Daniel and I started Tenger Ways with midsize enterprises as our target market – organizations with over $100M in revenue and 500-2000 employees.  But to our surprise, we’ve had a lot of success supporting smaller organizations as well; so much so that that we built an entirely new offering specifically designed for SMBs, non-profits, startups, and scaleups and I’m super excited to tell you about it. 

I’m thrilled to introduce you to Tenger Thrive – our answer to the completely underserved IT support market for smaller organizations.  Thrive isn’t just a small upgrade from traditional managed services.  It’s a revolutionary new model that – like everything we do at Tenger Ways – has been completely reimagined by putting our customer at the center. 

In this blog I share the main problems SMBs, non-profits, startups and scaleups face with handling their IT needs and explain how Thrive addresses them all. 

IT challenges faced by SMBs, startups, scaleups and non-profits

Smaller businesses and non-profits struggle to get their IT needs met for their growing business due to a variety of factors:

Budget Constraints: Most can't afford full-time IT staff. And the truth is, even if they could afford it, they simply don’t have the need– the volume of work rarely justifies a full-time position.  Organizations typically don’t have a need for full-time IT staff until they have at least 100 employees.

Specialized Needs: Even when organizations decide to hire a full-time support person, one IT generalist is never enough to meet all their diverse and complex needs.  In addition to basic IT tasks like providing functioning and secure PCs, most small businesses have a decent sized portfolio of SaaS platforms – Salesforce, Hubspot, QuickBooks, Rippling, Notion, Zapier, Vercel, Shopify, Squarespace – to name a few.  An IT generalist can learn the basics of these applications, but they’ll never match the expertise of specialists who ensure you get the most ROI from each platform.

Entrepreneurial Spirit: The innate 'get-it-done' mindset is the superpower of SMBs, non-profits and startups.  But this entrepreneurial spirit can also be their achilles heel, causing serious and unexpected pain in the long run.  We’ve seen it play out time and time again. The beauty of SaaS and modern cloud systems today is you don’t need an IT team!  Anyone with a credit card and an internet connection can purchase laptops from Amazon and get all your employees set up with basic office and collaboration software from Google or Microsoft.  Your first salesperson can spin up a homegrown CRM using Notion or easily get a Hubspot or Salesforce instance stood up.  Everything works beautifully…without any dedicated IT staff…until it doesn’t! As organizations grow and scale, they eventually learn the hard way that ad-hoc systems don’t scale with them.  There’s an inflection point where systems start to break down and prevent further growth – systems don’t talk to each other, data is dispersed and data quality is poor, security incidents pop up, core systems become unreliable and unstable, affecting employee productivity.  

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) Are Stuck in the Past: SMBs, non-profits, startups, and scaleups are completely underserved by MSPs today. The traditional MSP model was designed last century for a world where IT was simple, everyone worked in one office, and business needs didn’t change that often.  Traditional MSPs offer rigid, one-size fits all solutions and are not equipped to deal with organizations that are now distributed geographically, with a hybrid mix of onsite and remote, and with constantly changing needs.  With their fixed-price models, there’s no incentive for MSPs to go above and beyond. They might keep the lights on in your office building, but they rarely offer the proactive, tailored support businesses need.

Enter Tenger Thrive: Managed Services for the Modern Business

We designed Tenger Thrive to solve all these problems. And we did it the way we do everything at Tenger Ways – by putting the client experience above everything else.  Thrive is a modern take on IT Support for SMBs, non-profits, startups and scaleups: it is incredibly flexible, affordable, and provides you with deep specialist expertise combined with broad strategic vision over all your systems so your entire systems architecture is designed to scale as you grow.

Affordable Access to Expertise: Tenger Thrive provides affordable access to highly skilled specialists tailored to your needs.  Need a HubSpot expert one month? We got you.  Zapier automation the next week?  We got you.  Need to integrate your CRM and accounting systems? We got you.  Need to improve SEO on your website? We got you.  Need a security awareness program? We got you.  You have access to the specialists you need at one affordable rate.

Enterprise Oversight: All engagements have program managers and architects with enterprise-level experience. They've all had hands on experience working directly inside of large businesses and understand the architecture required for seamless growth. While our specialists manage your daily IT operations, our leadership team is constantly steering your roadmap with bi-weekly and quarterly meetings to ensure future scalability. We never over-engineer or build complex enterprise systems for SMBs, BUT we do keep future growth in mind so we can make smart decisions so that you don’t have to redo all your systems at each stage of growth.

On-the-fly Adaptability: Today’s fast-paced business environment demands agility. Traditional managed services have a rigid contract – a fixed number of hours for a fixed number of resources supporting a fixed list of applications.  With Tenger Thrive, there's no need for a predetermined IT checklist of everything you need. You gain access to the specialists you require, exactly when you need them.  From IT to business applications to analytics to security awareness programs.  Whatever you need, when you need it, we can accommodate with no change orders, no modifications to contracts, no upcharges.

Flexibility Built In: Unlike traditional MSPs that bind you to a fixed number of hours, Thrive is completely elastic. Your commitment adjusts based on your evolving needs.  With Thrive you can easily borrow hours from the future, roll over unused hours, flex up and add hours for special projects, or even reduce your commitment if you need less support. We got you covered.

Avoid the Pitfalls of Traditional Hiring: Full-time employees are expensive and lock you into specific roles and skill sets. Contractors, though temporarily useful, pose a risk of knowledge loss. Tenger Thrive allocates dedicated experts to your company, ensuring they deepen their understanding of your unique challenges over time.

Too good to be true?

Our flexible and modern approach solves all the problems SMBs, non-profits, startups and scaleups face:

• Budget constraints – Thrive is the most affordable solution when you don’t need full time staff.  With Thrive, you don’t have to worry about cost because you pay only for what you need.

• Specialized needs – Thrive provides access to specialists and true experts for all of your IT needs, and best of all the experts stay with you and become even more valuable as they learn the uniqueness of your business.

• Entrepreneurial spirit – You don’t have to worry about whether the IT decisions you’re making will come back to haunt you as you grow.  We provide architectural oversight to future-proof your IT decisions, help you design systems that will scale as you grow, while still allowing you to move as fast as startups need to move. 

• MSPs are stuck in the past – we reimagined the model putting you in the center – better experts, and more flexible and affordable contracts. 

Does it sound too good to be true? We think so too.  But when we put the customer first and completely redesign traditional support models, this is what you get. 

Our first clients love it, and we think you will too.  Try us out, risk free for 3 months.  Contact us to learn more.