An independent view of your business
Know where you stand, what it’s costing you and what to fix first.
We look at your business in eight areas, from pricing and profit to service productivity and AI, using your own numbers. You get five priorities and a 90-day plan.
Where many owners are
If your business is growing without progressing
Revenue up, margin flat
Each new client seems to add work faster than it adds profit.
The desk is always busy
Ticket volume rises faster than users, and the answer is always another hire.
Renewals are a price fight
Contracts come up and the conversation is all about the rate per seat.
Clients ask about AI
Your customers want help with AI, and you don’t yet have a clear, sellable answer.
Everything comes back to you
Pricing exceptions, escalations and client rescues still land on the founder’s desk.
A buyer called
An approach came in, and you’re not sure what the business is really worth.
The problem
Growth is not the same as progress
Most MSPs don’t have one dramatic problem. They have small commercial and operational leaks that compound: agreements priced below the real cost to serve, client complexity nobody charges for, service capacity lost to rework, vendor increases that aren’t recovered, and leadership time absorbed by exceptions.
At the same time, AI is changing what customers buy, and buyers discount generalists. Providers who make the shift to Strategic Technology Partner (STP) become the partners customers keep and the businesses acquirers compete for. The Diagnostic tells you, objectively, where you stand on both fronts.
What we cover
What we assess: eight dimensions
Each dimension is scored from interviews and your own financial, contract and service data, and profit leakage is quantified where the data supports it.
1. Strategy setting & governance
How direction is set, revisited and cascaded into day-to-day priorities.
2. Go-to-market & ICP
Clarity of your ideal client, pipeline consistency, client concentration and retention.
3. Operating model
How delivery, sales and service are organised around outcomes; service-desk productivity and rework.
4. Commercial model & profitability
Agreement structure and pricing, margin by service and by client, recurring-revenue quality, cash generation and exposure to per-seat pricing.
5. AI & automation maturity
Executive ownership of AI, shadow-AI exposure and how much delivery is genuinely automated.
6. Tooling, platform & IP
Stack economics and licence recovery, PSA discipline, and whether your know-how is codified and owned.
7. People, leadership & knowledge
Leadership capacity, founder dependence, key-person risk and depth of client knowledge.
8. Cyber, risk & sovereignty
Essential Eight, ISO 27001 or equivalent, data sovereignty and privacy as AI use grows.
How it works
Four steps, three to four weeks
01
Scope
A short kick-off to agree objectives, interviews and a focused data request.
02
Discover
Interviews with owners and leaders; analysis of financials, agreements, service data and tooling.
03
Assess
Eight dimensions scored against the STP maturity model; profit leakage quantified where the data supports it.
04
Read out
A board-ready presentation: scorecard, five priorities, 90-day plan and STP roadmap.
What you get
Scorecard
Eight dimensions rated from your own data, and your stage on the MSP to STP curve.
Profit-leakage findings
Where value is being lost, and roughly how much where your data shows it.
Five priorities
The moves with the greatest commercial effect, ranked.
90-day action plan
Owners, baselines and deadlines for the first quarter.
STP roadmap and readout
The path beyond 90 days, ready for your board or investors.
Who you’ll work with
Who you’ll work with
The STP framework comes from three decades of building, scaling, listing and selling IT service providers. Anthony Woodward built Bulletproof from one person to 200 staff, an ASX listing and a sale to AC3, ran Logicalis Australia as CEO and, as Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer at Orro, built an AI Centre of Excellence. John Ferlito co-founded Bulletproof as CTO and built its service platform. We’ve run these businesses ourselves, so the plan is one your team can actually deliver.
Delivered by Anthony Woodward, with John Ferlito on tooling and data.
Engagement
Fixed fee, fixed scope
Format
Fixed fee, fixed scope
Duration
About three to four weeks from kick-off to readout
Delivered by
Anthony Woodward, with John Ferlito on tooling and data
Questions owners ask
FAQ
How much of our time does it take?
A kick-off, interviews of about an hour with each leader, and a data request your finance and service leads can usually fill in a few days.
Is our data safe?
Everything is confidential. We ask only for what the assessment needs and can work under your NDA.
Do we have to engage you afterwards?
No. The plan is yours. Many clients ask us to help implement it, but the Diagnostic stands on its own.
We’ve had an offer for the business. Is this the right start?
Possibly, but if an approach is on the table, our Value & Readiness Review is faster and focused on how a buyer will see the business.
Ready to know where you stand?
Talk it through for 25 minutes, and decide whether the full Diagnostic is the right first step.