Solving key CSP challenges

Growth and comfort do not coexist.

By regularly chatting to our partners, it is apparent that as businesses grow and the Microsoft eco-system changes, there are many challenges thrown into the mix. This can be unsettling for many, especially when companies invest in teams and processes to try and help their MSP business grow.

So, let’s have a look at some of the more common issues we have heard from our direct Microsoft CSP partners. Maybe they’ll sound familiar to you?

1) Managing CSP subscription demands across many customers

Delivering seamless client experiences isn’t a walk in the park. Customer demands and tenant growth can lead to a to-do list as long as your arm. Day-to-day tasks such as assessing existing license quantities, examining subscription growth, and identifying improvements and over-provisioned licenses, are time-consuming. They can also take the focus away from other important areas.

2) Reconciliation of unallocated licenses across your customers

We’ve seen the numbers. According to data from Coreview, 56% of organization’s Microsoft 365 licenses are mismanaged, and 27% of E5 licenses are unassigned. Customers need to be able to trust that their CSP is managing and processing their licenses properly—which through no fault of any CSP, can be a challenge keep up with.

3) Enable customers to purchase new cloud solutions and services

Like many of the other challenges, monotonous, and time-consuming tasks can restrict business growth. Many CSPs need support to hand the ‘management baton’ over to their clients, allowing them to make their own decisions, and purchase custom services relevant to their business, for example back-up or third-party software.

Many struggle to do this, as they don’t have the tools available to facilitate their customers with options like this.

4) How can you provide detailed cost and usage reports for Microsoft 365?

It’s time-consuming work to manually mine customer data every month, and we find CSPs’ customers are after real-time information to show them what licenses and services contribute to the majority of their Microsoft 365 usage, as well as where the spikes of their monthly spend lie.

Customer demand can be overwhelming, and basic reporting functionalities will only scratch the surface of the data. We have found our Microsoft partners want to be able to educate clients further on how to manage usage accordingly.

Which leads us to our final point…

5) The arduous task of creating monthly invoices

Looking to take away the burdensome responsibility of administrative tasks, such as billing? We thought as much. Analyzing multiple reports to understand customer usage doesn’t need to be strenuous. But we know it can be.

Transferring data across into invoicing systems and simplifying Microsoft 365 cost details, can be done easily with the right tools.

What can be done to solve your CSP challenges?

We’re sure you’ve all experienced some or all of these challenges. Cloud User Hub was create to streamline processes and help direct Microsoft CSPs grow and scale their business. So while growth and comfort do not coexist, we like to think we can give you a helping hand, (and a little bit of comfort) to solve some of the more common challenges and help you thrive.

Laura Moise is Sr. Product Marketing Manager at N‑able