The general idea is to raise red flags to your clients as clearly as possible, make sure your recommendations are documented, and in some cases signed off on.

We had a situation today where a clients network went down and we had to go into troubleshooting and recovery mode. The client was surprised to hear our team tell them that it was only a matter of time before something like this happened due to the age of the network and the non existence of the redundancies you would implement on any business network.

The surprise expressed by the client caused our team to claim the client was suffering memory loss. They explained that multiple conversations where had with this client and there was no way they could have been unclear, they had decided not to spend the money to make the recommended upgrades to their network.

Now it never does any good to get in to an “i told you so” conversation with a client but it sure does feel a lot more comfortable when you have documented decisions for major recommendations that could affect their business.

In this case our team did produce the documented proposals we put in front of the client but what was missing is the Say It First Say It Clearly documentation. Something that says in clear black and white “if you do not make these minimum upgrades to your network you will suffer a network failure and your business will be interrupted”

I am sure you are good at having clear conversations and I am sure your key people are good at having clear conversations but you should have a documented process for dealing with clients, managed or hourly, that let your recommendations fall on deaf ears. Leaving this to the judgment of your people as you grow puts you at risk.

Josh

Service metrics that your team should always be tracking and looking to improve:

• Customer Satisfaction – we use Net Promoter Score
• Availability / response – hold times
• Average ticket age
• % of tickets resolved same day
• Open tickets per service employee
  
• Employee utilization rate
• Customer churn / retention

If you measure these service metrics regularly you will be able to see how your service levels are across time. Start by measuring and getting a baseline then make your entire team aware of the one or two metrics you want to drive by posting them on the wall daily and watch them dramatically change for the better.

Remember what gets measured gets managed

Start measuring these service metrics today.

Josh

The end result of this not knowing is a good client calling you one day and saying “I have to end my contract because…” The because could be anything from I have to cut costs, I have cash flow issues, to I am closing down and laying everyone off, I have just sold my business.

All of these scenarios are hard to prevent, although you can offer advice on how they should run their business there is often nothing they can do to keep things on track.

So how then do you protect your business from clients that are slowing spending or stopping it all together?

Well the first thing to do is to bring in more healthy business, there is plenty of it out there if you look for it. But how do you get a better read on your current client base.

We are currently in the process or reaching out to all clients and asking four simple questions. These questions are designed to gain an understanding of throw their business is doing in the current economic environment as well as to help them understand that we are here to help them in any way possible.

The questions asked by the Account Manger over the phone:

• How is your business going?
• What is going on in your industry?
• Are we still providing value to your organization?
• What are you hearing about our competitors?
• What are the three things that if we get right will ensure a long term relationship with your organization?
• What are the three things that if we do not get them right will cause you to re-think your relationship with us?

These questions are simple and strait forward but we often don’t take the time to ask them. When we do ask them the client often has to take a minute to get out of the weeds to answer them but every time you ask them you will create a shared understanding with your customer that you are there as more than just an IT provider.

This simple set of questions will give them the impression that you understand, are looking out for, and care about their business.

You will also be able to identify clients that are struggling and stay ahead of the “I need to change my contract with you” phone call.

Josh

That being said there are many certification programs popping up out there so what should you do? In my opinion a good certification program can provide value to your business but the service / business processes that you need to outperform your competition need to be an ongoing work. At Everon we started working on identifying, documenting, and constantly refining and improving our service delivery processes over 5 years ago and today we spend more time with what is working and not working than in the past.

Any provider that thinks they can write out a book of processes without making it part of the culture to constantly follow and improve these process is in for a rude awakening when they get their butts kicked by a competitor.

I received an email earlier from the folks at Ant Farm, if you have not worked with them they are fantastic. They bring a level of knowledge to service delivery and product development process that is rare. Check out their free upcoming webinar.

I pasted the email below as it is talking about MSP certification and their opinion, which happens to be similar to mine, that you have to use certification as the impetus for building enduring business value for it to be worth the time or the paper it is written on.

Josh

————-

Remember the end of the Wizard of Oz when the scarecrow receives his diploma?  The wizard explains that the scarecrow, the cowardly lion, and the tin man had the qualities they had been searching for (in the scarecrow’s case, intelligence) all along.  They just needed validation, or “certification”, by others.

The recent announcement by MSP Partners of their Managed Services Accreditation Exam, following on the heels of the certification program sponsored by MSP Alliance, has the blogs a-buzz discussing the values of certification for MSPs.

Most visible among the touted benefits is the potential distinction that certification offers to prospective clients – validation by a competent source that the MSP has the infrastructure and business processes necessary to provide continuing high-value services to their client.

However, the benefits of certification potentially go much deeper than this. Companies that have participated in tenured certification programs over a period of years will tell you that the enduring value is derived only partially from the credibility that certification brings.  The real value from certification is that it makes your business better!

Effort that you put into the initial certification can rust with time.  If you haven’t institutionalized the business capabilities and processes driven by the initial certification, you will find yourself reinventing the wheel preparing for each re-certification.  At some point you will ask yourself if the effort is worth it.

On the other hand, if you use certification as the driving factor to design and implement robust service delivery processes, and to continually improve them, the certification event becomes recognition of what you already have – sound business capabilities that bring value to both your clients and to your business.

In fact, institutionalizing your service process capabilities actually makes re-certification easier with each passing year.  Simply include the “hooks” for certification (such as metrics definition or customer satisfaction programs), into the processes that you follow daily, and point to them when it comes time for the certification audit.

Are you becoming certified with “straw man” processes, or will certification be the impetus for building enduring business value?

————-

Ant Farm Inc website – check them out if you have the desire to see what your service delivery could be

It will also be interesting as they bring this service to market to see how the channel play evolves and if there is a way for us to leverage their service in our business. I know I sure would pay the $37 / month / server to Symantec to manage all of my client’s backups with financial guarantees….

Josh

By Kevin Komiega

April 30, 2009 — Symantec today announced a Managed Backup Service for managing day-to-day backup operations in existing NetBackup environments at a lower cost than in-house management, according to the company.

The Managed Backup Services combine local management (on-site or off-site) with remote monitoring, incident management, restore requests, planning and optimization assistance, and reporting capabilities. The services are based on ITIL processes and run by a local Service Delivery Manager, who supervises daily operations and supplies customers with monthly account reviews.

IT organizations have always looked for cost-effective ways to outsource certain tasks, but, according to Symantec’s vice president of managed services, Grant Geyer, there is a new trend toward outsourcing critical IT functions.

“Lately we have been seeing a lot of selective out-tasking. Customers are trying to get the cost benefits of outsourcing in areas where high service levels are important,” says Geyer.

He claims offerings like the Managed Backup Service can offload critical IT applications – namely, data protection and recovery – with guaranteed service levels at a lower cost than in-house implementations.

“A lot of organizations are having a tough time with staffing. We can manage their data protection infrastructure on their behalf in a cost-effective way because instead of having a full set of resident [administrators], they benefit from our experts remotely and through a limited on-site component,” says Geyer.

Symantec’s latest “State of the Data Center” user survey reveals 60% of those polled are having difficulty meeting IT service levels demanded by their organization. Additionally, 43% of the respondents say finding qualified employees is a “big or huge problem.”

So how does having Symantec manage your NetBackup implementation translate to dollars saved? Geyer says Symantec has demonstrated cost savings over in-house data protection management of up to 20% – roughly $200,000 per year – in certain beta implementations.

Symantec prices its Managed Backup Services on a monthly fee per NetBackup client. The company factors in the tier of service, number of servers managed, and the complexity of the customer environment to arrive at an approximate starting price of $37/month per server.

Symantec is also building in a service-level insurance policy of sorts. The company offers a 97% backup SLA guarantee. If they do not meet that target, Symantec will pay customers a financial penalty, according to Geyer.

So while these ideas are specific to the go to assist tool we all should be thinking about cutting costs in this economy.

JC

10 Ways to Profit from Remote Support in a Down Economy

A down economy is no time to stick your head in the sand. Instead, it is a time to strategically cut costs and find innovative ways to grow your business.

Here are 10 ways remote support can help you get ahead:

1. Reduce travel costs by making fewer on-site visits.
2. Solve problems faster by enabling reps to access customer computers just as if they were there in person – instead of trying to talk them through the solution over the phone.
3. Increase customer satisfaction, which leads to increased renewal rates, increased referrals and, ultimately, increased revenue.
4. Reduce the number of repeat calls, as customers who watch reps fix their problems learn to do it themselves
5. Increase call-handling capability without adding staff. (This is especially profitable if you charge for service, but still a cost-saver if you don’t.)
6. Streamline management tasks using at-a-glance dashboard and monitoring tools.
7. Save time by getting automated reports sent directly to your inbox.
8. Expand your support capability to more distant geographical areas.
9. Train reps faster and leverage experience using team collaboration and session recording tools.
10. Win more new clients by using remote support as a value in your sales and marketing plans.

Anyway, judge for yourself.

JC

Big picture

1. Describe dell three years from now in terms of your product and service mix?
2. How far do you see your managed services offering extending into a client? Do you envision managing the entire IT spend of a client or do you envision doing the management and monitoring and having partners do the rest?
3. How do you protect your product revenue while rolling out service offerings such as managed services?

Partner strategy

1. I understand the pitch you have gone to market with telling providers they can become a Dell partner and register deals to protect their managed services clients but where does that leave current product partners who are not ready to become Dell managed services partners?
2. How can you convince a partner that has 4 or 5 million in revenue and perhaps already has a small managed service practice established to continue selling your product, or do you ultimately care?
3. How do you plan on competing at the local level, I sat in a room of service providers last week that were certain that Dell will never be able to provide the high touch service they provide their customers, how would you respond to that?

Future plans

1. We have seen how Silverback and Everdream are going to be utilized in your managed services offering what about MessageOne and Equalogic? Do you envision Dell offering these solutions from the cloud in a SaaS model?
2. What can you tell us about what we should expect next from Dell’s managed services program?

If you look at their new small business web site I believe they do a nice job talking to the business owner about solutions rather than support and products. “Secure my business” sure makes more sense to a small business owner than “Security products”.  This is what I mean by the right positioning. Anyone that continues to sell product and support going forward will not succeed in my mind.

Now it is going to take some time to see what kind of traction they are able to get in the small business areas but I can tell you that the 100 million dollar investment they are committed to making sure will give them a leg up over you and I when it comes to getting their word out. I personally believe they will make good inroads with the 100 – 200 user organizations because there is generally at least one IT guy on staff and the Cisco name means something to him. The sub 100 user companies are generally looking for a high level of service and the ability to call the CEO of your organization if something goes wrong, if this remains true it will be a much tougher nut for Cisco to crack.

I suppose in the grand scheme of things this just gives us one more giant to watch as they try to make their entry into the small business market. Perhaps as all of these big dogs show up we will see more strategic acquisitions and all of our organizations will get much higher valuations!

J C

While is seems the offering will initially be targeted at enterprise clients I foresee it quickly being asked about by our small business clients as Microsoft starts to turn up their marketing engines.

I would suggest as I have suggested in the past that your business needs to be thinking about how to continue to add value to your clients as they begin to use these service or others like them delivered from the cloud. I can assure you the 12% of the year one value and 6% of the ongoing that Microsoft has outlined as their partner commision structure is not enough to build a business. The traditional service fees for installation, upgrades, and ongoing maintenance and management will be wiped making it time to reinvent yourself.

The million dollar question is what does todays IT service business look like five years from now…..

JC

Dell is providing three levels of managed services, alerts only, resolution based pricing, and managed pricing escalating in price from $9, $39, & $59 respectively on the PC side and $59, $199 & $299 on the server side.

This shows that dell has done their pricing homework to figure out what price points are working in the market, they are a bit on the low side to provide high touch service but I assume they will make up for that in volume. I for one don’t believe Dell will provide the level of service our customers expect and even demand and look forward to watching their attempt.

Dell has maintained the stance that they understand and are embracing the Channel (you and me) over the past 12 months both in press releases and on this very blog. I would argue that the push for direct customers with no communication to the channel, that I am aware of, would indicate that they don’t know how to deal with us. I am sure the Dell guys reading this will argue they have spoken to hundreds of partners and even have focused on delivering these services in NYC through some select partners but the majority of people I have spoken with in NYC and around the county have this opinion “Dell says move over we are coming for your clients and the only way to deal with it is to become a Dell partner and register all your deals with us.” Not sure about you but if I am not ready to do that, which I am not, I am convinced that I should stop selling, recommending, or using the word Dell around any of my clients.

I am not saying that we have made this decision, yet, and I have the opportunity to speak with the head of Dells managed services initiative this week so I will keep you all updated on how they believe we should d be reacting in our businesses.

JC