What happens when your MSP overpromises and underdelivers business value?
If you’ve experienced or felt “the value gap” after a technical project wraps up, here’s why. It isn’t the technical skills or delivery leaving you feeling lost; it’s because you expected a real business outcome from an MSP with a purely technical mindset.
Are You Stuck in “The Value Gap”?
Ever sat through a “strategy” session that sounded more like system reviews? You’re not alone. Many leadership teams feel like they are stuck in an endless loop, raising the same concerns, wanting to explore solutions to solve the same problems, and still not seeing their IT investment deliver the right outcomes…
The real issue? You’re expecting business insight from a technology partner.
Most MSPs are wired to support, not strategise.
They fix what’s broken, prevent other things from breaking, assist your staff, keep the lights on and your systems running and recommend new tools.
But ask them to link technology to a commercial outcome, such as increasing profit margins, optimising headcount or mitigating business risk, and they often stall.
It feels like under-delivery, but it’s actually misaligned expectations.
By design, your average MSP’s business structure, culture, and KPIs are built around technical service delivery, not business performance. So if you’re searching for business value, you likely won’t get it because, because value creation was never their core mandate.
The cost of staying stuck
When tech projects stall, it’s rarely just an IT issue. Time is wasted. Budgets overrun. Teams lose confidence. Worse yet, people find their own workarounds…and stop bringing ideas to the table that they think will go nowhere.
Over time, staying stuck turns into your business slowing down.
Delivering business value starts with business thinking.
Business thinking means looking at how technology works for your business, not how it works in your technology stack. This starts with business questions – and not just technology ones!
- What’s the commercial problem we’re solving?
- What will change if we get this right?
- Who owns the outcome?
- What does success look like?
Only once your business direction is in clear view should the tech conversation begin.
What if your MSP is not leading with business questions?
A real-world example
A national service provider had enjoyed over eight years of consistent 30%+ year-on-year growth, becoming a market leader in their space. Then, almost without warning, growth stalled and began to reverse.
One of the core issues identified was a lack of control over more than 1,000 unique client agreements. Two separate Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) providers had been engaged over a 12-month period. Both scoped and attempted to deliver solutions. Ultimately, neither worked.
Why?
Because both focused on making their platform fit the existing requirements – without ever asking what a better outcome looked like for the business. As a result, integrations failed, adoption stalled and the real business problem remained unsolved.
That changed when the company engaged an MSP who understood the business context, and added value by suggesting a different path towards a better outcome.
Rather than introduce more technical complexity or force a fit, the MSP introduced a specialist partner who leveraged Microsoft Syntex to extract structured metadata from the existing agreements, consolidate that date into a live source that was integrated seamlessly across the company’s broader technology stack. A working proof of concept was delivered in two weeks and a fully functional deployment in under two months.
In this case, the business value gap wasn’t in the technical delivery. The previous providers likely delivered sound technical solutions that addressed the technical problem, but fell short of actually delivering any solution to the bigger, business problem. Classic case of failing to look at how the proposed technology would works for the business, not how it works in their technology stack.
How to tell if your MSPs is a business thinker!
- Do they ask “why” before jumping straight the “what” or the “how”?
- Can they exemplify how their work links to a commercial outcome?
- Are they open and willing to partner to ensure both technical and non-technical value is delivered?
If not, you’re likely not going to get the business value you’re after from your MSP.
It’s time to realign.
At Maxsum, we want to make sure what gets delivered actually delivers.
We bring a strategic lens to every engagement – clarifying what success looks like, identifying who will drive that success, who needs to benefit from it and how, and ensuring technology execution stays aligned to the key business priorities. And, if the right outcome requires specialist capability that we may not have, we bring in the right partner and stay accountable for the result.
Contact us today to start a different kind of conversation with a Managed Service Provider dedicated to delivering business value.
