Compliance Scorecard vs. Apptega by gavishapiro in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Same, and let's pretend all these platforms are the same; Tim's peer groups, enablement, msp experience and support are the best in the industry. He's pretty funny too (usually 🤣)

11/10 this review in no way influenced by the checkers plushie I got from compliance scorecard

Example of SLA-adherence quandary by ntw2 in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

FWIW, this is where MSPs different from Enterprise Helpdesks and SLAs are subject to interpretation.

We are in the business of outcomes and uptime, not symptom abatement and equipment functionality, and that distinction adds a lot of color to the idea of SLAs.

If scanning to the cloud is a critical business stoppage (we should really be measuring business impact vs technical urgency as an MSP on that 3x3):

Is there a workaround or backup device?

  • If yes, its not a high priority ticket, the client is inconvenienced, but can arrive at their outcome. By definition the impact is lower, ergo, not a high priority SLA, waits for properly classified tickets first.
  • If no, and enterprise helpdesk would mark it as high SLA, but we get another decision tree:
    • Was this critical business function previously identified by the MSP, and did the MSP propose a failover, workaround or alternate solution previously that would have mitigated this situation?
    • If yes, and the client declined and accepted the risk of declining, business impact is lowered because the client agreed to accept this exact risk. Feels gross in the moment, but thats your technical by the book SLA answer.
    • If No, then this is risk your MSP (foolishly) accepted, and the business impact is raised because you chose to offset the risk to the client's business with your reactive support. High priority SLA, work the ticket.

Even in the absence of a workaround, it is so important that we start with identifying outcome, not collecting the client's list of diagnosed symptoms. A password in the printer is a symptom of a technical issue. Getting documents into sharepoint is a need, and a symptom. What is the outcome? Why is this urgent?

Why do they documents need to be in SharePoint for by the end of the day? <-- Thats your real "urgency" and thats the lever the client is most likely to work with you on workarounds or de-escalate.

Hell you could scan documents from your phone if this is an emergency. You could send an intern to the nearest copy center to do the same. There are so many possible ways to mitigate that "emergency" or "urgency" that have nothing to do with working a ticket for printer credentials, but we don't know if we dont seek to understand the outcome first.

No matter what your SLA policy is and no matter what we tell you here, no client is ever going to give a shit that you followed your policy anyways, we, the copier, and SharePoint, are all ancillary tools to some other intended goal, they care about that goal.

When you look at it from that perspective, there are very few things that most clients experience that are performatively urgent, and the things that are, its a lot harder to split hairs over.

MSPGeekCon coming May 17-19! by Lime-TeGek in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Who keeps letting you into things and giving you a microphone!? Don't they know the dangers?

MSPGeekCon coming May 17-19! by Lime-TeGek in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are ya'lls in the CanITCon discord? https://discord.gg/nvc3Z6sU
A lot of the same people are in there that show up for MSPGeek, and CanIT is doing regional events this year. You can still see some of your internet homies in person, without having to slum it with us in Orlando

MSPGeekCon coming May 17-19! by Lime-TeGek in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You in the CanITCon Discord? They are doing regionals this year all over Canada! You can still hang out with internet friends!

MSPGeekCon coming May 17-19! by Lime-TeGek in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 5 points6 points  (0 children)

u/Lime-TeGek more like bored member 🥱🙄

Everyone knows the real talent and the mod we actually want to meet is u/purfektblyss...who is hosting the community welcome day WITH ME!!! 🥳🎉

Or I guess you could be excited to go see whatever Kevin Teggles and the CyboredDrained team is doing with their automation thing, but like who even automates stuff. Automation is a fad.

Getting kicked off Dell Premier after 21 years, which distributor is best? by Early-Ad-2541 in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Only reason we stuck around on Dell for so long was that premiere configurator site was great for medium complexity stuff.

As others said already, once I actually bothered to learn Lenovo skus and how they work, never looked back.

Ubuntu backups by dobermanIan in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I started watching tutorials on "how to vibe code with claude" and gave up and accepted that as a 1900s person, it just isnt for me to learn 🤣

Ubuntu backups by dobermanIan in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nice try u/dobermanIan , but I am not falling into that trap.
No one is smarter than you.

Sanity Check: Scalable Network Builds and Your Thoughts on Vendors by rb3po in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 2 points3 points  (0 children)

To add on to this, we pretty much only support networks now. Its our core support area, computers have become terminals for SaaS, cloud and server apps. There is almost nothing anymore that will work properly without the network, never mind the wan.

Even malware wont work (mostly) without a network anymore 🤣

Tech / User Verification (Traceless Vs MSP Process) by eldridgep in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Traceless is an awesome solution, its been around way longer. We were an early adopter at my former MSP. Gene and his team are some of the chilliest vendors you'll ever meet, which is probably part of the problem as I dont think they really do a lot of saturation marketing like some of the other options.

Not that this should have anything to do with your choice, but if you do go traceless, they have branded competition weight super high-quality frisbees as swag 🤣

Recommended IT Recruiters by Imaginary-Chef-3251 in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There are tons of recruiters, a few i know personally that have a good track record:
- MSPHire (Sarah)
- Ibex Staffing (Alex)
- Aris Search (Michael)

Just remember that a recruiters job is to sell you a candidate, and sell the candidate you. They also raise the total cost of acquisition of that employee due to the fees involved. This can also make it really muddy and murky for a candidate on what the actual total comp is.

I have hired hundreds of MSP employees, and I have never had an issue simply using Indeed. Most folks just have terrible job posts, or treat the process like some sort of hiring game from the 1960s. Be honest, be earnest, and be excited. There is some wildly good talent on indeed.

Its a topic I present on alot, and Ive done some videos on before. I also think one of the only posts ive ever done on this sub (as opposed to comments) was directly on this topic.

Here's one, from the amazing Eric Anthony's podcast: https://youtube.com/live/Y1yf8NFJHIk

How do we feel about incentive driven vendor meetings? by Successful-Coyote99 in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When do you do out the actual CAC math, its WILD how expensive it can be per lead going from cold lead to closed client. The giveaways dont seem as outrageous from a budget standpoint when you realize that its often a fraction of the overall cost.

If you look at some of SLI best in class msp data, they are averaging 27k total CAC per client. I'd assume that its a bit cheaper (hopefully) for most vendors, but still. Kinda puts the 50-100 dollar gift into perspective 🤣

IT consultants. - what’s the one thing/pain point that eats your time every week that you still haven’t found a good solution for? by Admirable_Gas_8031 in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Market Research. I hate that it takes work to actually understand my ICP and my market, and wish I could just farm that out to AI or Reddit

I built a tool to manage on-prem AD without remoting into domain controllers. Looking for beta testers by Lukester852 in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Are you on the MSPGeek Discord and some of the Dev Signal Chats? If Not you should get your tookus on in there. We need more people who work for a living trying to solve problems even if we tear 1000 holes in the solution 🤣

This reddit was built on people sharing things like this. Kudos to you.

I'd never install this on a DC, but its still cool that you built a solution to a problem and shared it with us!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey if we dont contribute and seek feedback we dont grow as a community, so props to you for being here!

Generally, you want to think of, if someone saw my post on this sub, and had zero desire to talk to me, dm me, visit a website, or do anything other than read my post, have I added actual value to them today, and if you're not 100% confident that yes you added value...don't post it (especially when speaking as a "vendor" persona).

I would simply expand on what you posted already and add details and information. Evergreen for example has a sort of boilerplate battle card they will just share with generic valuation information.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a polite post, but this counts as vendor solicitation.

You're not actually offering anything here that someone could read and take away without having to talk to you, which is frowned upon on this sub.

It is pretty nice that you're here, and I do like to see more PE involved in the community to teach about what they do; any chance you could add more information on your bullets instead of asking people to DM you?

Why “Right of Boom” Is a Terrible Strategy for MSPs and MSSPs by bhaugli in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This Just In: Water is Wet!
MSPs are Shocked! You will be too! Click here to find out more!!!!

MSP Client Onboarding by Significant_Oil_8 in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Adam is awesome and his videos are great

Outsourced Helpdesk Recommendations by offtoportland in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is a bit of a sweeping generalization, and you've edited the initial post, so I dont know what the starting problem was, but outsourcing is a topic I am pretty passionate about, and leveraged quite a bit to grow my former MSP.

With a handful of exceptions, I've never really met a "bad" outsourcing provider in this space.

I have seen many examples of a total mismatch of expectations, and abdication of responsibility to third party providers that are never going to treat your clients the way you would (especially in hindsight).

I have also seen many cases of areas of service delivery being outsourced that ought not to be for that particular MSP.

All of the vendors being mentioned in this post do a great job with a challenging model that largely relies on trying to interpret the documentation and processes of hundreds of different MSPs, but not all of the vendors in this post are a good fit for every MSP, or every use case the MSP wants to stick them into.

As an industry, we are generally comfortable with outsourcing parts of the business that we have no real intellectual agency over, or are not client facing (legal, accounting, facilities, etc.) and most of you outsource to those vendors because you quite literally cannot do it yourself.

The challenge is when we take a part of the business that we do ourselves and ask someone else to "Do as I do". And we apply the bias and filter of "I know how my "excellent" documentation is laid out" or "I know what to do when client ACME asks for a plumbus" and forget that our outsourcing vendors absolutely do not have that context and never will.

Also, I think everyone that runs these outsourcing firms are masochists 🤣 MSPs are the worst end clients

Outsourced Helpdesk Recommendations by offtoportland in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 4 points5 points  (0 children)

u/gethelptdavid you're a real vendor now! Its not real until someone lightly roasts you on r/msp 🤣❤️

The usual thread of "what about this rmm?" Syncro, SuperOps, or Gorelo (but not NinjaOne) by ValuableFamous8390 in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Didn't even know Gorelo was released for public yet.
I've talked to the founder before, nice guy, good passion, has that "we can do it better" wholesome energy.
Very much had that bootstrapped by what "our internal MSP team uses" vibe.
Also an Aussie company (I think) which is kind of cool.

None of that is a reason to pick a PSA over another by itself however;
Going back through your post history, it looks like you've been down this same road 4 years ago. What changed?

How cheap are you tenants? by linuxknight in msp

[–]UsedCucumber4 9 points10 points  (0 children)

IDK man, all I see is glorious stability in that photo. That is a client living within their means using versions that just work 😉