Five Years Since MSPs Saved the World

Table of Contents

• The Week That Everything Changed
• The MSP Industry Reels and Responds
• Looking Back - Operational Maturity Matters
• Looking Forward - Be Ready for the Next Emergency
• Knowing the Type of Disruption So You Can Better Respond
• Global Physical Disruptions
• Global and National Economic Disruptions
• How TSPs Were Impacted in Recessions Prior to the COVID-19 Recession
• Regional/Local Disruptions
• Optimizing Your Resiliency and Agility - Financial Strength
• Optimizing Your Resiliency and Agility - Strategic Strength
• Closing Thoughts
• Resources

The Week That Everything Changed

The world we knew was about to radically change. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic¹. With jarring speed, our entertainment, sports, business, community, worship, and family lives changed in unimaginable ways in an attempt to quell the spread of COVID-19, impacting most forms of human activity around the world.

Here are highlights of how COVID impacted just the world of sports that week:

• March 9, 2020: While “Derby d'Italia” football match had been played the day before behind closed doors, the Italian government canceled all sporting events including that day's AC Milan vs. Fiorentina match just hours before it started.
• March 11, 2020: Other US sporting events were shut down.
  • National Basketball Association (NBA): Around 9:30 pm Eastern time in the United States, the NBA shut down the Utah Jazz vs. Oklahoma City Thunder game at its halftime. Jazz center player Rudy Gobert had tested positive for COVID-19 just before the game. The NBA would then go on to suspend the season for the foreseeable future.
  • Professional Golfers' Association (PGA): First round of Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass was played, but by the end of the day this event was canceled along with three other events on the PGA tour.
• March 12, 2020: National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) canceled all men's and women's basketball tournaments and championships.
• March 13, 2020: Just hours before race practice was to begin, the season-opening Australian F1 race in Melbourne was canceled. A member of the McLaren team had tested positive for COVID-19 the day before and the McLaren team had withdrawn from the race.

At this time, no one knew what to expect or how long it would last.

One thing was certain - managed service providers (MSPs) were about to play a pivotal role in saving the world. While largely unrecognized, they were about to embark on the role of a lifetime - helping small and midsize businesses (SMBs) adjust, withstand, and then rebound from the effects of COVID and the lockdowns.

The MSP Industry Reels and Responds

MSPs were deeply impacted in ways no one could have foreseen. They were experiencing the same anxiety, uncertainty, and risk in their own lives and businesses. They were on the front lines, keeping businesses in business and were deemed by most governments as essential workers. At the beginning of the pandemic, most SMBs were woefully unprepared for a disaster of this magnitude, it is estimated that only 6-12% of SMBs with employees were capable of working from home.

Without the luxury of time to develop and implement strategic plans to prepare for an event of this magnitude, MSPs hurried to address the challenge of enabling tens of millions of their clients' workers to work from home in rapid succession. This included issuing new laptops, getting them connected and set up with VPN solutions to allow access.

To complicate matters, supply chain constraints meant laptops and other essential hardware were in short supply, forcing MSPs to make do with available resources to ensure employees could continue working.

In addition, MSP owners and employees were experiencing the same anxiety, uncertainty, and risk in their own lives and businesses.

This transition also brought about:

• Unprecedented cybersecurity risks, which MSPs were needed to help mitigate.
• Extensive use of collaboration and communication tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Slack.
• Assistance in end-user training and other client support to address communication gaps resulting from the significant shift away from the traditional in-office environment.

This massive effort, conducted simultaneously by thousands of MSPs globally, enabled their clients to transition from in-office to work from home, allowing millions of businesses and their employees to maintain their economic stability amidst extraordinary personal and professional challenges compounded by continued uncertainty.

The impact on our industry was substantial, including, for example, dramatic growth in cloud adoption. In Q2-2020, MSPs cloud resale was 44.2% higher than in Q1-2019.

By May 2021, the impact of what MSPs had accomplished was able to be seen in the Service Leadership Index^® (S-LI) data, shown in the Service Leadership Index^® 2021 Annual IT Solution Provider Industry Profitability Report™:

• In Q2-2020, this rapid shift to work from home had driven MSPs' support ticket volume up to 135% of 2019's average volume and kept it there through Q3-2020.
• During this time, the average MSP engineer saw their ticket workload increase to 130% of their 2020 average, in both Q2 and Q3, while they were no doubt taking care of their own families and challenges.
• Because MSPs commit to a flat fee, these massive increases in workload came with no increases in revenue; MSPs were granting many of their clients' discounts and even deferments of invoices. As a result, by Q2-2020, the average MSPs' revenue per support ticket had declined by 6%, adding financial stress to the MSPs' anxieties.

At the time, we used the phrase, “Echoes of Dunkirk and the Berlin Airlift” to describe the scale and the benefit of this massively successful effort by the MSP community worldwide to make sure their clients' business infrastructure continued to operate. Five years later, this does not seem like hyperbole.

Meanwhile, the MSPs themselves were facing their own challenges:

• Helping employees cope with COVID and the lockdowns' effects on their own families, including illness, children schooling from home, limited shopping, community and worship activities,
• Likewise dealing with their own shift to a work from home model, for which some MSPs were more prepared than others,
• Reducing the number of employees if financial pressure required it, and
• Wage and other inflationary trends.

These remarkable external factors meant many MSP owners and executives felt tremendous stress. The demand on their interpersonal and management skills ramped steeply and, reaching deep, they responded extraordinarily well.

By April 2020, Service Leadership and IT Nation Evolve peer groups were providing Rapid Recovery guidance and tools to help member MSPs navigate these challenges. Quarterly meetings and ad hoc gatherings continued remotely, and the familiar pulse of quarterly benchmarking provided insight and reassurance of continued industry viability.

Thankfully, and not without tragic personal and professional damage, the MSP industry, the IT industry as a whole and the global community they helped, survived and begun to thrive again. Reminders of the dark times of 2020 and 2021 abound: Mask-wearing is still evident, as are hand-sanitizing stations, and occasionally, even signs and stickers advising six-foot distancing, and high costs still lingering from inflation. We are all grateful to be, five years later, in better times. Yet we know the future always holds challenges, so we will be well-served to remember what we have learned and be prepared for whatever the next significant disaster might present itself as.

Looking Back - Operational Maturity Matters

Given the degree of disruption caused by COVID, it's remarkable that MSPs were not impacted more financially than they were. That isn't to say there weren't any challenges or tragedy, or that they aren't dealing still with the consequence.

Let's better understand what happened, so we can manage even better when we are faced with disruption again.

Figure 2 shows the adjusted EBITDA percent for four groups of MSPs: the average MSP, and those in the top quartile, median, and bottom quartile of profitability.

Though the official COVID-19 recession technically lasted only two months, the top quartile profitability MSPs (best-in-class or BIC) showed the same response as their BIC peers in past recessions: Their profit improvement appears sooner and is more pronounced than their lower-performing peers. Being at higher Operational Maturity Level™ (OML™), they have more accurate and timely financial reporting, they make better decisions, which are executed more quickly and effectively. The BIC also tend to make bolder decisions - such as to cut expenses more quickly and deeply. Their profitability since then has not fallen below the level of the four years preceding COVID. Those MSPs at lower OML more often responded less effectively: the median did continue to climb though, while the bottom ¼ unfortunately took four years to recover.

For year-over-year revenue growth, we look at the private equity (PE)-backed MSPs separately from those who are not so sponsored. The PE-backed MSPs are typically more aggressive about growth through acquisitions. As such, their revenue growth typically includes a higher percentage of non-organic revenue growth. Despite a slowing of M&A activity in 2020 having the effect of leveling the pace of revenue growth between PE and non-PE, the non-PE backed data gives us the most accurate picture of revenue growth.

In Figure 3, the blue line shows the year-over-year total revenue growth of the PE-backed MSPs. While their growth slowed in 2020 to “only” 31.9% over 2019, it regained speed in 2021 with 34.8% growth over 2020. Since then, their growth rate has declined. In 2024, it slowed to match that of the non-PE-backed MSPs at under 8% over the previous year.

While there were some mergers and acquisitions in 2023 and/or 2024, the fact is that in 2024 the PE-backed matched the slow growth of the non-PE-backed, indicating both are struggling to improve organic growth. Given the continued upward cost pressures, revenue growth of only 8% is a cause for concern; the organic growth challenge must be overcome.

The largest factor in revenue growth for most MSPs is the increase in managed service revenue, which is typically around 45% of total revenue. The revenue trends described above match the direction in Figure 4 below, which provides the most recent 4 quarters (MR4Q) of managed service revenue growth every quarter from 2018-2024 for non-PE-backed MSPs and PE-backed MSPs.

To what extent has work from home impacted the MSPs' staffing strategy, and to what extent does it continue?

Figure 5 shows the proportion of overhead expense as percentage of sales, general & administrative (SG&A) dollars that went towards occupancy expense (lease or rent) starting in 2020. The year COVID struck, the BIC profitability MSPs were spending a higher proportion of their SG&A on occupancy than their lower profit peers. Five years later, they are spending the least.

While the BIC were spending the least on SG&A, their comparison to the median and bottom ¼ (Figure 6) showed they had:

• Second highest percentage of employees in office 100%
• Lowest percentage of employees in office three or more days
• Highest percentage of 100% remote employees

In addition, the BIC were more ruthless at reducing or eliminating office space when they have employees working from home. They were better positioned to do this because they are also better at managing staff with key performance indicators (KPIs) tied to higher percentages of variable incentive compensation. Greater usage of variable incentive compensation along with KPIs such as W2 Multiplier (Service Leadership management ratio comparing service revenue to service-related wages) are tools that higher OML IT solution providers (TSPs) utilize to drive greater accountability on what matters rather than blindly having the expectation that being in the office leads to more productivity (and profitability).

Lastly, we can look at the changes in client technology strategy over the five years.

Figure 7 shows the amount of cloud resale revenue sold by MSPs for every dollar of traditional, non-recurring product resale. At first glance, it appears the bottom ¼ profitability MSPs have been the most aggressive about replacing non-recurring product with recurring product. In reality, they have accomplished this by reducing their volume of traditional product sales, while their more profitable peers continue to grow both types of product revenue. In fact, the BIC MSPs have been quickly growing both: over the five years, they grew cloud resale revenue at 36.3% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), and traditional resale at 20.8% CAGR.

The latter is almost as fast as the median profitability MSPs have been growing their cloud resale revenue! The abrupt shift to the cloud triggered by COVID work from home and cybersecurity concerns has continue to accelerate, but only the bottom ¼ profitability MSPs have found it to mean shrinking the traditional product business.

Looking Forward - Be Ready for the Next Emergency

This section provides specific actions all TSPs can take to withstand and even thrive in the face of unforeseen external challenges to your business. We'll skip past the obviously valid actions like attaining and sustaining a high OML - at least 3.8 or higher based on sober reassessment on a regular basis.

Instead, we'll focus on those actions and preparations which specifically provide safety and leverage when major disruptions occur.

Knowing the Type of Disruption So You Can Better Respond

To the extent that it's possible, it's helpful to understand the scale and potential duration of the disruption. Let's take a quick look at the types of disruptions and what we can conclude from each, in terms of keeping your TSP businesses healthy and able to respond during them.

Global Physical Disruptions

Thankfully, disruptions on a global scale happen very infrequently: world wars and pandemics are most often the regrettable causes. These disrupt lives and livelihoods with little regard for borders and beliefs.

Often, such events sadly have durations (including their aftermath), of periods measured in years. These could hold a lack of human capital, or of infrastructure, or of conducive financial conditions. This is important to assess for planning purposes.

As we have seen in the last five years, the IT community is impacted by such global events and is also essential to the surviving of and recovery from them.

Global and National Economic Disruptions

One step down from the level of global physical disruptions are global or national economic disruptions, by which we mean financial recessions or depressions.

These are most quickly evidenced by changes in the stock markets, which are caused by, and also cause other dislocations in business profitability and employment, which have further ripple effects.

In the US, the recession track record since 1980 has been:

We can glean several insights from this information. If we use 1980 as our starting point, recessions in the US have happened on average about every seven years. Ignoring the exceptionally deep and short COVID-19 recession:

• The average recession lasted about 11 months
• Unemployment peaked at about 8.5%
• Gross domestic product dropped about 2.3%

These are obviously material impacts. While all six recessions pale in comparison to the Great Depression, it is worth noting that the Great Recession was materially more dire than the average since 1980. It's also worth noting that, from a business survival point of view, it doesn't matter what the source or cause of the recession is, just that they do happen.

Recessions in the US do not always coincide with or cause recessions in other advanced economies, nor vice versa. For example, two closely intertwined neighboring economies - Canada and the US - often experience downturns or upturns not in sync with each other. Thus, even a severe recession, as much as its impact is felt in one economic zone, does not necessarily result in global disruption.

Thankfully, the duration of these, as noted above, tends to be measured in months not years, meaning that the well-planned TSP can usually count on light being at the end of a shorter tunnel than during the global physical disruptions.

There are non-physical and financial disruptions that can materially impact TSPs, typically at a national level, including: regulatory changes, broad-based cyber-attacks, and significant advancements or changes to the technology landscape. All of these can be best managed by following the steps outlined in the upcoming Optimizing Your Resiliency and Agility sections.

How TSPs Were Impacted in Recessions Prior to the COVID-19 Recession

We'll also discuss this in actionable detail in the Optimizing Your Resiliency and Agility sections which follow, but suffice to say here, in a typical recession, TSPs of all business models typically suffer during economic downturns.

Those TSPs whose business model is based on customers investing capital into technology, are obviously impacted by economic downturns, because customers typically constrain capital spending at those times. These TSPs are in the product-centric², infrastructure project-centric and the applications project-centric business models.

Usually, as the recession ebbs, clients rush to invest capital, and these same TSPs - if they have survived - experience a return to growth and profitability.

Those TSPs who are instead focused on the client's operating expense budget, sometimes mistakenly think their recurring revenue model protects them from economic downturns.

The Optimizing Your Resiliency and Agility sections goes into the details needed for planning, but here we simply note, monthly recurring revenue (MRR)-based TSPs such as MSPs and cloud service providers, typically do experience material drops in revenue in recessions. Shrinking MRR can be attributed to clients' headcount shrinking, requests for discounts or reduced service levels. Some clients go out of business.

For TSPs of all business models, there are potential revenue upsides during recessions, too, as we will cover in the Optimizing Your Resiliency and Agility sections. However, while they help, the general trend is toward significant financial and operational pressure.

While the COVID-19 pandemic was global, its short financial downturn combined with its jarring shift to work from home some ways resembled past regional/local disruptions.

Regional/Local Disruptions

Perhaps as/or more often, the disruptions which impact the livelihoods of TSPs and their clients, are even more local, that is, at the state/province level or smaller regions.

We're speaking now of (usually) natural disasters, such as hurricanes, snowstorms, earthquakes, wildfires, and similar occurrences which can knock out power, impede travel and supply, and cripple a local or regional economy.

While they impact a smaller area than the grievous pandemic and war scenarios we discussed earlier, such regional/local disruptions are no less difficult for those TSPs and clients in the affected areas. How are the TSPs in these areas impacted financially?

Thankfully, the S-LI has a large benchmark population, and in 2018 we were able to analyze how TSPs in the regions impacted in Q3 2017 by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma performed financially versus those not in the hurricane-impacted areas.

Interestingly, compared to the TSPs in the unaffected areas, those in the hurricane-impacted areas:

• Saw their profitability improve in Q3-2017 (when the hurricanes hit) over the previous quarter, while those in the unaffected areas did worse (for unrelated reasons).
• In Q4-2017 (during the immediate recovery), they performed even better than in Q3, while those in the unaffected areas declined further.

This was without any large-scale emergency government financial aid to businesses.

There were clear reasons for their better financial performance in the face of these regional disasters:

• Further research revealed that certain other segments of business in disaster-affected areas also do well financially in the immediate aftermath: hotels, supermarkets, gas stations, clothing stores, home improvement stores and, sadly, hospitals and clinics.
• Similarly, TSPs are a material part of the immediate and longer-term recovery efforts of these regional disruptions, and so actually benefit from the additional workload.

Also, the MSPs in the impacted areas were better prepared financially than the average TSP nationally:

• They were in a 21.2% better than average cash vs. expenses position Cash Safety Ratio - Months Covered in S-LI (BSR8) was 4.0 months versus the national average of 3.3 months.
• They were in a 2.4% better than average MRR vs. expenses position Recurring Revenue as a Percent of Non-Product Expenses in S-LI (SR16) was slightly higher: 86% versus the national average of 84%.

They were not without financial challenges: their SG&A dollar expenditures soared in Q4-2017, due to their own recovery costs. Thankfully, their gross margin production also increased in Q4, resulting in improved profitability.

The good news is that these local/regional disruptions, while severe, are typically shorter lived: 3 to 18 months is a prudent planning horizon.

Optimizing Your Resiliency and Agility - Financial Strength

As we have seen, historically, those TSPs at higher OML have done better during and after disruptions than those at lower OML. Again, to get to the best position and stay there, SLIQ^{™ 3} can be a continuing part of your planning and improvement regime.

However, in the face of the types of disruptions we have been discussing, there are specific steps that high performers take which optimize their financial strength and agility.

Step-by-step instructions for these were provided in the Service Leadership Rapid Recovery Planning Guide provided to the community during the last three quarters of 2020. They are equally relevant in future disruptions. We'll summarize those steps here and refer you to the Financial Resiliency Guide in the Resources section for your deep dive:

1. Immediately understand your today-to-9 months cash position.
   1. Determine which type of disruption you are likely facing, and the likely depth and duration of it. For example, in the average, 11-month recession:
      1. Customers can cut capital spending quickly in recessions. Value-added resellers (VARs) and project-centric TSPs usually see revenue declines of about 45% in the first 1-2 quarters.
      2. MRR-based TSPs, such as MSPs, usually see revenue declines of about 30% in the first 2-3 quarters: 45% in resale and projects, 20% in managed services. Some of their customers go out of business, many reduce staff so have fewer users; hence, lower MRR, and many will ask for a discount or other ways to pay less.
   2. Take stock of your current situation using the metrics below. If you subscribe to S-LI⁴, check these numbers.
      1. Cash Safety Ratio - Months Covered (BSR8). The BIC profitability TSPs typically hold cash sufficient to cover about five months of non-product expenses (i.e., all costs incurred by the company except those paid to vendors for their products). Median and bottom-performers tend to hold less: about 3.3 months.
      2. Current Ratio (BSR5). This is a measure of the firm's ability to pay debts even from assets, if need be. The BIC TSPs typically have a current ratio (on the balance sheet, current assets / current liabilities) of greater than 3.0. Bottom quartile performers typically have a current ratio of less than 1.2.
      3. Recurring Revenue Expense Coverage (SR16). The BIC profitability TSPs can pay about 125% of their non-product expenses just from their MRR. Bottom quartile profitability TSPs on average have less than 90% expense coverage from their MRR. This coverage ratio provides financial resiliency in the face of up to 20% drop in MRR while maintaining 100% non-product expense coverage.
      4. EBITDA as % of Revenue (IS5). Top-performing MSPs typically have 18% or higher EBITDA %, and top-performing VARs have 11% or higher. Bottom-performing MSPs have 9% or lower EBITDA, and bottom-performing VARs have 4% or lower EBITDA.
   3. Comparing your S-LI numbers to these provides a quick read on your likely strength in the face of economic pressure.
   4. Step-by-step instructions to deep dive into this can be found in the Financial Resiliency Guide in the Resources section below.
2. Urgently take defensive steps to assure and sustain a positive bottom line.
   1. Before you start thinking about possible revenue upsides to the disruption, put your current income statement into a spreadsheet to use as a basis for planning the upcoming months.
   2. Now (let's assume you're an MSP), adjust the revenue for the next three quarters as indicated in paragraph 1.a.ii, above. (If you are a VAR, use paragraph 1.a.1, instead.) Probably, the next three quarters will show a significant bottom-line loss.
   3. Now, reduce product resale cost of goods sold (COGS) to match your expected decline in product sales. Reduce your service COGS by the degree needed to sustain good gross margin after the likely loss in service revenue.
   4. Reduce your SG&A costs to ensure bottom-line profitability even though gross margin dollars have dropped.
   5. Repeat steps 2a, 2b and 2c until you have arrived at a pro forma income statement that produces a tolerable profit against your realistic assessment of likely revenue over the next three quarters. Use this to plan your cost management actions. Update it monthly.
   6. Step-by-step instructions to deep dive into this can be found in the Financial Resiliency Guide in the Resources section below.
3. Take offensive steps to maximize upside wherever it is available.
   1. Now that you have estimated the financial changes you need and are acting on them, it's time to estimate and possibly add to your equation the revenue upsides which may be possible to gain during the disruption.
   2. These are notoriously difficult to predict, not just because it's hard to predict the course of the disruption, but because it's also hard to predict the ways that customers and prospects will respond to them.
   3. In past disruptions, surviving TSPs have gained revenue from these sources:
      1. Clients' capital spending may shift from planned expenditures to disaster- or recession-related must-haves. Recovery needs are often a large part of this.
      2. Recession-related support demand may rise (but can you charge for it, and can customers pay)?
      3. Some prospects may fire their IT staff and look for a TSP.
      4. Some companies who were previously too large to be in your target size range may shrink to fit your target size range and thus become valid prospects.
      5. Some proportion of competing TSPs may go out of business and leave orphaned customers who may be an opportunity. In such scenarios where you may acquire a new customer who is in a hurry due to dire straits, please remember:
         1. They are likely to be a “dumpster fire” and inflict higher than normal resource costs on you, and
         2. Always do credit checks and determine their financial viability. They may be seeking a new TSP because they failed to pay their previous TSP.
   4. Step-by-step instructions to deep dive into this can be found in the Financial Resiliency Guide in the Resources section.

Together, these steps will help ensure that your company has financial strength, stability and agility during a time when your customers, employees, vendors, and your family and theirs can benefit from it.

Optimizing Your Resiliency and Agility - Strategic Strength

Protecting your financial strength as described in the preceding section is critical: strength of strategy and culture do not help if you're closing the doors.

Given that you will have now followed the instructions above and are financially positioned to remain in business, additional actions must be taken to produce your stoutest resilience and ability to survive.

• MSPs in general are typically better prepared than other businesses in terms of their own business continuity and disaster preparedness. That said, the best time to test is when there isn't a disruption:
  • Do a live test of your business continuity and disaster preparedness procedures and systems. Pull the plug and yet maintain operations and use the experience to improve your capability.
  • Do your best to test how your operations must cope when cell phone coverage is down over a wide area, when the internet is down, when mobility is diminished for your people and your suppliers. What happens when a tech can't open a ticket, or see or close one?
• The same is true regarding cybersecurity; MSPs tend to be better secured than even their clients. Nonetheless, test the procedures you have written for a breach.
• Closely related to these is your approach to automation. A given automation typically assumes that the connectivity, data and supporting processes and players it needs are in place. If a disruption removes one or more of these supporting pillars, then automated processes are likely to halt.
  • Document how these processes will be carried out manually in the event of disruption, and train and test the team on the documentation.
• Examine your service portfolio and prepare for both tactical and strategic changes:
  • Tactically, prioritize your service offerings, such that you know during a disruption which services must keep being delivered and which can be deferred for days or weeks. This will help manage peaking workload. Have a sequence of communications to staff and clients ready in advance, to calm their anxiety and enlist their support in the changed service plan.
  • Strategically - in this case meaning the 3-to-12-month time frame - be prepared to examine your service offerings and consider evolving them to meet changing client needs. If you feel pressure to temporarily reduce the price of your offerings, have a lower-cost, slimmed-down “Deferred Maintenance” offering with a 3-to-12-month time limit. Most people understand that they can safely defer things only for a limited time, before full service must be resumed for their own good.
• Enhance your “account intelligence,” that is, what you know about each of your clients, and how early you know it. Task your sales, account management, marketing, and service teams to amplify their radar and report to you:
  • Changes in senior management and employee count,
  • Articles in business news and posts on social media,
  • Changes in creditworthiness and speed and accuracy of paying invoices.
• Over-communicate to employees, clients, and business partners. When they lack information, people tend to assume the worst, so communicate simply and often:
  • They want to know you are concerned but calmly on the job. They want to know what they should expect, and what you expect of them.
  • With employees, first and foremost, help them take care of their families, and communicate that it's ok for them to do so. They will anyway, but knowing you support their priorities will win you lasting commitment.
• Collaborate with your peers and industry community via your ConnectWise and other vendors relationships. Many good ideas and helpful resources - and words of encouragement - are traded when the going gets tough.

Closing Thoughts

In many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic was a watershed event, after which it seems much has not been the same. And yet, much progress has been and continues to be made. The TSP community, especially MSPs, has played an enormous, if largely unsung role around the world, in making sure millions of livelihoods were possible to maintain.

While all TSPs played a role, it's clear that some were in a safer and better position to help sooner and more.

With this newsletter, S-LI, and SLIQ along with the TSP community such as Service Leadership and IT Nation Evolve peer groups, you have the resources, tools, and guidance to be safer, set the example, and take the lead when the next call comes.

Resources

Financial Resiliency Guide
Service Leadership and IT Nation Evolve Peer Groups
Service Leadership Index
SLIQ

Contact

questions@service-leadership.com.

Notice: All materials published (electronically or print) by Service Leadership are proprietary and subject to trademark and copyright protections, regardless of where and how it is sourced. The terms and concepts of SLIQ^™, Service Leadership Index^®, (S-L Index^™), Predominant Business Model^™ (PBM^™), Operational Maturity Level^™ (OML^™), Normalized Solution Provider Charts of Accounts^™ (NSPCoA^™), Total Cost of Managed Services^™ (TCMS^™) and Service Factory^™ are proprietary to Service Leadership, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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¹ “Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic” World Health Organization

² Product-centric also known as value-added reseller (VAR).

³ SLIQ: Service Leadership's cloud-based OML progression tool that guides TSP executives to attain best-in-class performance. Learn more here.

⁴ If do not subscribe to S-LI, email questions@service-leadership and an S-L advisor will be in contact with you.