MSP software vendor ConnectWise plans to give its customers a broader set of business growth advisory tools through its acquisition of Service Leadership Inc., a consultancy that works with technology solution providers and vendors.
ConnectWise will gain Service Leadership's financial performance and operational maturity benchmarking index, which collects and analyzes data derived from channel partners globally, and the SLIQ Operational Maturity Level tool, a diagnostic and performance improvement system for partners. Additional assets include Service Leadership peer groups, executive training and individual management consulting services, the companies said.
ConnectWise executive vice president of growth Chris Timms said the acquisition rounds out ConnectWise's business development resources for technology solution providers (TSPs). Those resources include ConnectWise's business platform, its IT Nation community of service provider professionals, and its business maturity and leadership training programs.
"First and foremost, we want our partners to improve at a time of disruption in the market," Timms said. "We really feel the best way to do that is through being analytical and being able to decipher the signals from the noise that all the TSPs are trying to navigate through right now."
The addition of Service Leadership will give TSPs "a blueprint to be able to navigate the disruption that they are currently enduring and, over time, increase their financial performance," he said.
Service Leadership's team, including CEO Paul Dippell and senior vice president Brian O'Connell, will join ConnectWise's growth organization, reporting to Timms. Dippell will continue to lead Service Leadership, ConnectWise said.
The intention is to continue to deliver the services we do today and to offer them to an increasingly broad set of partners, whether they are ConnectWise software partners or not.
Paul DippellCEO, Service Leadership
Dippell noted that Service Leadership's offerings will remain open to TSPs that don't use ConnectWise software. "The intention is to continue to deliver the services we do today and to offer them to an increasingly broad set of partners, whether they are ConnectWise software partners or not," Dippell said.
He added that Service Leadership's offerings work for "dominant TSP business models," which include MSPs, VARs, project-centric firms and private cloud service providers. The offerings also apply to office equipment companies either building or running an IT division.
Prior to the acquisition, Service Leadership had established relationships with many of ConnectWise's TSP customers, as well as other companies ConnectWise has acquired. For example, Dippell said Service Leadership has long collaborated with HTG Peer Groups, which ConnectWise acquired in January 2018 and transformed into IT Nation Evolve. A significant portion of Service Leadership's benchmarking data is derived from IT Nation Evolve members, Dippell noted. "We are already working on plans to help further enhance the capabilities of the Evolve facilitators and bring new things to the group."
In the press statement announcing the Service Leadership purchase, ConnectWise noted that partner data Service Leadership collects and analyzes will be strongly secured and used only as intended.
The Service Leadership website states that Service Leadership also uses its benchmarking index to advise IT vendors on channel partner strategies, partner recruitment and partner enablement. The Service Leadership Index is used to give vendors information on "the demographics of the Solution Provider community to find the relevant population for specific product targeting purposes," according to the website.
ConnectWise said it will immediately begin integrating Service Leadership data into the ConnectWise platform. The company will hold a webinar on Feb. 25 to share more information about the integration plans and benefits to partners.
