Memo From Kaseya to MSPs: Document Your Business Processes

How can managed services providers (MSPs) continue to differentiate from cross-town competitors and regional rivals? Instead of focusing on price, features and functions, Kaseya Executive VP Jim Alves says it’s time for MSPs to focus on documented business processes. Here’s why.

No doubt, the base remote monitoring pitch is getting a bit long in the tooth for MSPs serving mature IT markets. Instead of getting in a price battle with your local rivals, Alves says it’s time for MSPs to emulate mature, well-managed corporate IT departments — which have well-documented business processes. Then, show those processes to your target customers to convince them you’re the most trustworthy game in town.

Kaseya CEO Gerald Blackie and other executives in the managed services market have spent the past few years talking about ITIL (information technology infrastructure library), a standard that assists with the business process discussion. Many large service providers and data center operators already leverage ITIL — which helps IT managers to develop “comprehensive checklists, tasks and procedures” for smooth IT service management.

Market Disconnect

But generally speaking, I think some smaller MSPs sometimes get overwhelmed when they try to get their arms around ITIL. And most small MSPs, I suspect, haven’t even taken a close look at ITIL.

That’s where Kaseya hopes to help. Alves didn’t go into deep detail, but he says Kaseya is expanding its educational efforts around ITIL and business process management. The idea is to give service providers some basic templates to get started — without forcing MSPs to master all of ITIL’s intricacies. Moreover, it sounds like Kaseya will stop short of handing every service provider a complete business process playbook. The reason: Doing so would potentially commoditize yet another segment of the IT market.

Alves and I also discussed some Q4 Kaseya product enhancements. More on that later.

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