AI Practice Development for Microsoft MSPs
We build the commercial side of your AI practice. Until your own team is ready, our specialists help you in live customer engagements.
Operator, at GM and CxO level
Revenue under direct accountability
Turnover growth inside a UK MSP, with its leadership team
MSP owners interviewed before a word of this was written
Two sentences we hear from almost every MSP owner.
We only hear about it when they ask us to quote.
We built exactly what they asked for, but there was no next conversation.
Both sentences describe the same problem. The first comes before the customer decides, and the second after the build. In both cases, you were brought in after the business decision had already been made.
Whoever leads the commercial conversation writes the requirement everyone else quotes against. Sometimes you are not in that conversation. The customer then decides what to buy before you are asked to quote. So you often compete on scope and price. The business value of your work rarely comes into that decision.
Being brought in late does not mean your technical work is inferior. Building a strong technical business was the right decision. The problem is having nothing to offer when the business decision is made.
An AI practice needs two capabilities. Most MSPs have built one.
Customers do not buy AI for its own sake. A customer first buys a change to how the business works. The technology that delivers the change comes second.
AI business consulting
AI business consulting finds where value is created in a customer’s business. It works out how the customer’s teams should work differently, and what that change is worth. AI business consulting also tests whether a CFO would accept the business case. The CEO, CFO and COO buy this work before a requirement exists.
Most MSPs have not built this half.
AI technology implementation
This half covers how the technology is architected, licensed and configured. Next, it is integrated, secured and deployed. Then the customer’s staff adopt it, and your team supports it. The work is delivered against a requirement someone else wrote.
This half is a real asset, and you have already built it.
Neither half matters more than the other. The commercial half happens first, and that is when the requirement is written.
We do. You do.
Every MSP owner asks us one question in the first minute. Where does your work stop, and where does ours start? Here is the answer before you ask.
We sell no software, no licences and no implementation. You do the build and keep the revenue from it.
Review. Build. Apply.
Each of the three stages removes a different risk.
AI Business Consulting, delivered with you
How do we lead the business conversation at a customer now, before we are ready?
Build your own capability. Buy capacity while you build it.
Building your own capability takes quarters. Your customers will not wait that long. Our specialists supply the commercial half while you build your own. They work inside your customer engagements. The service is called AI Business Consulting, delivered with you.
Each product has two prices. The first is what the service would cost you to buy separately. The second is what Ingram Micro partners pay. It is lower because Ingram funds part of the programme.
Growth Executive
£60,000 a year (£12,000 for Ingram Micro partners)
- On site, inside your business. We work with your leadership and management teams in your own offices.
- Your own offers, accounts and numbers. We work through them with you, step by step, until your commercial half exists.
- Access between visits for live commercial decisions. A deal may need shaping. An offer may be hard to price.
- Not training, not coaching, not a peer group. One senior operator works one to one with your business.
AI Business Consulting, delivered with you
From £3,000 per engagement (from £2,500 for Ingram Micro partners)
- You keep the customer relationship before, during and after the engagement. We do not form, seek or keep our own relationship with your customer.
- You lead delivery and attend every customer session. Our specialists work as you direct. The customer sees your team lead the work.
- You sign every deliverable that reaches the customer. Your name is on every document.
- You win the build. Our work ends at the high-level solution design. The build is your work and your revenue.
We have already helped a UK MSP grow, working inside the business.
He helped us put in place the growth structure, commercial discipline and strategic thinking required to scale the business more effectively — and challenged us to think about growth as a system rather than a series of isolated activities.
Most growth advisers study growth. We have run businesses and grown them.
We have spent twenty-five years at GM and CxO level. We held P&L accountability throughout. Those roles were at Vodafone, O2 / Telefónica, Symantec / Norton, Staples Europe, Equifax and Helvar. In total, we were directly accountable for £24bn of revenue. We delivered £1.1bn of additional annual revenue and added 15 million customers.
“We are not consultants.”
Eight MSP owners told us a version of that sentence. Each one said it separately, before any of this was written. None of the eight had a technology problem or a marketing problem. Every one of them could implement. None of them could reliably lead the business conversation that comes before the requirement.
We work with MSPs. We do not compete with them.
We sell no software, no licences and no implementation. We do not build, configure, integrate, secure, deploy or operate technology. We do not bid for the work that follows our engagements. You keep that work and the revenue from it.
Sometimes a live customer engagement needs executive AI business consulting. Your own capability may not be fully built yet. In that case, the consulting comes from Formalus, our specialist customer-facing commercial transformation business. It does that work only, and does not implement technology. Formalus specifies the build. You deliver it, and you are paid for it.
Be in the room when your customer makes the business decision.
A Growth Review is a structured conversation with you and your leadership team. There is no charge for it. We find where your AI practice is actually constrained. We work out what removing that constraint is worth. Then we tell you honestly whether we are the right people to help. Sometimes the honest answer is no.
Win the business case before you win the build.