Many MSPs look at compliance as a nuisance. Honestly, I can’t blame them. Compliance comes with costs (both external and internal soft costs), time diverted from other endeavors, and other side effects that do not generally sit well with executives and business owners. Worse still, some MSPs feel they are caught in a sort of limbo because they are not fully sure if they need to be in compliance with a certain regulation or not. Overlapping standards can also create confusion for the MSP who must decide what is relevant for their profession and their often diverse customer base.
This bleak view of compliance, however, is not only archaic, but it ignores alternatives which may help MSPs deal with the difficult question of compliance and actually turn it into a positive. The new perspective on this issue is to turn your compliance costs into a marketing advantage.
- Know your customers. This is important. Do a thorough evaluation of your current client list and see if they fall into any vertical and/or regulated industries.
- Talk with your customer. Find out whether your customers are asking you (or likely to ask you) to become audited or compliant in their field.
- Develop a plan. Many managed service providers work in multiple regulated markets, so devising a compliance and audit plan that satisfies all or most of those vertical markets is important.
- Don’t waste money. There are many compliance and audit programs that have been awkwardly forced to fit managed service provider organizations. This approach is more likely to waste your time and money since it will require multiple certifications and audits in order to cover all the areas important to your customers.
Unified Certification Standard for Cloud & Managed Service Providers
The UCS audit and certification was designed specifically for cloud and MSPs. It combines all the elements of a certification, along with the weight and authority of a full audit. Moreover, the UCS is an unrestricted audit report which means you can show it to your customers without the need for a non-disclosure agreement, making the UCS the perfect marketing and sales device.
If you are facing an onslaught of compliance requests from your customers, ask for a free consultation on what it would take to get your cloud or managed services practice UCS certified and audited!
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