adoptie MSP
Why does adoption fail so often at MSP clients?
Adoption fails because MSPs treat it as the closing item of an implementation instead of as the starting point. Clients often use only 20% of the licences they bought, while the ROI sits precisely in that use. Adoption at an MSP is therefore not an extra but the foundation under the business case.
MSP Late Night · 20 August 2026
How do you stop adoption being the first item to fall?
Adoption falls as soon as it sits at the end of a project plan, because that is exactly where discounts and lack of time strike. Anyone who starts with the question of how the end user will actually use this designs the communication plan, the onboarding and the behaviour change before the technical migration. That is a different order from what most MSPs are used to from their technical management DNA, and it calls for separate KPIs on usage, not only on licences sold.
Why is adoption not a closing item?
The ROI of a product sits in the use, not in the implementation. Planning adoption after go-live means the organisation throws the email in the bin and usage never gets going.
What explains that 20% usage?
Microsoft 365 contains 40-plus tools, but digitally immature companies touch around 5%. Partly unconscious incompetence at the client, partly vendors pushing agreements and bundles down without usage KPIs.
Button training or behaviour change?
Real adoption goes two steps further than a tool explanation: first knowledge of what the tool can do, then behaviour change to keep doing it differently. Without that second step everyone falls back into old workflows.
Tell me the incentive and I will give you the result. As long as sales steers on revenue, nobody steers on usage.
Frequently asked questions
Should a client pay separately for adoption?
The business model around adoption is broken in practice: clients know they need adoption, but do not reach for their wallet as soon as it becomes a separate invoice line. It works better to build adoption into the proposition and into the KPIs of the seller, so that usage becomes part of the contract instead of a separate service that falls first under budget pressure.
What is the difference between functional and technical management at an MSP?
Technical management focuses on infrastructure, migrations and working systems and is historically the DNA of most MSPs. Functional management focuses on usage, policy and end user behaviour around those systems. Adoption lives in the functional domain, and that is exactly the discipline MSPs traditionally give less time and attention than the technical migration itself.
How do you measure adoption of Microsoft 365 concretely?
Microsoft 365 offers usage reports down to user level, which makes visible which workloads are barely touched. That data is not daily top of mind at most MSPs, but it gives direct input for conversations about scaling licences down, additional training or dropping tools that add no value to the contract.
Should an MSP deliver adoption itself or outsource it?
That depends on the DNA of the organisation. MSPs strong in technology can choose to deliver adoption through a specialist partner and focus themselves on data security, governance and setting up around the target group. The alternative is building a separate adoption team, but then adoption really has to become core and not something squeezed in alongside.
How do you prevent shadow IT with tools such as Copilot and ChatGPT?
Shadow IT appears when staff do not know what is and is not allowed, or dare not use anything out of fear. Clarity about which tool for which purpose, combined with an explanation of data governance and ground rules, keeps company data inside the approved environment. Without that explanation staff choose a tool themselves, usually the first one that appears in a browser.