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technologyreseller.co.uk 13 BUSINESS BRIEFING Datto’s BCDR solution in year one and two thirds in year two. Based on feedback and insights from the MSPs in question, Forrester suggests that such an organisation could look forward to financial gains and productivity improvements across the board. These include: n $100,000+ of annual client base growth over and above what it would have experienced otherwise; n $50,000 in extra billing, thanks to accurate time tracking and documenting of billable work by Autotask PSA; n 50% faster resolution of work order tickets thanks to Datto RMM and Autotask PSA dashboards and widgets that enable MSPs to manage client work in one centralised location, prioritise jobs, and gauge the time needed to resolve them, and, in time, improve self-service for clients through automated services and FAQ pages; and n a 90% drop in productivity losses from downtime. Forrester singles out Datto’s patented Screenshot Verification that alerts MSPs if a backup is experiencing difficulties as a great time-saver during disaster recovery procedures, helping reduce time to recovery from three days to a matter of hours. Overall, Forrester calculates that its composite organisation would experience benefits with a value of $1,101,844 over a three-year period against costs of $309,432 from annual fees, the expense of migrating clients’ data to the solutions, and employee training. This adds up to a compared to previous arrangements based on tape storage and/or a combination of hard drives and off-site storage that required constant oversight and tracking by staff. Harris says that a lot of these efficiency gains are a product of increased levels of automation and integration. “Some of these are attributed to a particular solution, while others are a benefit of using integrated products from a single vendor. For example, one interviewee noted that new wireless access points sold to a client were automatically pulled under their Datto RMM instance, which, if there was a problem, would automatically create a ticket for engineers.” Return on investment To quantify the financial impact of Datto solutions, Forrester analysed the characteristics of the four MSPs interviewed and created a single composite out of its observations, to whit a global MSP with more than 100 small and medium-sized clients, each with 25 to 100 users; operations in the Americas, EMEA and APAC; annual revenues of $5 million; BCDR services from multiple vendors; and limited PSA/RMM capabilities so that employees have to keep track of service request tickets individually. Next, it calculated the impact of implementing Datto solutions, including the deployment of Datto RMM and Autotask PSA to all clients in the first year (including training for all employees) and the migration of one-third of clients to net present value (NPV) of $792,412 and an ROI of 256%, with payback in less than 6 months. Unquantified benefits Harris adds that these savings are just the starting point and that there are many other benefits mentioned by the MSPs that Forrester didn’t quantify for this study. “An important one,” she says, “is greater client satisfaction, which improves client retention rates and services spend and gives everyone involved greater confidence in the security of their data. “They also praised Datto for the support that it offers MSP partners, from technical support and help with sales and marketing to networking events and popular industry events, like Datto MSP Technology Days and the DattoCon conference, next scheduled to take place on October 11-13. “Finally, Datto received plaudits for its commitment to innovation and product development. This not only gives MSPs something new to take to clients but also increases organisations’ confidence that Datto is continuing to meet their changing needs. A good example is the launch of new Virtual SIRIS (vSIRIS) data protection software – a software-only version of the Datto SIRIS business continuity and disaster recovery solution that gives a rapid, hardware-free deployment option for MSPs, including those that haven’t been able to install hardware on client offices due to remote working restrictions.” Assessing all the savings and benefits possible by standardising on Datto solutions is clearly no easy task. Forrester’s The Total Economic Impact™ Of Datto: Cost Savings And Business Benefits Of Using Datto Integrated Solutions is a good starting point. To download a copy, please visit here . * For every 10% increase in the proportion of revenue from managed services, MSPs’ annual growth rates increase by 0.25 to 0.75 points. So, increasing the percentage of your managed services revenue stream from 20% to 70% improves annual growth by 1-4 points (source: Datto Global State of the MSP Report 2020 ). Benefits over 3 years MSP client base growth $432.2K Productivity value with RMM/PSA services $372.0K Productivity value from reliable BCDR services $175.7K Recaptured value from reduced billing leakage $121.8K (source: The Total Economic Impact™ Of Datto: Cost Savings And Business Benefits Of Using Datto Integrated Solutions, March 2021 ) Virtual SIRIS data protection software gives MSPs a software-only, hardware-free option for deploying the Datto SIRIS business continuity and disaster recovery solution