Infrastructure matters. When your network or applications unexpectedly fail or crash, IT downtime can have a direct impact on your bottom line and ongoing business operations. In some extreme cases, data and monetary losses from unplanned outages can even cause a company to go out of business!
IT Downtime Factors
The industry average cost of IT downtime is dependent on a lot of areas. The monetary losses vary when you consider your revenue, industry, the actual duration of the outage, the number of people impacted, the time of day, etc. For example, losses are significantly higher per hour for businesses who are based on high-level data transactions, like banks and online retail sales. If you experience an unplanned outage during peak traffic time, obviously the damage will be more significant.
According to Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime is $5,600 per minute. Because there are so many differences in how businesses operate, downtime, at the low end, can be as much as $140,000 per hour, $300,000 per hour on average, and as much as $540,000 per hour at the higher end.
98% of organizations say a single hour of downtime costs over $100,000. 81% of respondents indicated that 60 minutes of downtime costs their business over $300,000. 33% of those enterprises reported that one hour of downtime costs their firms $1-5 million.
Indirect Costs of IT Downtime
But there are other costs that don’t often show up in dollar form. That’s the cost of interruptions, especially when IT professionals are interrupted from what might be more productive work.
Take, for example, the interruption that occurs when someone pops into your office to tell you that your email server is down. That interruption, of course, takes the time it takes, plus the time to fix the problem. But did you know, according to a study by UC Irvine, that it often takes an average of 23 minutes to refocus and get your head back in the game after an interruption?
As once reported in the Washington Post, interruptions consume, on average, 238 minutes per day. In addition, the time to get started back up after an interruption consumes another 84 minutes a day. The time lost to stress and fatigue steals another 50 minutes a day.
All that adds up to about 6.2 hours per day, or 31 hours per week lost to interruptions! Is it any wonder we’re spending most of our time treading water?
The truth is that no business is immune to the corrosive effects of downtime when it comes to customer — as well as employee — retention, productivity, and standing in the marketplace. Downtime is extremely expensive, and in ways that can make or break the success of your organization. At the same time, it’s essentially unavoidable, because technology architectures are becoming increasingly complex and unpredictable.
Downtime and Cybersecurity
Downtime is costly enough when it results from purely accidental failures in your technology. But when downtime is the result of nefarious behavior by hackers and other threat actors, the monetary consequences can start to skyrocket at an alarming, often business-ruining rate.
The statistics on this are sobering: A 2017 study found that SMBs spend, on average, approximately $117k dollars to recover from a cyberattack. And the SMBs that do recover are the lucky ones, as nearly two thirds of SMBs have to close up shop within six months of a hack or data breach, as reported by the National Cyber Security Alliance. And it’s not just the big companies who suffer from cybercrime, either. Verizon’s 2019 Investigations Report revealed that 60% of cyberattacks affected SMBs.
And now with more and more employees working from home, companies face an even tougher battle against cybercrime. Remote work has “contributed dramatically to the rise in successful ransomware attacks,” says Israel Barak, chief information security officer at Cybereason.
Downtime caused by threat actors comes with the usual costs of downtime — the costs of not being able to do business — plus a plethora of additional costs, such as the ransom payments that companies make to hackers after a ransomware attack. But perhaps the most insidious cost of a data breach is reputational damage. A survey put out by Security.org found that almost one in four Americans stop doing business with a company after it suffers a data breach.
Preparing for IT Downtime
So, what can you do? Are there any positives in all of this?
The best news — and what really matters — is that simply taking a few steps to prepare for an outage can make a huge difference. You can, for instance, take the time to define which services require the most prioritized response, have contingency plans in place, leverage post-mortems to improve processes, and conduct regular testing.
By taking the time to implement a plan for addressing inevitable downtime, your organization stands to realize thousands — or even millions — of dollars in quantifiable cost savings, as well as ensure the health of crucial qualitative factors such as employee morale, brand reputation, and customer loyalty.
Windows 11
The Facts (and What They Mean for Your MSP)
Windows 11 is coming for all to enjoy! Well, for some of us to enjoy. Specifically, those of us with PCs that are equipped with a TPM 2.0 … or is it a TPM 1.2? And just which PCs are those, exactly? Also, when’s the release date? What about the free upgrade? When’s that coming? If you’re an SMB owner, should you hop right on the upgrade, or bide your time and milk the continued support of Windows 2010 for all it’s worth?
There’s a swarm of questions surrounding the imminent release of Microsoft’s brand new operating system, and like any good swarm, it’s creating quite a buzz. At times like this, it can be edifying to step away from the fray and take inventory of the facts at hand. So, what do we know about Windows 11—and what are we still waiting to find out? And how should owners of IT service providers be feeling about all of this? More importantly, what should they be doing?
What We Know (and Don’t Know) about Windows 11
Release Date
Microsoft announced that its new operating system will be here by “the holidays.” Most agree that it will happen sometime between October and December, although a growing chorus online is converging on a much more specific release date: October 20.
And just how did they come up with that? Well, they noticed a clock—the one in the snapshots featured on Microsoft’s announcement blog post for Windows 11. The snapshots show off various aspects of the company’s snazzy new UI. And it just so happens that the time shown in every single one of them is 11:11 a.m. The date’s also the same in all of them: October 20, 2021.
Coincidence? Or is Microsoft showing us instead of telling us that Windows 11 is dropping on October 20?
Honestly, no one knows—except for maybe a few select people over at Microsoft. We’ll just have to wait and see. We’ll also have to wait and see when exactly the free upgrade will be available (the “by the holidays” refers to new machines that come with Windows 11); at this point, all Microsoft has told us is to expect the free upgrade by early next year.
System Requirements
This is where things get messy. Microsoft didn’t exactly set a reassuring tone at the outset; with unclear documentation, evasive public statements, and a PC Health Checker app that just didn’t work, the company almost seemed intent on stirring up confusion and frustration. No such thing as bad press, right?
But clarifications have been made, specifications drawn up, documentation altered. Here’s what we now know—and what we don’t:
The following system requirements might not be set in stone, but they don’t seem to be up in the air, either. So, until notified to the contrary, we can assume that PCs will need to tick all the following boxes to be able to run Windows 11:
Processor: 2 or more cores running at 1+ GHz
Storage: 64+ GB
4+ GB of RAM
Security requirements: Secure Boot, TPM 2.0
Screen: At least 9 inches with 720p resolution or higher
Graphics card: compatible with DirectX 12 (or later) and WDDM 2.x.
Internet connectivity and a Microsoft account
Some of these aren’t surprising, or difficult to fulfill. Others, such as UEFI Secure Boot and the TPM 2.0, pose more of a challenge. To say the least, the above requirements are more stringent than many were expecting, and they shut out a lot of PCs from the Windows 11 party, including Microsoft’s own Surface Studio 2, which came out just a few years ago and costs a pretty penny ($3,499.99).
But just how many of the 1.2 billion machines currently running Windows 10 will be able to run Windows 11, and how many will be left out in the cold? And which ones?
If there were solid answers to these questions, we’d give them to you. But as things stand, there’s a good amount that we still don’t know.
For instance, we know that 8th generation Intel and AMD Zen 2 CPUs will be Windows 11 compatible, but what about 7th gen and Zen 1? Microsoft is looking into it. As for the TPM 2.0 requirement, just how absolute is it? Are there workarounds? Might a machine with a TPM 1.2 and the right tweaks slip through the Great Filter of Obsolescence?
Again, we’ll have to wait and see.
Windows 11 and Your Business
Not knowing what the system requirements are, finding out your brand-new, expensive PC doesn’t meet them—there’s no shortage of reasons to feel some frustration and anxiety about the imminent release of Windows 11.
Businesses and business owners face a particularly tough decision, especially those whose current PCs are among the millions of hapless machines that will be left out in the cold. The question will not be whether to upgrade, but when. Timing is everything and a careful consideration of the ROIs involved in different courses of action could be the difference between harnessing an upgrade for profit and letting it knock your business off track.
Support for Windows 10 will continue through October 14, 2025. So, if you’re a business facing a potentially expensive upgrade experience, just know you have a little time to make your plans.
Do What You Can Now
At this point, it’s a good idea to take some definitive steps in the right direction. For instance, you can check your systems for a TPM 2.0. Here’s how :
1) Right-click the Windows start button
2) Select “Device Manager”
3) Click the little arrow next to “Security devices”
If it says “Trusted Platform Module 2.0,” you’re good to go—on that requirement, at least. Figuring out whether your systems have Secure Boot implemented is a bit more complicated, and it can be a good idea to just contact your PC manufacturer for information on that.
Taking concrete action is always better than sitting around and worrying, catastrophizing, and complaining. If you want to be a successful business owner, it starts with you: your attitude, your tone, your habits. Be positive in the face of challenges and your employees will take your lead.
But being positive isn’t enough. You have to also be prepared. What is your upgrade strategy? Can you afford to upgrade to Windows 11 right away if doing so means purchasing a bunch of new machines? Can you afford not to?
Remember: Security is an Investment
The cost of not upgrading might seem abstract, but when it comes to security, this cost could become all too real. There’s a reason why Microsoft is demanding that PCs have Secure Boot and a TPM 2.0 in order to run Windows 11. That reason is security. The company is tired of being the target of hackers. Tired of being mauled by malware. So, with their stringent Windows 11 hardware requirements, they’re doing something about it.
Regardless of how you feel about the TPM 2.0 requirement, know this: As reported in this post, Microsoft was able to reduce malware instances by 60% in test devices using TPM-enabled security features such as Windows Hello and Secure Boot.
When making upgrade plans for your business, don’t let the inconvenience and up-front costs of an upgrade be the reason for a much, much larger inconvenience of a security breach down the road. There’s such thing as rushing the transition, but waiting too long is a very real danger.
We Can Help
The 20 is an exclusive group of MSPs who utilize shared resources, expertise, and tools to outpace the competition. When it comes to navigating the business side of your MSP, we’re your “Easy Button.” And when your MSP faces a challenging period of transition, we can help you make the necessary adjustments to keep your business on track, on a path to greater and greater growth.
Learn more about The 20’s unique all-in-one model for MSP success, and check out our latest security offering, ID 20/20, a multi-factor authentication solution that employs zero trust security principles to keep your end users—and your company—safe. We focus on keeping your data protected, so you can focus on growing your MSP.
Meet Michael of YourITgroup!
Tell us a little about your MSP…
Our HQ is in Boca Raton with support for the greater tri-county (MIA, Broward, Palm Beach) area. YourITgroup has been in business since 2001, new ownership (me) in 2015.
How long have you been a member of The 20?
We’ve been a member of The 20 for 6 years.
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
Why re-invent the wheel? Work on the parts of the business that will grow it.
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
Biggest change is our revenues. With Tim and The 20’s help and guidance, we have almost quintupled our MRR.
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
Always being on the forefront: Security, Industry, etc. You know who the winners are? The ones that bolt out of the gates first. If you’re not first, you’re last.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
Sales and marketing focus. If you aren’t great at sales or not a people person, get someone who is STAT. Just like how we need to get our clients out of the mindset that IT is not an expense but a great investment, we too need to think that salespeople are not an expense but a great investment.
What are your biggest business challenges?
Managing the growth. It is true what they say, mo money – mo problems.
What are your areas of focus for 2021?
Compliance – I believe CMMC or some form of it will be the standard for most companies in 3-6 years
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
Be around people who have already done it. Their knowledge and guidance will shoot you there faster than anything else, period.
What book are you currently reading?
o Good to Great – Jim Collins
o Chief Joy Officer – Richard Sheridan
o Radical Candor – Kim Scott
Favorite blogs/podcasts
The Tony Robbins Podcast
Interested in becoming a member like YourITgroup? Click here for more information!
IT Documentation: Do it for Your Techs!
Documentation isn’t boring. That’s right, you heard it here first. It isn’t merely ‘paperwork.’ Nor is it an inconvenience or a necessary evil, something that MSPs have to ‘put up with.’ At least, it doesn’t have to be. Not if you look at it from the right angle.
In essence, documentation is writing things down. And, in the business world, it is an expression of and means to greater operational maturity. In other words, robust documentation practices not only reflect, but reinforce mature business practices.
And just what might those be? That one’s easy—mature business practices are the kind that make your MSP money! However you feel about documentation, the fact remains: An effective documentation management strategy can save your MSP tons of time and money.
In this, the first of a series of blog posts devoted to documentation, we will consider how documentation makes your technicians’ work lives easier and more productive. But before we dive into that topic, a few general remarks on what makes documentation such a powerful business tool …
Documentation is Paying Attention
Documentation facilitates an honesty that comes only from truly paying attention. When your IT business’s SOPs exist mostly in your head (and perhaps the heads of your more experienced techs), they can seem a lot more efficient and effective than they really are. But writing them down, and then, reading what you’ve written … well, that entire process has a way of clearing away the fog of ego and revealing the truth—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Documenting your business means really looking at it.
Getting Your Technicians on Board
MSP owners face a distinct challenge when it comes to implementing more and better documentation protocols at their companies. Technicians aren’t, generally speaking, huge fans of documentation. So, pushing a pro-documentation agenda can make you look like the ‘bad guy.’ This is a serious issue, because no matter how slick and elegant your documentation protocols are, without your technicians’ buy-in, they’re just a bunch of rules.
Documentation protocols become documentation practices when the people in your company take them seriously. But how are you supposed to convince your MSP employees that documentation isn’t a bitter pill to swallow, but something to relish?
The solution to the problem of how to instill a documentation culture at your MSP isn’t itself documented. There’s no algorithm you can follow for garnering employee support and enthusiasm. How you go about doing it is largely idiosyncratic. You know your employees and your management style (and if you don’t, this is a wake-up call: get to know yourself ASAP!). Trust your instincts and be the leader you’re comfortable being.
That said, here are two pieces of general advice on how to get your techs to start (and not stop) practicing good documentation hygiene.
1. Be the change …
First piece of advice: be the change you want to see in your MSP. Attitude is contagious. As an MSP owner, what you think and feel about documentation will influence what your employees think and feel about documentation.
“Influence”—not “determine”; you can’t force your technicians to get excited about documentation, but you can do your part to chip away at their biases and their knee-jerk negative reactions. A positive attitude is immeasurably helpful here.
So, consciously foster in your own mind a favorable conception of documentation (e.g., view it as a ‘slick and modern tool capable of driving your MSP’s efficiency through the roof’ or as a ‘thoughtful and detail-oriented business practice that both reflects and reinforces operational maturity’).
2. Don’t force. Motivate …
Second piece of advice: If you frame your documentation conversation in terms of ‘you forcing your techs to do something they don’t want to do,’ you’re shooting yourself in the foot at the beginning of the race—using the starting gun! In business (and in life) forcing people to do things doesn’t work nearly as well as motivating people to do things.
When it comes to implementing a robust documentation culture at your MSP, you don’t want your techs’ obedience; you want their engagement. Without their active, willing involvement, you simply cannot sustain healthy documentation practices.
That’s why some MSPs are turning to gamification to incentivize documentation for technicians. Gamifying documentation makes it fun—well, more fun—and can help you get the ball rolling. But as an MSP owner, you shouldn’t have to rely too heavily on ‘tricks’ like gamification to motivate your techs to follow documentation protocols. That’s because of one simple truth:
Your techs are probably the people in your company who will benefit the most from a mature documentation management strategy. Your job is to convey this to them without hitting them over the head with it. Try working the following points into your conversation …
Why Your Techs Should Love Documentation (or At Least Hate it Less)
When your MSP gets serious about documentation—not only doing it, but doing it the right way—your techs will be able to do their jobs more easily, more efficiently, and just plain better. To be more specific, a solid documentation strategy can help your hardworking technicians …
• Stop having to reinvent the wheel all the time. Without a mature documentation system in place, your MSP’s techs will often have to reinvent the wheel when faced with a new IT issue or customer. Starting from scratch is hard, time-consuming, and prone to human error. But when your techs have a rich service database to consult—clearly written SOPs and detailed ticket notes—they never have to reinvent the wheel to solve a customer’s IT issue. The amount of time this will save your MSP is truly monumental.
• Not have to rely on their fallible brains so much. Written SOPs provide your techs with convenient checklists. Checklists have been used by pilots and surgeons for decades and with great success. The reason is simple: human beings are fallible, and we’re especially fallible when carrying out complex tasks in high pressure situations. So, when you give your techs checklists to carry out their service duties, you’re not implying that their jobs are easy or mechanical; on the contrary, you’re recognizing the inherent difficulty and complexity of their work. Like surgeons and pilots, IT techs ought to offload some cognitive work onto a checklist in order to save their brainpower for the more nuanced aspects of their job—the things that can’t be captured by a list.
• Make customers happy (or less angry, at least). Here’s a scenario: Say a tech goes out to lunch, and a customer whom that tech was helping calls your MSP’s service desk. Here’s what happens when your company has good documentation protocols in place: Another one of your techs can take the call, refer to their colleague’s ticket notes, and pick up right where that colleague left off. This is obviously highly efficient, and it also means that the tech won’t have to ask the customer a bunch of things that their lunch-eating colleague already asked, during the initial call. Why is this important? Because the last thing—the last thing—a frustrated customer wants to do is repeat themselves.
• Spend less time and energy on training new hires. This is a big one. When you hire a new technician, there’s a lot that person needs to learn in order to become a productive member of your company. Without detailed documents that explain how they’re supposed to do their job (internal documentation), the task of training them falls entirely on your more experienced techs. But with such documents, new hires can largely train themselves, leaving your experienced techs more time to tackle the sophisticated IT issues you pay them to deal with. This makes everyone happier, but also, it saves you money—in-person training is costly!
• Avoid awkward stalemates with customers. Sometimes customers are unhappy with the IT service your MSP provided them. Sometimes these customers lodge formal complaints. Sometimes these complaints are … aggressive. When this happens, and there isn’t sufficient documentation of the services received, it’s your word against theirs, your tech’s word against the customer’s. Sure, the customer’s always right—but you don’t want to throw your tech under the bus, or accept fault without knowing what really happened. Dealing with an upset customer is never going to be fun, but documentation gives you something solid to point to when things get testy and turbulent, and it allows for greater overall transparency and accountability in your business culture.
At the end of the day, proper documentation practices are geared towards one thing: making it easier for your techs to access the critical IT info required to carry out their duties. It takes time to build a streamlined, centralized, and comprehensive documentation platform, but the amount of time such a platform saves your MSP in the long run is truly on a different order of magnitude.
IT Glue: Helping You Fight Information Sprawl
Building a productive documentation culture at your MSP is hard work, and it takes time. As your MSP grows, so too does the amount of information flowing through your business. Organizing and managing all that info with proper documentation procedures, and in a way that boosts revenue and improves workflow, can feel daunting—to say the least!
IT Glue is an industry-leading, SOC-2 compliant documentation software that allows MSPs of all sizes to develop and maintain a robust and cost-effective documentation management strategy. If you’re the owner of a growing MSP and you want to get serious about documentation, but you don’t know where to start, start with IT Glue.
Learn more about IT Glue’s suite of features and robust integrations to see why thousands of MSPs have chosen IT Glue for all of their documentation needs.
VISION 2021 – Why You Don’t Want to Miss Out!
VISION 2021 provides two days of compelling speakers, educational sessions, and networking focused on MSP business best practices, thought leadership, and growth.
Join world-class MSPs and ITSPs for two days of non-stop learning and a wealth of insightful sessions. The conference is supercharged with content catered to every member of your MSP team, from tech to exec.
Connect with IT professionals and experts from around the world. Exchange best practices and share tips, tricks, and secrets for success with a powerful network of MSPs.
Here are the top 10 reasons you don’t want to miss #VISION21:
100% Live Event
Our event is fully live. Not virtual, not hybrid, 100% live. We’re all ready to get back to live events and we have an awesome 2 days planned.
Attendees
Come surround yourself with the nations top MSPs, share best practices & network with like minded business owners.
Sponsors
We have a full slate of industry leading vendors including Datto, Dell, Huntress Labs and more.
Killer Content
Come learn results generating strategies to grow and scale your MSP!
Location
The event is being held in Arlington, Texas at live at Lowe’s right next to the Dallas Cowboy and Rangers stadium.
Breakout Sessions
Breakout sessions, along with our main stage speakers! We have a wide variety of breakouts covering technical training to sales and everything in between.
Party
Nobody parties like The 20! Join us for live music, drinks & dancing.
The Year of the Return
Our theme this year is the year of the return, we have a kick off reception on the 28th which will include an actual delorean based off the Back to the future franchise.
The 20
If you are an MSP looking to grow and scale your business come hear from the best with sessions from our CEO Tim Conkle.
Speakers
We have a great line up of speakers covering a wide range of topics. Our keynote speaker this year is Maye Musk. Maye is a best selling author, model, trend maker and rule changer with a fascinating family. She’s mother to three incredibly successful entrepreneurs – Elon, Kimbal, and Tosca.
Join us at VISION for an incredible conversation with the amazing Maye Musk! Register Now!
Meet Gerard Irizarry, IT Support Desk Team Lead
Gerard Irizarry quickly became a tremendous asset to the entire team at The 20. Read below to find out more about Gerard.
What do you do here at The 20?
I’m the Technical Tier 2 Lead at The 20.
Describe The 20 in three words…
1 – Transparent · 2. Connected · 3. Nurturing
As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to become a teacher when I was in third grade. I grew up, went to college in New York and became a technical trainer in that very same college!
What’s the most challenging thing about your job?
The biggest challenge was getting to know the members of my team, especially one working from home. At the same time, trying to accommodate and synchronize their workflow, but everyday it became so much easier.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My wife and I recently purchased our first home in Lake Dallas. I am very proud of that.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
I believe we all must have is a genuine desire and willingness to learn and to keep an open mind as well as not be afraid to go the extra mile.
What do you like most about The 20?
I’m a very curious person, so I like to understand how things work and how to fix various issues. I feel like I have that opportunity here at The 20. I love working with people who are just as curious as I am, and that are more skilled. It makes my work the best learning environment there is. Every day I learn something new on the job.
What do you like to do in your spare time? / What are your hobbies?
I love spending time with my wife dancing or watching our favorite shows. I also enjoy my freelance Web/Graphic design as well as video and audio editing with a focus on advertising.
Not much of a life hack but a work hack. Keyboard shortcuts have made my technical life a lot easier over the years. Keyboard combinations such as Alt + Tab for switching between open programs, Ctrl + Tab for cycling through open browser windows, and Ctrl + C or Ctrl + V for copy and paste respectively saved me significant amounts of time.
The 20, a leading consortium of managed service providers (MSPs), is excited announce keynote speaker Maye Musk for the VISION 2021 conference.
Maye Musk, a role model, trend maker and rule changer with a fascinating family is set to deliver a keynote address on September 30th at VISION 2021. Maye is a respected dietitian who gives talks all over the world about health, nutrition, business, and aging. But things were not always so easy or glamorous — she became a single mom at thirty-one years old, struggling through poverty to provide for her three children; dealt with weight issues as a plus-size model and overcame ageism in the modeling industry. She established a lifelong career as a dietitian, all the while starting over in eight different cities across three countries and two continents. She made her way through it all with an indomitable spirit and a no-nonsense attitude to become a global success at what she calls the prime of her life. Her book, A Woman Makes A Plan, has been published by Penguin Random House in the USA and Canada. It is an international best-seller, and in over 70 countries with more to come.
Today, she continues to give presentations on entrepreneurship, aging, gender equality, single parenting, overcoming challenges, confidence and health to corporations, associations, hospitals and universities. Maye has traveled around the world giving talks in Melbourne, Stockholm, Kiev, Budapest, Cannes, Beirut and most of the major cities in the USA, Canada and South Africa. In Shanghai, after walking her longest runway at the Shanghai Sports Stadium, she was interviewed by over 30 media outlets.
Maye Musk will participate in a moderated discussion with The 20 CEO Tim Conkle at VISION on September 30th.
“Maye Musk is an icon. It is a great honor to have her as our keynote speaker for VISION 2021,” says Crystal McFerran, CMO of The 20. “We’re thrilled to be able to hold this year’s VISION conference in-person and look forward to a fantastic lineup of content.”
What can you expect from VISION this year? A full roster of sought-after speakers, innovative disruptors and business-focused visionaries sharing their knowledge with likeminded MSPs who are seeking to level up.
The two-day event also features a full slate of leading channel partners and industry experts. Hailed as the most important MSP event of the year, VISION 2021 will bring together top MSPs and IT service providers for two impactful days of speakers, sessions, and networking focused on business best practices, thought leadership, and growth.
The 20 is an exclusive business development group for Managed Service Providers (MSP) aimed at dominating and revolutionizing the IT industry with its standardized all-in-one approach. The 20’s robust RMM, PSA, and documentation platform ensures superior service for its MSPs’ clients utilizing their US-based Help Desk and Network Operations Center. Extending beyond proven tools and processes, The 20 touts a proven sales model, a community of industry-leaders, and ultimate scalability. To learn more, visit https://www.the20.com/
Artificial intelligence (AI) offers the promise of bringing infinite automation at and beyond a level humanity is capable of at present. It also brings forth the promise of the singularity where all technical growth and development collapses into the automation cycle of advanced artificial intelligence. There isn’t an argument on whether this will happen or not (if we can avoid destroying ourselves until then), just a matter of when. The issue is that the “AI” of today isn’t really all that intelligent, but most people think it is.
Most modern AI is glorified machine learning (ML) at best. Even the most advanced lacks any comprehension or understanding of what it is doing. You have a black box; you plug data into it, and you get out some (hopefully) correct results. That isn’t to say ML isn’t impressive and can’t deliver results; you just need to know what you have and what you’ll get from the process.
There are some overblown claims in ML and AI, but if you understand what AI can do, and more importantly what it can’t, you can temper your expectations to fit reality. I’m going to refer to these various technologies as AI for the sake of convenience unless the distinction is pertinent.
The Promise Of AI
It feels like there’s some kind of AI or ML solution strapped into everything and anything. Security and networking solutions throw in AI. Analytic solutions bolt on ML. This isn’t a coincidence either; we’ve reached an awkward spot in the development of technology. We’re past the era of heuristics and human-generated algorithms in many fields.
There’s been an arms race in technology. Hackers use more and more novel techniques to exploit software and people at levels where even the slightest human slip-up can snowball into catastrophe. Modern viruses have become polymorphic messes of novel exploits that defy analysis outside of dedicated technical research. Humans can’t keep up. They need something at least fractionally intelligent for all the minutia — something that doesn’t get tired and doesn’t make mistakes.
This is where the promise of AI comes in. All of the various AI solutions claim to do this and more; they’ve unlocked the magic solution to every problem, and their solution does things better than any of the old-guard solutions. You just need to buy in, and all your problems will disappear like magic.
Limitations Of AI
Unfortunately, that’s all sales talk. The facts are buried in the fantasy, but it’s up to you to figure out what’s what. Even the simplest machine learning can bring something to the table, but you’re going to disappointed if you’re expecting a steak and you get a bowl of chips instead. Current-generation AI solutions are limited in many ways.
There isn’t an AI solution that has any degree of sentience or understanding of what it’s doing. You get your magic black box, which approximates a human by some measurement, but even the most advanced AI doesn’t understand the data, the results, what it’s doing or why it’s doing something. The AI can’t understand any part of the process, so bad data gets bad results. Another flip side to this, if the principle the process was created around was flawed, the entire process will be flawed as well. A person can use their better judgment to know whether something makes sense or not — a machine can’t (yet).
You need to know the right questions to ask to determine whether a product can or will fit your needs. What theoretical principles are behind the implementation? How does it collect or work with training data? Is the process adjusted regularly, or is it static? Are the real-world statistics in line with the theoretical statistics? What do you need to maintain? You need to pull at the thread until you unravel the whole thing to something you can understand. Otherwise, what exactly are you buying? There’s going to be a limit, and it’s up to you to figure out what it is.
Putting These Factors In Perspective
AI offers the promise of boundless improvement to virtually any process when done right, but that hinges on it being done right. What are you trying to solve, and how does the solution target that? You need the right solution for the right problem, or else you’re just wasting time. A good programmer won’t necessarily make a good technician.
If you’re introducing your findings to your company, you need to temper their expectations. A solution doesn’t have to be bad to not be the right choice, but many people treat it as a zero-sum game. This reductionist approach makes sense when you don’t understand all of the factors: Either it works, or it doesn’t.
You’re fighting an outside salesperson familiar with the product, what it can do and all of the smooth talking to sell your superiors on how sleek it is. If you don’t understand it and no one else at your organization does, who can make sense of the claims enough to make the right choice? To top this off, if you don’t understand it enough to relay the information, who will trust your interpretation of the solution for better or worse? It may be worthless, but you can’t just say that; you need to explain and show why it doesn’t fit.
The future is going to be lined with developments in AI, but that doesn’t mean every product that adds AI will be the right choice every time. What are you trying to do, and what does the solution do? Pull the fact out of the fantasy and see what you can actually expect. It’s not magic, but as Clarke’s Third Law states, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Do you want to fall for magic snake oil or see it for what it is and unlock the true potential behind a given technology?
Meet Brian & Mary of Mid-Atlantic Data & Communications!
Tell us a little about your MSP…
Mid-Atlantic Data & Communications is currently located in Roanoke VA. We were started in 2004. We started this company originally just to make an extra $1200 a month in cash.
How long have you been a member of The 20?
We’ve been a member of The 20 since April of 2020.
Why did your MSP originally look to partner with The 20?
We partnered with The 20 to drive down the cost of our tool sets, partner with other resources that had knowledge that we didn’t and save money.
Tell us about the biggest change in your business since joining The 20.
Understanding scale and letting go.
What do you like most about being a member of The 20?
Our favorite part of being a member of The 20 is the 24 hour help desk as part of our sales strategy.
What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success?
Letting go.
What are your biggest business challenges?
Our biggest business challenge is documentation.
What are your areas of focus for 2021?
Operations and Sales/Marketing
What advice would you share with an MSP looking to scale their business?
Decide what you want to become and never lose focus on your goals!
Google has announced that Chrome will drop support for third-party cookies before 2022. While they aren’t the first to do so, they are the largest browser by market share to do so. Marketing is about to have a major lateral move where some parts move backwards as other parts move forward to compensate.
The death of third-party cookies isn’t going to be the ad apocalypse of 2021 that some marketing firms claim it will be, but it will be the death of an entire methodology. Data didn’t get diminished, it got different. If you’re ready for the changes, or at least receptive to acknowledging things are about to get much different, you’re ahead of most companies. This is a grand reset of the marketing ecosystem with an old premise brought forward to today.
Learning from the lessons of the past will enable to you to adapt to the lessons of tomorrow once this change hits the ground running. Yes, things are about to get harder for a while, but they’re also going to be harder across the board. That includes for your competition. Capitalize on the chaos and use the foundational principles of marketing, and you can and will prosper.
Third to First: Move Back to Move Forward
It’s a bit of a misnomer that the death of third-party cookies corresponds to the death of analytics. The rumor feels like it’s mostly been quashed, but I still hear echos of it from time to time. Good first-party data and analytics were essential before tracking networks were even feasible, and they’re going to make a return. You may lose action to the connections, but it’s possible to get a very good picture without leaving your domain.
People tend to forget that if people are opting in, you still have their data. If they’re on your email list, if you place or generate the link, etc., you can still collect data on them as a first party. The same tricks that worked in the late 90’s and early 2000’s are still used today. You may lose some of the granularity, but imagination and experience easily fills in the detail.
How are you collecting data and what are you doing with it? How a customer, client, or prospect is using your website or interacting with your content is just as valuable as ever. Your ad targeting will get much more narrow and general, but will also get cheaper on average (when the dust finally settles). We already started going back to older models where advertisements almost need a bribe in technical circles. A business doesn’t put out their white paper for the benefit of humankind after all.
Content Is King: Back to Basics
The first rule of running a business is to have something someone wants, and the same applies to marketing. People buy something because they’re looking to solve a problem or because they want to buy a feeling. People want content because they’re looking to learn something or find out about a product. Why not do both at once? Content is still king and you need to get competitive with it.
You need content people want to view. Almost every industry is saturated with ads and gimmicks, but how can you get people to come forward to pick your ad and marketing rather than trying to push it down their throats? A blog article that solves a problem can also point all signs towards your offering. You can push a white paper that covers what you discovered behind an email list to get them into your pipeline.
Content should be part of your marketing cadence plan to scale your marketing outreach. People don’t just want an email with details written out, they want something aesthetic, easy to digest, and full of the details relevant to what they’re looking to accomplish. They want a holistic package which balances the information with the glitter to really shine. The exact balance will depend on your audience and what you’re selling.
What can you provide to get people to volunteer to learn about your solution? How can you provide valuable content to begin to monetize your actual value? SEO and marketing cadence are going to decide the next rounds until something new comes along. How are you building a marketing cadence and building your SEO strategy with quality content?
Hitting the Digital Pavement: Get Back Out There
Think of this change as getting laid off with a favorable severance package and a strong safety net. You do need to make changes to keep going, but you have some time to wrap your head around the changes. While the jump when third-party cookies finally die is going to be abrupt, the principles you’ve learned and used will continue to serve as long as you’re willing to make changes, especially if you start testing things now. The service you used for data and metadata may shift to a quick lesson in Excel for analytics.
While you probably can’t just hit the pavement to sell a service or find a job even now, doing the digital equivalent can set you above your peers or competition. SEO tips from 20 years ago may be heavily dated, but the principles themselves are more relevant than ever (such as having good content). We’re moving back in terms of what we have access to, but not what we can do with it. Data may get “simpler”, but how we work with the data can get more and more complex with the right application.
Pay-gated services are going to get heavily shuffled, and necessity will necessitate innovation once more. Things are going to get a bit chaotic before we get some serious changes. It’s a new frontier, temporarily, but you have a chance to make a breakthrough ahead of your competition. Hit that digital pavement and ask around and go back to basics deciphering how to make sense of the new world of marketing.
Retrograde vs. Regressive
There’s a difference between moving back and moving backwards. Go back to the principles but not backwards in the practice. Technology has changed the game and will never be less important than it is now. Make more sense of your analytics and you make more sense of all analytic processes (assuming the data hits a certain standard). If you have the concepts down, we’re moving back in available data not potential.
The move from third-party cookies will hurt the marketing industry as a whole at first, but it is also a chance to see the playing field leveled. It’s also a chance to see a better balance between the creep factor of profiles and the idealized prospect. Marketing and advertising had been beholden to the paradox of choice with data and ways to weight it.
Third party sources each held varying levels of value and none of them agreed with the other. 100 views was 110 on one platform, 91 on another, etc. While I made the numbers themselves up, I’ve seen data that varied (or more) between sources on individual data points. We see data after it has been through the black box of the almighty algorithm which gives each service its edge. Some remove data, others don’t, and others count data which is near erroneous everywhere else for the sake of completeness. The problem is, no one tells you what they actually do before you get the data.
What you see is what you get, but what they got isn’t what they necessarily started with. You just never know. Your data you can understand and thoroughly shape, but outside data may have a differing foundation. Use the principles that worked on a more limited internet and not the contemporary trends. Move back not backwards.
