For years, managed IT services have been growing in popularity in the SMB market. They make managing infrastructure about as worry-free as it can be. And, they offer cost certainty, which is great for strategic planning. Unfortunately, however, very small businesses—those with fewer than 30 employees—traditionally had difficulty justifying the cost of hiring a managed service provider (MSP). At that scale, it was challenging for an MSP offering per-user rates to create plans that cost less than the business would pay by sticking with a break/fix support solution.
Today, however, that's beginning to change, courtesy of automation technologies. They're making it possible for MSPs to create bespoke pricing plans for very small businesses that make good economic sense. By wholly or partially automating many core service offerings, they reduce their own overhead and pass the savings on to clients. Here are four ways MSPs are lowering prices through automation.
Automated Patch Management
One of the most essential services offered by MSPs is device patch management. It helps ensure that the software and firmware of every covered device remain up-to-date. It's something that small businesses often overlook when left to their own devices.
The earliest iterations of MSP patch management services were only partially automated. That is to say, most providers offered patch monitoring and deployment, but they required significant intervention by MSP staff. Today, however, most MSPs utilize fully automated patch management solutions.
An excellent example of an automated patch management solution is the Heimdal Security Platform. It's an agent-based monitoring and patching solution that MSPs can deploy to a customer site and leave to run with no intervention. It covers all major desktop and server platforms, as well as over 350 device and software solutions. Its low-intervention approach means MSPs can provide the service to very small businesses for pennies per device.
Automated Cybersecurity Detection and Incident Response
Another key service MSPs provide is cybersecurity monitoring, detection, and response. Unfortunately, it's a difficult undertaking. At last count, small businesses were the target of 43% of all cyberattacks each year. The frequency and severity of the threats have made safeguarding clients a costly undertaking for most MSPs.
Today, however, leading MSPs like QuoStar are driving down cybersecurity provisioning costs using extensive automation. They complement a staff of highly-trained cybersecurity experts with automated incident detection and response. The result is a system that handles the bulk of the average SMB client's daily cybersecurity needs with almost no human intervention. Using sophisticated attack fingerprinting algorithms, the MSP platform can guard against known attack types as well as derivatives. And when a situation requires escalation, human staff can be sure they're not wasting time on false positives.
Automated Onboarding and Offboarding
One of the realities that most small businesses face is a fairly high level of employee turnover. When a new employee joins the company, they need IT service provisioning as a part of the onboarding process. That includes new credentials, access rights, and basic training on using the company's IT infrastructure. Then, when an employee departs, the company must revoke their access. Overall, this can be a labor-intensive process for an MSP to provide.
That's why many are now turning to low-code automation platforms like Rewst. It allows for the creation of automated onboarding and offboarding processes. Critically, it can automate interactions with almost any existing technology infrastructure. That enables the MSP to custom-create processes that work with whatever software and hardware a client already owns. In doing so, the MSP doesn't have to allocate any staff to support the process after configuration.
Automated Help Desk Support
Finally, one of the highest-overhead services a typical MSP offers its clients is IT helpdesk support. Traditionally, the only way to do that was to maintain a large support staff on the payroll at all times. For MSPs, that's a major balancing act. Keeping too few agents on the payroll risks failing to honor promised service level agreements. However, keeping too many keeps per-user contract prices too high to be a viable option for very small businesses.
Today, MSPs are utilizing an army of front-line support chatbots to alleviate workloads on human support agents. They can reduce the need for high helpdesk staffing levels by automating responses to common requests. An excellent example is password reset requests. According to surveys, those make up about 20% of all corporate help desk requests. It's the same for MSPs. A chatbot can trigger a built-in automated password reset procedure, complete with thorough end-user identity verification.
Helpdesk chatbots can also automatically escalate certain requests when appropriate. For example, an end-user reporting a network bottleneck might trigger an automated network health check. If that reveals a network-wide issue, the chatbot would forward the user's request to a network specialist rather than a helpdesk agent.
Affordable MSP Services for All
By deploying automation wherever possible, MSPs can now offer compelling value propositions to very small businesses. That represents an industry sea change, which is making IT expertise available to a broader cross-section of companies. And it's likely a trend that will continue to grow in the years ahead. That should continue to help ever-smaller organizations get the IT help they need without breaking the bank. And that's good, for both the MSPs and their clients, as well as the broader IT industry, which will benefit from more professional management of otherwise vulnerable business systems.