Freedom From: Labor
Busy, busy, busy is NOT the answer
Welcome Warriors of the Autotask software
Normally, I say that I am glad you are here, but today I am hoping you are NOT here. Why? Because many of you should be enjoying the fruits of all your labors and enjoying the start of a 4-day weekend. You should not be working a 12-hour day trying to control the Chaos of your business and Service Delivery Operations.
If You’re Here on Friday…
So, if you are reading this on Friday, I get it. Things have to be sold, tickets worked, Clients apologized to for missing SLAs, and Techs micro-managed because they can’t figure out what to work on next. Or, slightly better, you are overloaded with all the new Clients coming in and need to get them onboarded and their needs met.
Monday Catch-Up? I'm Sorry!
For those of you reading this on Monday because you need the “catch-up” day, I am truly sorry you have to give up that time to relax and refresh and perhaps have that last family mini-vacation. But your customers don’t care so you gotta do what you gotta do, right?
Where are the Tuesday people? Are you reading this refreshed and ready to work on your business?
No matter where you are, I have seen it when I do an evaluation for a new Client. But I’m not here today to talk about all the stuff we can do to help. We certainly, can, of course, and an email to info@agmspcoaching.com can make that pain go away. What I do want to do today, is update my MSP readers on where we are with our labors (pun intended).
An Update on Our Labors
Back in January, I shared our New Year’s Resolution: To provide more value at less cost to our Customers, Subscribers, and the Autotask Community.
I also shared our plans:
New Newsletter format to provide more information in a more organized and appealing way
A fresh, new website
Making it easier to do business with us
Better messaging
Making it easier to access relevant, more current information
How to Resolve Operational Issues courses you can take online – at your fingertips.
Reaching out and engaging with us on a 1-on-1 basis will be more accessible.
In other words, we weren’t planning just a brand refresh, which we are very proud of, but a new and improved content delivery system as well.
Enhancing the Service Delivery Gladiator’s Community
Part of this was much more attention on the Service Delivery Gladiator’s Community. We wanted that paltry $47 a month to go even further for you in this time of inflation (and recession?)
A content library where Members can pull and publish “Best Practices” content on how to Resolve Service Delivery Issues. Our library that will be 100% available to Members contains:
109 SOPs and Standard Builds
79 Autotask Live Report Mockups
Membership-only webinars where we go more in-depth on Service Delivery topics with well-known guest speakers.
A Service Delivery Issues Forum, where members can go and collaborate, as well as follow threads on how best to Resolve Service Delivery Issues.
Vendor Reviews and a list of vendors our Members find worth mentioning.
Special Blog Articles written just for Members from myself, other thought leaders & industry insiders.
Whatever else the Members would like to see, and that makes sense under a “How to Resolve Service Delivery Issues” moniker 😊
What We've Achieved So Far
Those were the goals we’ve been busy executing. As I am sure has been the case for you this year, things have certainly changed in the market and internally and we’ve adjusted our operations. And this is a good thing. Yes, our plan didn’t end up being 100% perfect, but we polled our Clients and prospects and we asked how we could better serve the PSA using MSP market. And we learned a lot.
What we learned:
Clients want on-demand courses
Clients want to be able to speed up or slow down the program they are in
Group collaboration works better than 1 to 1 calls for most
Clients wanted lower costs
In short: MSPs are busy people and need us to meet them in the middle. And I think we’ve done that.
Our Next Steps
We are:
Building out a library of quality courses you down buy for an affordable, one-time fee.
Pivoting our time-consuming 1-1 coaching programs to more affordable video delivery that you can consume on YOUR schedule (think college lecture from the tenured professor)
Having weekly calls (lab hours) on Thursday and Friday for our program members to hop in, get their questions answered, and get back to work if they choose.
Giving program members 6-month access to the Gladiator’s site to provide even more on-demand help and value
Greatly adding to the available content and help available on the Service Delivery Gladiator’s Membership Community
Focus, Not Busy Work
I’ve mentioned “being busy” a couple times. We don’t want you being “busy, busy, busy.” Craig Groeschel says, “Busy leaders don’t change the world. Focused Leaders do.” We’re trying to help you become more focused to change your world.
What about you? Have you done an analysis of your Strategic and Tactical Goals from January to see how it compares to now? Made any adjustments? Want to do better? Need to do better? I’m here to help.
Process Improvement: The Key to Achieving Goals
Achieving these Strategic or Tactical goals takes Process Improvement initiative/program/goals Research says that 87% of us did not achieve our 2023 goals. Why not?
Based on Clifton Butterfield and HDI, there are three things that failed improvement programs have in common:
1. No plan or roadmap on how to achieve the Process Improvement goals
2. No Success Criteria so as to know where you are going and when you arrive
3. No Champion to hold everyone accountable to stay focused, energized, and to carve out time out of a busy work week to execute the plan
Is this you? Be honest with yourself. It’s okay – I’ll explain all three right now.
So, what does a Plan or Roadmap need?
Specific Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) improvements to implement
Tool changes to support the SOPs
Data to Set Benchmark, Track Results, and Guide the SOP implementation and/or improvements
Hold on…breathe….use a paper bag if you need to….these sound harder than they are. MSPs always want a boilerplate plan, so keep reading as it’s coming.
So, what does a Success Criteria look like?
If full operational optimization is the desired end goal, or at least the general direction of operational efficiency improvements, then we strongly recommend borrowing from LEAN Process Profitability KPIs:
Inventory => Billable Hours or Resource Utilizations
Throughput => SLA or Mean Time to Resolve (SLA w/o wait states) Performance
Efficiency => Reactive Hours per Endpoint per Month
However, these are the result KPIs to determine if you are heading in the right direction or even achieved Operational Optimization. Where we need to focus is on the leading indicators. The leading indicators for each area of an MSPs operation (Sales, Finance, Back Office Support, HR, Project Management, and Service Delivery) are all different.
(I said KPIs – many of you want to tune out – it will be okay – keep reading)
For the Service Delivery Area (we start here because Labor is the biggest expense, and there is usually more labor on the Service Delivery Team than any other Team)
Leading indicators can be grouped into three areas:
Intake and Open Ticket Management
Tech Performance
Client Experience (CX)
Intake and Open Ticket KPIs:
There 9 leading Dashboard KPIs in this area that should be check at least once per week:
#1 New Tickets sitting in the Triage queue:
#2 Coming up on Next SLA Due Date - Overdue:
Triage
Tech Engagement
Completion
#3 Waiting … with last Activity date greater than 2 days ago
#4 On Hold with past Due Date
#5 Maintaining the Ready to Engage widgets - no tickets Next SLA Due Date more than 24 hours past due
#6 All Open Tickets greater than 20 per Tech
#7 Tickets requiring scheduling without Service Calls
#8 Non-Triage, Alert or NOC tickets unassigned
#9 Worked Hours greater than the 2X of Estimated Hours
And a few Autotask Advanced Live Reports
#1 Scheduled Tickets with No Future Service Calls
#2 Backlog List of Tickets (BLT) greater than 5 per Tech
#3 Advanced Workflow Distribution report
#4 Advanced Service Delivery Forecast report
#5 Advanced SLA Performance report
(if your chest is tightening and the panic attack is coming, take a moment and breathe…eat these like an elephant – one byte (or just a Nibble) at a time. My team is here to help. Keep reading - your team deserves it.)
Tech Performance KPIs:
Typically, there are 9 Advanced Live Reports in the Tech Balanced Scorecard, and then a cumulation score for the month, qtr. or year. These should be run monthly, and many MSPs use it as a bonus or profit-sharing criteria at the end of the year.
1. Resource Utilization
2. Real-Time Time Entry
3. SLA Tech Engagement performance
4. Mean Time to Resolve
5. Escalation Rate
6. Re-Open Rate
7. 1st Contact Resolution
8. Backlog List of Tickets
9. CX score
10.Cumulative Score
CX score KPIs:
Following the Client-Facing Communications Protocol
Company Real-Time Time Entry average delay
Client Survey Score
(Breath…use that paper bag…take several deep breaths…you can absolutely do this…you are not alone)
So, what does a Champion need and need to do?
The first thing that comes to mind is accountability. But in reality, they keep the energy up throughout the program, make sure everyone on the Team is focused on their part, and carves out time to meet their commitment due dates.
The Champion (or Guide on the Side) also tracks the metrics and lets the Team know how they are doing. They are responsible for maintaining the plan/roadmap and document collaborations changes from the original vision.
On yea, they also hold everyone accountable, including themselves to make sure the program is completed on-time and on budget.
(“OMG – I can’t do this alone…Working 100 hours a week in the MSP has got to be easier, right?” Stay with me – you’ve come so far. I’m going to show you my plan right now)
Why should we care?
The results of an Operational Efficiency Improvement Program are significant and usually return 6-10X of the investments. Here are some specific returns that you can expect for an average 6 Tech Shop:
a. Resource Utilization: for 6 Techs and an SRR of $150, a 10% improvement means you can sell an additional $187K per year in MRR or Professional Services without hiring another Tech
b. Advance Contracts: Capturing 5% more of Non-MSA billable hours that today are being written off as Managed Service Support could net $7,533.30 per month in additional T&M billing
c. Sales Dashboard and Opportunity Training: Increase Sales efficiency by 10%, yielding another $18,683 per month in revenue
d. Building a Better Client Experience: In one Client with 103 Managed Service Clients, reducing Churn by 50% was worth $240 per Client or $24,720 per year.
Example: Bundled all together: $28,299 per month, or a whopping $339,588 per year.
Wrap-Up
Thanks for staying with me. I imagine many of you are 30 seconds from cardiac arrest as “this sounds so hard,” “I don’t have 6 Techs”, or I’ll just never grow.” ENOUGH! I’ve got the plan and Team to help you. You can take my boilerplate above and DIY, join our Gladiator’s Community for guidance, or you can work hand in hand with my team to grow your MSP and build a Happy Team with raving fan Clients. Embrace the Suck! Get ‘er done. You can do this!
Next Week: Deep Dive Into Process Improvement
Next week, I’m going to start going through our Process Improvement programs in-depth so you can fuller understand the depth of the programs (and you DIY folks can do some self-improvement). Here the full list so you see what we are going to go over:
Advanced Global’s Process Improvement for MSP in a box program:
Drive to Thrive:
1. Intake
2. Categorization
3. Triage
4. Tech Allocation & Scheduling
5. Prioritization
6. Service Coordination Dashboards, Introduction and Training
7. Tech Dashboard Lunch N’ Learn
8. Other
Streamlining Labor Invoicing:
1. MSAs
2. Roles and Work Types
3. Contract Templates
4. Cascading Contract Template
5. Copying Contracts into Client Accounts
6. Client Facing Contracts
Building a better Client Experience:
1. Clear, Concise, Client Friendly Notifications
2. Automated Client-Facing Communication
3. Tech Ed
4. Real-Time Time Entry Culture Change
5. Internal Testing
6. Pilot Group Rollout, Feedback, and Adjustments
7. All Client Rollout
Need help right now?
Service Delivery Gladiator’s Community: Home - The Service Delivery Gladiators (agmspcoaching.com)
Unshackled e-book: https://www.agmspcoaching.com/unshackled
(Learn how to apply the 6 keys to MSP Service Delivery Optimization)
Talk to me: info@agmspcoaching.com
Steve & Co.