 Tom here from Lawrence systems, and I'm joined by VP of operations and the guy who actually kind of runs the company now Brett Chittum so warning we are Answering questions, and I wanted to answer this specific question, which will leave to the forum link here It says from break fix to MSP how to make the transition This is Discussion started by Dave over in the forums is all public and of course I'll be linking to this below and I Talk back and forth a little bit but I think there's more to the story I wanted to offer and I have done in a past a video an overview of a managed IT services offering we have here at Lawrence systems and You know there's some back and forth which by the time you read this post It will probably be longer after the publishing of this video and this video will go included in post kind of meta Where everything's gonna get a good evening together, but me and Brett We're talking about this this morning, and we wanted to kind of address it So I talked about what we offer, but how we offer it and how you get to that offering is a Subject of great discussion. Wouldn't you say Brett? I would and it's funny within this within this post in the forum It he asked some questions that are asked by a lot of different people Do I need to have this do I know there are a lot of specific questions? He's asking that people there's misconceptions out there Yeah, and some of the misconceptions that are dispelled in there right off the top is like do you assign like a tech to a client and it's actually a little bit different than that and Let's start here Tooling and the question was asked like do you need an RMM? That's a discussion Maybe I'll do a video on it someone asked me the answer is still yes right now in September of 2021 It is the most effective way to get things done and end of story It's a grandstanding to have all the complicated discussion about we shouldn't have these powerful tools But if you don't have powerful tools, you can't get the work done You'd have to have more people doing the work. So that's kind of we Yeah, it's efficiencies. I mean absolutely. It'd be great if every company could afford a team of IT people internally so we would have no threats from bad software, but we'd still have threats from bad software because There's still a lot of bad software out there and it'd be just challenging to Have these people securing everything and it wouldn't be cost-effective for the clients. So yeah, and second This is not an endorsement for any of the tooling or any tool in particular Whatever tools that you decide which of course is a completely different complicated topic And I do not have time to try every different RMM tool and every stack of tools out there But I will answer at least the question it will be asked is which one are using which right now We are using enable as the RMM tool platform as the backup platform We use set in the one for antivirus and huntress That's the generalized stuff that we do and you know We have remote access tools like screen connect But don't get caught up on the analysis process today's talk is about process not about tools But I at least want to answer that question so people know what tools we use because that'll the first thing is well I just want to use tools that you're using cool. I don't have any offer codes for any of them So go ahead and use them Absolutely I think the the problem comes in first when people ask the question of I want to transfer from you know problem brought to me problem Solved to Charging and what are you charging for that's kind of the gist of managed services and the reality is You take all the clients you get them on some type of program because we need them Constantly updated as we know right patch Tuesday is at least one Microsoft patches But everything else has patches that are even more frequent and despite automatic patching mechanisms. We all know those are not always As functional as they should be matter of fact who fixes the automatic patch mechanisms when they don't auto patch and that comes back to us the MSP And how many problems can be solved if it was up to you when there's a major flaw in our product That's exploited for example browsers are constantly in need of updates because there's a constant attack on browsers Because they're the threat surface and the way we interact with the greater world therefore a flaw in them and being actively explained to be a big problem This is where we come in with managed services the other misconception that was kind of brought up in there is how we assign These problems and essentially all the clients go on to a dashboard We're gonna look every morning and probably what's Eric doing right now looking at backups Maybe Brett. Yes, absolutely. What came through on our ticketing system. Yeah, yeah It's important because the writer that started Dave he He asked the number of questions I wanted to poke on the liability one though a little bit if we can get to that at some point in this so What are you liable for what aren't you liable for it's kind of an insurance question, but when your when you have a True system that you've you've imposed on but there is some liability Point point to that and you can actually get insurance to cover you in that But I think you're more liable if there's things you don't offer a client right if you're not Working on patching any of these things and this is typical because if the client doesn't have the mentality This is something you deal with as a break fix as in people bring you their problems And they always so why didn't you tell me about this? It's it's not easy you can send out newsletters and notices Hey people you should be updating but if you don't have active Engagement with the client and you don't have active access and persistent access to the system So you can see the status of their system to see if there's a problem with their system to see if their hard drives are full or if They're some type of failure notices that you're getting with a service You're not being proactive the clients being very reactive and people well They quickly adjust to the norm of I don't know I always click okay to that message What do you what does the air mess is actually see I don't know I click okay So I can get my work done is typical thing that people do and that's not necessarily what you want them doing But if you're actively engaging with them and then you don't have that question coming up Oh, why didn't you tell me so you go through you're backing it up all the time and backup failures are one of those things like you Know the staff tickets are created automatically We also log in manually and then we do occasional testing of the backups to make sure they actually work Those are all these little things that we're doing all the time to make sure that the machine is running The machine is viable because untested backups are just wishful thinking. It's not just looking for these tickets But all the clients when they're in one system get addressed as one system to us Every one of our managed clients is in just one big dashboard or pool if you will where we monitor these things and you Manage by exception and you end up noticing trends that are interesting actually one of the funnier ones I noticed last Tuesday Brett was we had a big storm and I could tell where the storm was because we have Clients kind of spread across the state here and you could see where the storm was when we had power outages by the notices That came in like oh look it just hit the this area Oh, look it just hit this area where we're coming across to us now Yeah, and we'd see like a UPS notice go and things like that to send you a ticket to go. Hey, there's there's a power outage here You know so these are but you treat the clients like that because reality is when your managers rather they're all running windows So that's your primary thing is making sure windows update They all have a web browser because that's pretty much how we get our work done these days So we're making sure their browser update and they all need backups. Those are very primary things But of course secondary things Secondary the way we look at them primary to the client are going to be still Other line of business applications making sure those are up-to-date and support and being able to support them quickly Like when they call Brett, how fast do we get a hold it when someone calls us for a problem? How fast are we at addressing that issue? We're it's almost immediate I actually have a system set up within our ticketing system that Notifies me if we haven't responded to somebody within 90 minutes We try to get on top of things right away The goal with all the technicians is a ticket comes in someone grabs a ticket of science itself and goes forward and runs with it They don't want the 90 minute mark where Brett asked the question. Hey guys because then he gets to be talked to by Brett Yeah, Brett's like dad. Hey guys, you know, there's a notice that's here It's in my inbox now because someone didn't deal with it Things actually do as much as it just rolls uphill of management So when people are doing things that goes up, but generally speaking if you build a good team They understand they need to be on top of whatever the issues are the other thing you need You know like the debate of what or not as I said the RMM tool One of the reasons you need the powerful tools that we have is because we see a problem customer Even if it's a problem they had like for some reason my QuickBooks file one open That's a common ticket unfortunately because users and they don't always interact with technology at the same level we do But being able to solve that very quickly for them means we can remote in we see the ticket open Maybe call the client maybe just message them back if we can or a lot of times just jump on there and solve it They'll like hey Can you log on to my computer because they know they know how our process works their question isn't can you fix QuickBooks? Can you log on to my computer right now and fix QuickBooks? Someone will see it grab it boom Fix it and also doing is opening the file We you know someone saved a copy of their QuickBooks opened it and opened the old copy and realized there's not changes from the other people There are little things as you know dealing with users and what you're doing though Is giving these clients a piece of mind that they can call you that they can get this problem solved and get it quickly If you go on the other side like I mentioned earlier Well, we don't want to have persistent access to our clients because it it's a big threat surface You're not wrong about it being a threat and you need to keep these tools up to date and secure the tools that we use to Manages are very powerful But the other side being able to go in there quickly see what the client does and go you're opening the wrong version of the QuickBooks file open the right one and hit save and be done within five minutes won't occur If you don't have these tools you're like hold on. Let me get you to the website Let me get you connected download our client download our support tool, right? Brett's even jumped in I mean when you know Brett will jump in there. I will do support calls I love doing that now. I can't always handle every one of them Yeah, but it's it's that concept and that's what you're charging for I mean In in Brett from the other side of this before you were in tech you had would you have 27 insurance offices? Yeah, that I was managing over and and really working over and and helping to build those businesses But you used outside IT support and that's what you wanted was a piece of mind going I want to make sure my staff has somebody to call to get things done Yeah, you know Just call a different person every time and you would prefer them to be proactive and keeping things up to date So you're from the complete before you sat in that chair from the other side of the world that you were on This is what you wanted as a business owner I did that's that piece of mind, you know in and that that the really that sense that somebody's gonna be there when I need them, you know, he all he mentioned about, you know having one person Handle a client and you and I talked about that a little bit prior to this this this the video here and You can do that But I don't people don't mind talking to a different person as long as their problem is handled now If you want to hire 30 people and it's funny you and Riley in your live stream last week You talked about what's your biggest cost to your business is people, right? If you want to reduce cost you need to reduce people and create Efficiencies your arm and tools gonna do that. It's gonna allow you to have less people handling more problems Exactly the the other thing too. This is how people get go get aggravated It is because a lot of the typical support models, especially by the large companies is every day is a new day for them This is where documentation comes in the reason we know which QuickBooks file They should be opening or what their line of business application is is because we document what those things are for that particular client So when someone says and does a ticket and says this is the problem I'm having we have a profile on that client So any one of the technicians can look at the profile understand what needs to be done And then any technician becomes the knowledgeable source of Information to solve that problem and that's what makes the client happy But they don't like and this is a common problem because even as it text We've definitely dealt with this that when we call someone they don't know anything is going on So we just keep bouncing kind of get back that one person that seemed to have some clue and that's often an internal sign that you haven't done Documentation if your customers are seeing that externally or they only are requesting the same person first the nature of people Is to request the same person? That's one thing and they're Hesitant when you switch going well instead of Eric Can you talk to Kyle as long as Kyle solves her problem then they suddenly like Kyle and Eric and eventually as different teammates Here at the office solve their problem. They're like, oh Steve was able to solve it, too Oh Miles was able to solve it and Brett has access to documentation. So even Brett can go. Oh, yeah, you're supposed to be on this printer This is a part of how you create a cohesive appearance to your clients So they're used to calling you this is how we build the brand trust with them and Overall some of the behind-the-scenes of how this works. It's not it's not as complicated in some ways as people think People I mean granted when you're first picking your stack of tools You're gonna pull your hair out going they all claim every salesperson tells me they're amazing Which one do I choose and then everyone are all amazing. They're all amazing And I mean you jump in the forums everyone hates their arm and because they all suck So as IT technicians the sales people say they're amazing There's a lot of amazing features They all have and the other side of it is they always do something you don't want them to do and by the way All of them to my knowledge right here in 2021 do not have great patch management support Everyone claims theirs is better than the other one and if you follow in forums You'll find everyone just complaining about it because yeah We're all trying to wrestle the Microsoft beast and broken update mechanisms from Microsoft and broken update mechanisms from any other companies So the our own tools are trying to fix all these and guess what that's really hard It's it's the it's the who moved my cheese sir. Everything keep Microsoft keeps moving that cheese around. It's incredible Yeah, read that book sometime. That's so that's an old management book I had to read that like 20 years ago, but I love that book. I still live by it simple It's a simple short short book about who moved my cheese So hopefully this answers some of the questions are behind the scenes or I'm not sure I always want to answer as much as I can about the business and offer my information here freely I have like I said no endorsements. This isn't a sales pitch This is more just wanting to have other people have a better understanding of what we do here How you can do this as well and how you can set things up You know getting the tools building it out offering the services, you know People will pay for the confidence that their backups aren't just being done But someone's actually tending to making sure that they're there that they're testing it that not just assuming the auto update Mechanism but making sure that people here at learning systems are making sure all these updates are patched and all their security tools Is there some reason a security tool isn't updating is the definitions out of date or the client out of date on this Randomly that happens. We don't I don't even have a why sometimes. I'm like, look, it's out of date I don't know and sometimes we had to learn some crazy command line stuff because We're we had a couple set of one agents has decided not to update We don't know someone was very helpful. We fixed it I mentioned we sent a one and we pushed the update network We don't know why out of a bunch of machines that seem to be identical one decided it was going to slowly update the agent That's what we do and the customer is completely blind to this Because we're going to get behind the scenes and the tools but the customer feels the confidence that when this happens or if Because we keep it all up to date when a threat does hit these clients. We're there. We're responsive We know when someone clicked on something immediately And you know if you roll back I have a video I did about something that kind of sort of got through the man It definitely got through the mail filtering and it was a huntress in sentinel one We're able to see it but we still had to quarantine the client that gave the client Even though the client's first like hey, how'd that get through but they're also like well worst case is Uh, this one workstation got locked out and we had to reload That was the end result as opposed to it was not a disaster for the other 50 stations that the client has it was a singular Uh person who was pretty insistent. They wanted to open this really whatever this nation wants to email And it set off all the alarms here We locked it down immediately But that responsiveness and then we called the client because you know before they could even tell us like hey My computer doesn't do things anymore like go online. We're like, yeah, we shut it down. You are you locked out You're done. The biggest threat is humans. Come on. Let's let's let's face it the biggest threat is humans And if everybody if being an msp was easy everybody would do it It's not that whole technique, you know technical it's about business, right? If it were easy everyone would do it Yeah, it's not an impossible task It's just a very process oriented task and uh building all those processes takes time Putting it all together making getting people to document. I mean our own internal people problem Is uh, how many times have I come in ranting? Why didn't we document something? I mean, I'm not going to paint you some lie of a rosy pictured at my documentation is Is supreme and there's no stink in there. Don't worry There's occasionally thomas found things that are out of date because we're still humans that work here And uh, let me fix we we look at it. We remedy it because if I I'll look at something and this is One of those things you from a management side Observability and what I my my very strong function I have here is looking at our tech stack and auditing things Uh, as opposed to working on them This gives me a chance to look at this and then you know having the discussions with the technicians Sorry, how can we make this easier? Do I need to um, you know update the way this works? Is this too hard to update or is it just you didn't feel like doing it like you And if they don't feel like doing it, I sent them to a brett for motivational talk Which usually isn't too. We have a very cohesive um team here And one of that one of the the benefit of that is is we all talk and we're talking and constantly about Um, you know, hey, I just spoke with with with this client and they're having this issue So if they call can you make sure if I'm not available? Can you do it? Um, yes documentation can be slow Sometimes you're getting it in there But we do continually have conversations so that If someone calls in most people know oh brett talked about this or kyle or steve Someone's talked about this and we have an idea of what's going on. Yeah having all the history is great Now the last thing I'll leave you with is people always say where can I learn more? Well, this is being discussed in my forums My forums does have some discussions on this topic But I'll give a shout out to and this is a paid forum and I got no offer code no links No, nothing, uh, but I think the tech tribe is a pretty cool place where you can get a lot of information on managed services We are paid members not even discounted members So that's something we pay for I also do like reddit r slash msp that subreddit actually has a lot of good intelligent discussion in there Um and a lot of people whining about their uh rmm's and how much they suck So if you are looking to uh argue about that reddit is a great place for that Don't worry. It goes on a tech tribe. It's just in a private forum with people whining about how that sucks Uh, but tech tribe does have a lot. It's actually uh tech tribe is much more business oriented than it is there But if you're looking for just another uh place to be able to do that, I would give it a shout So they have specific documentation for msp's Um from legal documents to you know, how to's to you know, if you're getting through the sales process It's actually a really good. They have really good tools. We've used some of their tools Yeah, so I I'm just giving them a shout out for those of you that want to have some further reading Also, let us know in the comments below or over in the forums what other topics or what piece of this topic You like us to dive more in detail and me and bret will do some more videos on this topic. 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