Please tell Charles to visit us. We’d love to hear from him whenever he has opinions to share.

Readers: If you want more info from Lane Smith or MSPAlliance on Accreditation, check in with Lane at http://www.doitsmarter.com or visit http://www.mspalliance.com, respectively.

• Managed Services Best Practices
• Physical and Data Security of your NOC
• Business / Financial Health and Wellbeing
• Client Retention / Satisfaction

Across all of these topics the exams really dives into what it takes to run a sustainable, scalable and profitable managed services business. As such we encourage any company that wants to take the exam to start the process as soon as possible and not to wait until they think they are ready. Once you have started the process and gone through the initial interview you will know the areas that you need to improve on prior to passing the exam, from here we can help you with a game plan to get there.

The process consists of a written exam which is an essay based exam that generally takes 24 hours or more to complete. The reason for this is that we not only ask you to explain your processes but to provide proof of the process. So for example we ask you to explain how you handle call priority and then provide your SLA as well.

Once the written exam has been completed and passed we ask for customer references as well as non-customer references. These customers need to be managed services customers that have been using your services for at least a year.

The last component is an onsite examination. The goal of this is to ensure that your NOC is secure and that your team is actually leveraging the processes that you have outlined in the written exam and documentation.

This processes can be an enormous benefit to any company as it really forces you to not only document all of your processes but implement them as well.

I also see a great benefit from a marketing perspective too. I recently say an IPED survey that stated, “93% of Solution Providers Say they Currently Provide or Plan to Provide Some Form of Managed Services”. What this means is that everyone is claiming to be an MSP. So how do you differentiate yourself from the competition? The media awards are one way but none of them involve a 3rd party organization actually auditing your managed services process and giving a stamp of approval. The MSP Alliance Accreditation does.

The exam costs $1499 plus any of the travel expenses involved in the onsite inspection. This I can tell you is an incredible bargain considering the time that the MSP Alliance Board puts into this process. The exam can be taken anywhere from 1 month to a year depending on how prepared you are when you start the process.

While Do IT Smarter does offer a training prep course for this exam I can tell you this is not the reason I recommend it rather I do speak from the heart and am very much interested in continuing to grow the managed services industry. I believe that without these types of programs in place and without some sort of self regulation we will have a difficult time sustaining the incredible growth that we are seeing. We very much need an organization that is not tied to vendors to set a standard for what it means to be an MSP?

I know MSPAlliance has some Accreditation info on its Web site. But can you share more info beyond a blanket statement that essentially says “go get Accredited.”

1. What are the key benefits of MSPAlliance Accreditation? For instance, what advantages does an Accredited MSP have over a non-Accredited MSP?
2. How much does it cost?
3. How long does it take?
4. How many MSPs are Accredited and how has it benefited their businesses?
5. Are you (Do IT Smarter) affiliated with the Accreditation program? In other words, do you have a vested interest in getting MSPs Accredited? Your site mentions that you have prep courses for the Accreditation. Are you speaking from the heart and telling readers that it’s a highly valuable program they should pursue?

Readers: Lane and his company, Do IT Smarter, helped to pioneer the Master MSP business model. And I’ve heard from quite a few MSPs (such as masterIT) that describe the value of pursuing Accreditation. But I also think it’s important to understand exactly what the Accreditation program involves, and how it potentially enhances an MSP’s business.
-jp