Managed Services Vs. Professional Services: What's The Difference?

By Jeremy Blanton, Sr. Director, Managed Services Research, TSIA

How to Use Each to Drive Adoption and Renewals

It’s one thing to sell your technology, but it’s a completely different task to make sure  customers know how to use it. Both managed and professional services can help your customers enact your solutions and bring about a faster time to value. But when do you call in professional services and when does it make more sense to hand it over to managed services?

Don’t think about “managed services versus professional services” as a competition. While the implementation will look different, their importance to a company’s success is the same and can even be used together to accomplish outcomes. When deployed correctly, both can be used to drive better renewal rates and customer satisfaction. However, their differences mean it’s crucial to make a strategic decision on when to use which service.

Let’s look at the difference between managed services and professional services, the boundaries of what each offers, and what that looks like in the real world.