Case Study: Growing MSP Increases Staff Utilization And Improves Margins

On the way to building a strong managed services business, Dempsey Bluevar took a slightly different path. While many MSPs have their roots in hardware sales and break-fix services in the small and mid-size business (SMB) marketplace, Dempsey Bluevar's background is in the enterprise market. One advantage of this is Dempsey Bluevar's long history of seeing IT as a business accelerator. "We definitely have a background that views IT as a strategic tool," says Aaron Biehl, Vice President of Client Services at Dempsey Bluevar. "As our focus shifted to managed services in the SMB market, that approach served us well." That shift began in 2004 and accelerated over the next few years as new tools for the delivery of services to SMB clients appeared and matured. "Our shift to managed services was motivated by both the attractiveness of the SMB market and the availability of new tools— including Intel® vPro™ technology-based PCs and N-able's N-central management console software—that made the business model feasible," explains Biehl. "The pieces have really come together."