IT Documentation: Do it for Your Business!

Good IT documentation saves an MSP money by saving it A LOT of time.

If you own an IT business, chances are you’ve heard about the glorious benefits of proper IT documentation practices. How they can make your technicians’ lives dramatically easier and save your business tons of time, and thus, tons of money.

But just how much time do your employees waste due to poor documentation practices, anyway? How many hours a day? A month? A year? And what about you?

You may not be able to give precise answers to these questions. But there’s a good chance you radically underestimate the number of hours — and dollars — that are lost at your MSP due to inefficient uses of time. And there’s also a good chance you radically underestimate how much of that time you could win back through better documentation.

The good news is that it’s not your fault — not entirely, at least. It’s hard to judge just how much the little things add up when you’re busy running the rest of your business. But it’s essential to take control of your destiny and your business to make things more efficient for you and your clients. By the end of this blog post, two things should be clear, if they’re not already:

1. It’s all too easy to underestimate how much time (and money) your MSP wastes.
2. It’s all too easy to underestimate how much time (and money) better documentation practices would save your IT business.

Time Wasted: Take it with a Grain of Rice — Not Salt

Maybe you’ve heard the following story from Indian folklore …

A man invents the game of chess and shows the emperor his creation. The emperor is so impressed by the man’s ingenuity that he allows the man to name his reward. The man asks for rice. Specifically, one grain for the first square of his chess board, two for the second, four for the third, and so on, the grains doubling each successive square. “No problem,” the emperor says, feeling happy to grant the man his humble request.

But the “humble request” turns out to be anything but. How much rice has the emperor promised? A ton. Actually, that’s a vast understatement, for in truth it’s actually

trillions of tons. To fill the entire board in the manner proposed, the emperor will need 2⁶⁴ grains of rice, or 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains. That’s a lot of rice.

But what does any of this have to do with documentation? Quite a bit, actually. What the above story illustrates is human beings’ pronounced tendency to underestimate the power of accumulation. We simply don’t realize how quickly things add up.

This applies to time wasted as much as it does to grains of rice. If you’re a business owner, it can be easy to either overlook, underestimate, or ignore how small inefficiencies add up into huge wastes of time and money. But the right information and the right expertise can help resolve this issue for you and your organization.

The Cost of Inefficiency

Experts estimate that workers in technical fields waste about 20% of their time trying to track down information that should be at their fingertips. So, in an 8-hour workday, a technician is likely to spend around 1.6 hours just looking for information, much of which proper documentation protocols would have made readily available. Let’s put a dollar amount on this …

Say your MSP employs 5 technicians. If they waste 20% of their time searching for information and you pay them an average annual salary of 60k dollars, that means you’re losing almost 7k dollars each week on account of poorly organized information. And that’s before factoring in opportunity costs! When you factor in opportunity costs, you’re losing an additional $13,824 per week (based on a gross margin % of 50). In total, that’s …

More than 20k dollars a month! ‘Yikes’ is right. (You can use IT Glue’s “Cost of Waste” calculator to estimate the cost of time wasted at your company due to information not being easily accessible. Just plug in the relevant information — number of techs, their average salary, etc. — and voilà, you’ll see just how much inefficiency is hurting your bottom line.)

Insidious Interruptions

Here’s another somewhat startling statistic: A study by UC Irvine found that an office worker takes, on average, 23 minutes to refocus after an interruption. And having to track down a coworker for critical information during a call with a customer — you better believe that constitutes an interruption! Having to dig for crucial information that’s hidden in discrete silos can completely ruin your techs’ flow and lower their morale. This is likely to taint the customer service experience that your MSP’s reputation relies on. We start to see how the effects of inefficiency ripple outward.

But with a robust and centralized system of documentation in place, your techs can assist clients not only more swiftly, but more smoothly and confidently. A chef who has to cook a meal while simultaneously trying to find the recipe, the steps of which are hidden all over the kitchen, all while juggling knives … Yeah, that’s not going to be a happy chef. And that chef is no different from an IT tech who has to help a customer while trying to track down the information needed to provide quality assistance. So, write down your MSP’s ‘recipes’ (i.e., standard operating procedures) so your techs can serve up tasty IT support with confidence, instead of sloppily prepared meals thrown together under stress.

Don’t Listen to Your Gut

Here’s the bottom line: If your MSP doesn’t have its ducks in a row when it comes to documentation, your technicians are likely wasting tons of time not only tracking down information, but refocusing once they’ve found it. And once they’ve refocused, they’re often going to be facing a frustrated client whose patience is running thin — yet one more obstacle to working smoothly and efficiently.

Just like the grains of rice in the legend, it all adds up — all of these inefficiencies caused by inadequate documentation. It’s easy to underestimate or just plain overlook the sum of all these time wastages. Again, that’s just what humans do. From MSP owners to emperors, we’re all prone to misjudging the power of accumulation.

But once you know about a bias, it’s easier to combat it. So, going forward, keep in mind that you’re ‘wired’ to underestimate how much time your MSP wastes on account of bad documentation. On a gut level, your documentation problem may not feel like a huge problem. But as we’ve seen, our guts aren’t always great guides when it comes to cumulative processes, whether they involve rice or time.

Documentation Works … If You Do Too!

Just as the time an MSP loses to bad documentation accumulates sneakily, often going unnoticed or underestimated, so too does the time an MSP wins back once they get their documentation practices in order.

What this means is that it’s vital that you pay attention to how documentation is affecting your organization’s overall productivity and efficiency. More specifically, track data; you can’t expect to appreciate the impact that documentation is having on your MSP if you rely on casual observation. Wield the power of analytics to determine what sort of effect changes in your documentation strategies have on KPIs. And remember, the benefits of good documentation practices are not immediate; efficiency and productivity may take an initial dip while your MSP adjusts to new documentation protocols.

It can be useful to set aside time every quarter, or even every month, to go over your MSP’s documentation. Documentation isn’t something you set up once and never think about again. It’s an ongoing and evolving record of your

organization’s core operational processes. When a tech figures out a better way of solving a particular IT issue, update your SOPs accordingly.

It boils down to this: For documentation to work, you have to work on it. That’s why a lot of MSPs end up failing to harness the power of documentation; as in any industry, a willingness to put in the work is what separates the winners from the losers in the MSP space — the multi-million-dollar MSPs from the ones barely scraping by. But don’t just work hard, work smart. And remember, the right tools and expertise can enable you to do more with less.

Invest in Documentation

Documentation isn’t something to cut corners on. The reason to implement a new documentation regime at your MSP is the same reason you do anything as a business owner: you want to maximize profitability. But for documentation to serve that end, you can’t just do it; you have to do it well. So don’t document just to document. Do it to improve your IT company’s process and, in turn, its profitability. And this means doing it thoroughly, consistently, and thoughtfully.

If you’re committed to getting serious about documentation, and implementing documentation practices at your MSP that will actually save your business time and money in the long run, consider using IT Glue for all of your documentation needs. Using documentation software makes documentation immeasurably easier, and if you’re going to use documentation software, it’s a good idea to go with the trusted choice of the world’s top MSPs. There’s a reason over 200,000 people use IT Glue: it works!

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

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!
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By Tim Conkle, CEO | The 20
Full Forbes Article Here

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.

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!

What book are you currently reading?

Scaling up and Atomic Habits.

Favorite blogs/podcasts

Interested in becoming a member like Mid-Atlantic Data & Communications? Click here for more information!

Companies are having to confront how to bring their workforce back into the office (if at all). While your clients need to wrestle with the logistics of this move, you need to address how to actually implement their vision from a technical perspective. Your clients need you to focus on the cybersecurity, infrastructure, and balance it all with the logistics of the technical implications of their post Covid-19 workplace transformation.

The pandemic necessitated many changes for most businesses to stay functional. Businesses scrambled to replace in person meetings with Zoom or Teams, or moved from on-premise solutions to the cloud. While they may have shored up some of the issues with the mad rush to just make things work, returning to the office will have its own technical needs to make the process smooth and secure. Assets have been shuffled around and what worked before may not work now.

We rounded up ten different aspects we’ve seen MSPs encounter when helping their clients return from the pandemic and the considerations which go into the process. Each of these aspects feeds into the others, so something which seems common sense at face value can have a profound effect when you make note of it as a specific part of the process.

We’ll start with the basics of cybersecurity, infrastructure, and the logistic concerns. Sign up for the full version of this article which includes the actual 10 most common aspects we have seen our partners deal with during this return and what to consider when working with them. There’s a difference between knowing something exists and applying it.

Cybersecurity Concerns

With the return to the office, there are going to be many new security concerns to square up. Devices have been effectively out in the wild for a year, needs in the office have changed, and you need to be aware of everything touching the network. This is something you normally keep up with in the regular scope of running your MSP, but it is exacerbated by the fragmented nature of work from home.

This section will cover the security concerns at a high level since there really isn’t a one size fits all approach to security. You need to audit assets in the office and beyond, audit devices coming in, make sure that the network makes sense for the new normal, and make sure that old methods of getting in are removed when they need to be. While each of these are straightforward enough in writing, there are multiple parts to consider. We start with security since you should always think about the security implications first (where possible).

Considerations:

What assets are in production (locally and remotely)?

What assets are available for use?

Is everything in storage up to date?

What solutions are in use (SaaS, on-premise solutions, etc.)?

What solutions have been added?

What can be removed, what can be reduced, and what is essential?

Infrastructure Concerns

The move to work from home during the pandemic necessitated many changes to infrastructure. Most businesses didn’t previously have a scalable system in place to facilitate the widespread move to work from home. The changes you or the client have made to the infrastructure impacts security, but it also impacts the logistics for your client to come back to the office to work as necessary.

While infrastructure often bleeds into logistics and vice versa, we are going to define the infrastructure as the actual technical infrastructure which transparently supports the logistic concerns. Certain onsite infrastructure may need restoration to service, other infrastructure may need adjustment to support safe habits, and you may need to change out onsite infrastructure to support cloud migrations or other changes from the pandemic. Some things didn’t make sense to have centralized when working from home, but can provide value back in the office, while other things will slow down from everyone working off the same connection.

Considerations:

How is your client returning and what do they need to stay safe?

How does this work with their expansion and growth?

Do they need more bandwidth, more flexibility, or both?

Logistic Concerns

While many clients are returning to their offices, the logistics of how they do business is probably going to change. Before the pandemic, if someone was sick or on vacation, they might have some way to do work, but there wasn’t often the need for a way to do their entire job remotely. You expected someone to be gone for a fixed amount of time, not potentially permanently while still working.

Your security policy for your client and even the exact specifications of infrastructure changes will depend on the logistics of how they do business. If they implemented a new cloud infrastructure, you may have the bandwidth exhausted or barely touched depending on how the business adapts to their return from the pandemic. The cat’s out of the bag with remote work as at least a potential option, and businesses are going to strike a balance. Logistic changes will mean new movement in and out of the office, and new long term plans for the new normal.

Considerations:

What changes is your client making and how can you facilitate them?

What changes have happened to your client’s business model and how do those impact logistics?

Why are they making certain choices and is there a better way?

Conclusion

There are so many other considerations we can dive into, but these 10 main points across 3 different levels of consideration should help you get deeper into the process. You may not be able to shore up every single consideration depending on the logistical constraints of your client, but you can make sure they know the limitations of what they’re doing and how it impacts their business. No decision will ever be perfect without unlimited resources or extreme luck, but you can make sure that every decision is the right one for you and your client.

This list isn’t exhaustive, but it should help you towards exhausting the considerations you need to have for helping your client. What other considerations can you think of and how does it fit in with everything else you’re doing? How can you turn your client’s vague idea into a tailored plan that covers their bases for their return from the pandemic? How do you make the process scalable between different clients without having to reinvent the wheel at each level?

It might help to go through this list in a different order as well to target from a different metric for your considerations. If flexibility is the most important requirement, start with the logistics and work from there. If the infrastructure requires the biggest changes, consider starting there. It really doesn’t matter where you start, just that you take all of the important elements into consideration to ensure your client’s success.

Every client is different and some will be going back into the office while others won’t. You need a plan for each client to facilitate the logistics and infrastructure behind their decision and a way to keep them safe every step of the way. Now that things are changing, what does your client need, and how can you facilitate it for them?

READ MORE: Check out our full 10-pg guide here!

Meet Luke Glover, Research & Development Manager

Luke Glover quickly became a tremendous asset to the entire team at The 20. Read below to find out more about Luke.

What do you do here at The 20?

I am the DevOps Manager. I develop new tools, solutions, and automate tasks for The 20.

Describe The 20 in three words…

An IT company.

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? 

Growing up,  I wanted to be an Aeronautical Engineer.

What’s the most challenging thing about your job? 

The most challenging thing about my job is coming up with outside the box solutions for seemingly impossible tasks.

What do you consider your greatest achievement? 

My family is my greatest achievement. 

What do you think is the most important quality necessary for success? 

Perseverance

What do you like most about The 20? 

The opportunity for growth and advancement.

What do you like to do in your spare time? / What are your hobbies? 

Video games with my son, working on my cars, and making knives.

Where are you going on your next vacation?

Somewhere with a nice beach.

What’s your top life hack?

Interested in working with Luke at The 20? We’re hiring! Check out our Careers page for more info.