According to the global payments network Veem, 81% of small businesses in the US are expecting an economic slowdown over the next 12-16 months. In times like these, cost-cutting becomes one of the top priorities for all businesses, including managed IT providers. In this guide, we will overview five great tactics to cut your costs. Continue reading
A standard operating procedure, or SOP for short, is a step-by-step document that comprises workflows, frameworks, and procedures that are taken as the standard for your managed IT services. SOPs are a common instrument for most MSPs wanting to standardize and streamline their operations. These documents help to onboard new tech staff members faster and ensure that the quality of support is of the required level. Continue reading
It is important for MSPs to determine key business processes and milestones to structure operations and to provide partners and investors with crucial information about business. This template covers the essentials of an MSP business plan. Continue reading
It is easy to say that you need to evaluate your risks, control and mitigate them and, if anything bad happens, perform damage control, overview the situation and make appropriate changes. All that sounds great, but what is “risk” exactly? And how do you make risk management a part of your value-based managed IT offering? Continue reading
Some managed IT providers think it's obvious that they have limited liability for data breaches, failed hardware, and clients’ data loss. On the other hand, many clients believe that their managed IT providers are totally liable for any of these incidents, and they will go straight to court to sue the MSP for any damage, downtime, or loss. While the court may not be on the side of the clients, a lawsuit is a long and expensive process by itself. Continue reading
Some MSPs will tell you that you should not waste even a minute of your time creating a business plan while your business is only a project. Other, more mature managed IT providers will tell you that, unless you have to secure funding from a partner or investor, an MSP business plan is - you guessed it - a waste of time. Continue reading
It is crucial for MSPs to have well-documented processes to guarantee an outstanding level of services delivered. These templates cover the essentials that should be included in service level agreement and statement of work. Continue reading
Learn how to accomplish the transition from break-fix to MSP successfully and get tips on how to elaborate your offer, and what to do first after the transition.
Many managed IT providers believe that, no matter how hard you train the end users, they will still click the links, download the malware, provide account information, or simply send corporate money to the malefactors. End-user training is, indeed, not a panacea. However, it aims to decrease the chances of a successful attack or intrusion.
Quite often when you reach out to a new prospect, you might hear: “You know, that sounds great, but we already have an IT department in place.” Whether this “IT department” is a real department or a one-man army, the answer comes across clearly as “not interested”. Or does it? Not really. Companies with internal IT are indeed harder nuts to crack, but there are several possibilities for landing them. In this article, we will overview four such possibilities.
The managed IT provider business is on the rise in the US, and MSPs are operating in every public and private sector of the economy. Many private-sector organizations working with sensitive data were forced to operate under certain compliance regimes, such as HIPAA for the medical sector. These regimes make strict stipulations about the way sensitive data should be managed and IT infrastructure secured in an organization.
Everyone knows that backup is a must nowadays. When you lose your data, you lose money and, in some cases, the whole business or, if you are a managed IT provider, your clients. The amount of data you need to back up is getting bigger and bigger over time. It has got so big, in fact, that the popularity of local storage solutions and local backups is diminishing. You can, for sure, store your data in the cloud, but how do you choose the right option?
