Comments on: Are MSPs Really Pro-Active?

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:37:44 +0000

Roberto: Your term “the comfort zone” is on the mark. People are creatures of habit. They do what they do best. If emergency repair is a strength, then pro-active services may not be a major focus area. Just a theory…
-jp

By: Roberto Simi

Roberto Simi — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:14:11 +0000

From the work we have done with IT resellers in Europe – moving to a proactive model is a big leap particularly for smaller IT service businesses. Do you think a significant barrier is that many are run by technically minded business owners who find it difficult move out of their technical comfort zone? To run a proactive business requires a much more sales driven approach, a very clear offering and a marketing plan. Hiring the right type of people and agencies that excel at this will is a key success factor to winning and retaining volume business.

By: Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:45:38 +0000

@John: Putting green? NOC? Photos please…

joe [at] ninelivesmediainc.com.

By: John Kilgore

John Kilgore — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:36:35 +0000

Rich – I couldn’t agree more.

What alot of new MSPs just don’t get is that the RMM tool coupled with a PSA doesn’t solve everything and automatically make you proactive. Just because you can get alerts and respond to them quickly doesn’t mean you’re proactive… ideally you wouldn’t receive any alerts if you were truly being proactive.

The staff that I have truly recognizes this. They have all the tools to get the job done but they understand tools can only do so much. They have a monthly schedule of things that they perform per client per month (that obviously couldn’t be automated or scripted) that has definitely shown fruits of labor. We re-vamped our proactive schedule at the beginning of the year and the phones have stopped ringing. No one calls or emails for support much anymore because we -truly- are proactive. I won’t know it for fact until I run my reports for Q2, but I bet our ticket volumes has decreased by 60% or better in the last 3 months. That’s good for the MSP and the client.

What do they do? Just a few examples:
- Software Audits
- Firmware Updates
- Bios Updates
- License Audits (AV, OS, Hardware, etc.)
- Manual Backup Test/Restores

I think what some are afraid of is that doing this true “proactive” work seems like “busy work” and takes away from their engineers time to perform other duties, like supporting clients. It’s an equilibrium shift of sorts that you make when you decide to perform the “busy work”. At first it seems like it is too much to do, but you can definitely see the results within 90 days.

Now, if I could just explain to the other management why my staff has become 35-40% less utilized…. and installed a putting green in the NOC…

By: Rich Marlatt

Rich Marlatt — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:50:09 +0000

What are MSPs doing to be “proactive”? Just having an RMM solution that reports problems doesn’t make a company proactive. I think a lot of MSPs are purchasing tools and services but not utilizing them in a proactive manner. I have seen MSP monitor for problems and when they see a problem they go and fix it and to me this is still break/fix. I am curious as to what MSPs are doing to be proactive beyond monitoring.

By: Thomas Johnsen

Thomas Johnsen — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:49:47 +0000

I can’t speak for everyone be my crew at Networthy Systems are truly pro-active. All of our clients are now virtually trouble free due to pro-active maintenance.

By: 2009 IT Services Trends and Practices Survey Results – Kaseya | IT Automation

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:37:49 +0000

[...] some surprising results. (if I wasn’t so lazy and would have finished this post yesterday, Joe Panettieri wouldn’t have beaten me to the punch on this [...]