We caught up with seven MSP leaders at the show – which attracted a record 800 registrations – to ask them how the onset of new AI tools might change what they charge.
Here’s what they said….
“We’re under threat as a species“
Ian Groves, MD of Start Tech
How will the onset of AI tools that in theory make MSPs more efficient impact their pricing to customers?
We’re going to get more efficient – that’s great. But when we can do more, the expectations will be that we just do more and it’s a given. Because if we’re all going to do more, there’s no differentiator or advantage there.
As has been alluded to a couple of times today, the customers are starting to do stuff because they don’t need us. We are under threat as a species.
I think we’re all underestimating the speed at which this is moving. The example earlier was, ‘why do I need an MSP? I’m doing Claude to fix stuff’.
We’re getting to the point where one of my technicians had access to a new model and the PC he uses blue screened. He told the AI agent to have a look at fixing it for him, and it repaired his PC faster than he could. He came in the next day and was like, ‘we’ve got a real problem’.
It’s about unpicking all of that and thinking about how we’re going to make a new existence for ourselves. We’re not even scratching the service of that. Bear in mind, what’s the unit MSPs sell? Headcount. We sell per person per month. Yet all of our marketing says we can lower your headcount by selling you AI efficiencies and outcomes – we’re killing our own currency.
So, an AI is going to make us all so good at delivering stuff abundantly. Well, do you need 10,000 MSPs in the UK anymore? I think it’s an unanswered question.
I think we’re going to see a lot of MSPs fall away. I think we’re going to see a lot of them die through natural selection, quite frankly. That’s why I come to so many events to keep hearing the different ideas.
On that note, why are you here at ChannelCon EMEA?
There was a slide I took a photo of yesterday saying we’ve never needed the community more. I couldn’t agree more.
We’ve got to share at a more electrifying rate than we’ve ever done. What’s working in my business? What’s not working? How did we sell stuff?
You’ve got to bear in mind that we’ve all become so preconditioned [as MSPs]. Scott Barlow said it earlier – it took us 10 years to learn how to sell managed services. We’ve got things like Service Leadership. We all know how to bundle. We all know the margins we should make. We all know what we should and shouldn’t put into bundles.
But no-one knows how to build an outcome.
I actually think we’ve lost some of our imagination and creativity as MSPs to think and solve problems.
Most of us created a business because we were neurodiverse, technical, creative people who solve problems in a creative way. We’ve become so pre-conditioned to bundle like this, sell like this, do it like this, and now we’re back to a new rule book, MSP 3.0, and everyone’s going, ‘okay, who’s going to tell me how to do it?’ No one knows.
So we’re all just looking at each other. The fastest way to fix that is keep collaborating.
What does Redsquid’s Phil Callow think about the AI-pricing equation? See next page for more…
