Over the past few Boot Camps I’ve done since becoming a Head Nerd, automation has been a continuing topic of discussion, and one that brings up various roadblocks. Many of the MSPs that I have talked to one-to-one after the Boot Camps have said they were “embarrassed” to ask more questions about automating their service delivery as they didn’t want their peers “laughing” at them. If you fall into this category, don’t panic! Here are some answers to the three most common challenges MSPs feel they need to overcome when starting their automation journey:
- How do I get my end users to “pay” for automation?
- Where do I start with automation, or what should I be automating first?
- I am a single-person shop; I don’t have time!
Let’s dive into these quickly:
1. How do I get my end users to “pay” for automation?
To get end users to “pay” for automation, I am a fan of minimum time entries on tickets. In the real world, I have seen minimum entries of 5-15 minutes depending on the capabilities of the ticketing solution/PSA. What this allows an MSP to do is create simple self-healing items—for example, empty the recycle bin upon failure of a “Disk Space Check” or automatically install a piece of software if it’s not found by an “Is File There” Check—that can become billable and trackable items. Both N-Sight RMM and N-central RMM automation allow you to integrate your PSA to open a ticket upon check failure and closes the ticket upon the check clearing. This will allow you to bill and track these simple maintenance items and begin to see the monetary benefits of automation.
Some quick math here:
- If you charge $125 per hour for your services a simple automatically opened ticket for a “Disk Space Check” failure can generate you anywhere from $10.40 to $31.25, depending on where you fall in the 5-15 minute per ticket minimum.
- Comparing this to the average burdened technician cost of around $35 per hour, you can pay a tech to work on automation for an hour with 2-3 tickets of this type. Imagine what happens when you see 50-100 pieces of self-healing attached to tickets rolling through your PSA each week/month.
Please note that I am not asking you to rake your end users over the coals with automatically generated tickets that come bearing a minimum, just inflating the amount you are billing them. Remember, we are selling and producing “End User Productivity and Peace of Mind.” Something like an ignored check that passed on its own without any work or automation being done should not be billed for and audited out of the invoicing. We should bill for work done regardless of whether it is hands-on or automated. Plus, your fully managed and proactive packages should have some built-in leeway for automation time.
2. Where do I start with automation, or what should I be automating first?
This is a much harder question to answer. In my mind, there are two trains of thought here but, before diving in let’s get one thing out of way first. There are table stakes here: you should have almost all your patch management, backup, and MAV/EDR actions automated to make your life easier. If not, get those items automated and then come back.
So, the two trains of thought here are:
- Start with your SOW/SLAs/SOP and automate your weekly and monthly maintenance as much as you can.
- Audit your tickets and grab the top 10 issues, if you can automate a response/solution to any of those tickets do so.
These mindsets will help get you in a position to quickly realize that automation is not some unsurmountable task that can never be completed. Instead you’ll have some quick and simple tasks that combine to make a powerful timesaving bit of automation for you MSP business. Once you have gone through this exercise, it’s time to leverage the Marc-Andre Tanguay Boot Camps titled 15 Things You Can (and should) Automate and 15 MORE Things you can (and should) automate.
3. I am a single-person shop; I don’t have time!
This is one of the most common objections to automating an MSP’s service delivery, and I get it. The answer here is to not try and reinvent the wheel. Follow the mantra of “if I have to do something three times, I should automate it,” however we need to remember that we are not the first MSP to automate our service offering.
Stack Overflow and Google are real resources here, I use them in my day-to-day all the time. Even more valuable there are already 70-80 pieces of scripting in N-Sight RMM/N-central RMM via the Automation Manager, whch is available to every user in both of your RMM solutions. On top of that our Automation Cookbook has over 720 scripts that have been either created by either the Head Nerds or our partners. You can find the resources that you need to easily and quickly implement the automation that you need without putting in excessive amounts of time. So use the resources that you have rather than trying to script everything from scratch and you’ll see your life get easier.
The Biggest Takeaway for MSP Automation
The takeaway here is that automation should not be a scary monster. It should be taken step by step utilizing the resources at hand to not only increase your profitability as an MSP, but to free up time for your technicians to further automate your service offering.
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Joseph Ferla is a head nerd at N-able. You can follow him on Twitter @headnerjoe or on LinkedIn. Read more N-able guest blogs here. Regularly contributed guest blogs are part of ChannelE2E’s sponsorship program.
