Home – New › Forums › Starting your journey › Any I.T. nerds interested in a Co-OP MSP – Victoria
- This topic is empty.
-
AuthorPosts
-
January 19, 2019 at 4:34 am #999262Up::0
tl;dr – Proposing the formation of a co-operative MSP entity. Each person maintains their own client base, but shares costs and pools resources.
Dear Friends,
I am a self-labelled jack of all trades. I have worked across many industries and have skills in many various areas including I.T., payroll, running my own company, accounting etc.
I have been thinking about where to go next. I had thought about going back into the I.T. service business and attempting to build up a client base of small businesses that need intermittent help.
My brain went a few steps further and so here I am putting out the feelers for people who might be interested in my proposal.
Who
- Want to build their own client base
- Individuals who have the necessary I.T. skills
- Are a one-man/woman show
- Who may have strong I.T. skills, but either lack the tax/afinance skillskills or interest.
- Would appreciate having others to lean on
What
I propose starting a partnership with those who are interested and those that may come along in the future. Each member holding an equal number of shares in the entity.
The entity would have its own trading name. After each member was comfortable with the arrangement, they would advise their clients of a ‘name change’.
Eventually we would trade under one brand, but each member would be expected to source and maintain their own clients.Those clients would forever remain yours (unless you hand them off, or they choose to go elsewhere (either internally or externally)).
You would set your own billing rates, service contracts and so forth.
Assign each member a geographical territory – i.e. if a phone enquiry came in from a new customer in Thomastown, the tech in that territory would have first right to accept/reject that customer
Why
The reasons I suggest going as a co-op are;
- Everyone is building one brand
- Billing/administration is done centrally
- Service delivery
- Calls can be answered when you’re not available
- Designate one person for after hours response
- Ticket response times decreased
- Other people to turn to if you can’t get to your client – they have access to client’s IT documentation
- Discounts through using a single supplier (volume discounts)
- Centralised monitoring systems
- Access to a wider skill set
- Insurance savings
How & How Much
I think a good starting team would be up to 5 members starting off in Victoria only.
After locking down the finer points, we’d decide on a business name and start getting our ducks in a row.Although not critical, it would be good to have a consensus on technology/software to be used internally. i.e. ticketing systems, remote monitoring & management, imaging/disaster recovery, asset management etc.
Each member would have an individual DID (phone number) that they provide to clients (entity to have a central ‘reception’ number).
Member would decide how calls to their number route.Costs:
The cost to each member would consist of;- Formation/on-going running costs: Company registration/domain name/hosting/ASIC fees/ SSL certs/insurance etc.
These are non-discretionary expenses that are split equally between members (pro-rata if part year) - Inter-service charges: These are fees from one tech to another whenever a service is provided for another member’s client. Phone/remote session tech support, answering tickets, on-site service etc.
- Cost of service: These are costs directly associated with one of your clients (remote monitoring software subscription, office365 licenses) which would be billed to the entity
- Operating expenses: Ticketing software, VoIP, marketing, etc
Anything in this category is decided on by all members at regular meetings. - Administrative charges: payroll, BAS filing, following up on overdue accounts
So that’s my pitch. This isn’t a franchise or ‘a opportunity to secure your financial future by working 10 hours a fortnight’ (a sarcastic dig at some ads going around) – just an idea for people in the same boat to possibly row together (ok, enough idioms!).
All aspects of how this will run are voted on by all members.
Nothing about this is intended to lock you in or hold your customers at gun-point. If you find that you’d prefer to go solo, take your phone number & clients with you.Any one interested, either post privately or publicly and we’ll go from there.
January 19, 2019 at 10:06 am #1218652Up::0Hi Greg,
Thanks for joining and welcome to the forums
I can see where you are heading with this concept. The idea of small businesses joining forces certainly has merit – I’ve seen this with group buying and industry membership groups etc.
My first thought is that a more formal set up like this would lead to challenges on agreeing direction, plans etc etc … people who run their own business tend to be very independent and strong-willed! Even partnerships with close colleagues and friends need a lot of caution.
However, the idea of teaming up with others in your industry – could call them ‘competitors’ – is such a good one I think. We’ve done that for years in the copywriting space less formally. I’ve been involved in a few private groups and we share clients, overflow work, tips, ideas, rants and even have regular xmas party.
As a starting point, setting up a private group online – be on Slack or Facebook for example – could be a nice way to test the waters and share the benefits of the concept??
Good luck with the ventures and thanks for getting involved!
PeterFebruary 19, 2019 at 1:33 pm #1218653 -
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.