MSP Automation: Benefits and Tools
Are you an MSP and experiencing a surge in your daily workloads? Perhaps your employees are struggling to cope with the evolving customer needs and market dynamics and you are worried that if these inefficiencies are not addressed, you will inevitably struggle to retain or attract customers to spur your business growth.
If you are experiencing these problems, it is time to bank on MSP automation because it offers myriads of enterprise solutions that increase work efficiency to meet your customers' requirements. This article will tell you everything you need to know about MSP automation including how to smoothly integrate MSP automation into your business.
1Why Automation is So Important for MSPs?
From the definition, MSP automation is the process of using automated tools to provide services. Whether it is endpoint monitoring, patching, ticket resolution, or cybersecurity, MSP automation aims to automate these processes.
This automation comes with an array of benefits ranging from enterprise, employees, and customers as illustrated below.
For MSP Enterprises:
● Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity- MSP automation ensures routine tasks are done faster and without human errors.
● Strengthened Competitiveness- MSP automation has a ripple effect on customer satisfaction and improved resource utilization.
● Cost Saving- It reduces costs in terms of human resources and human errors.
● Attract More Customers- With MSP automation, customers are attended more effectively and timely translating to more sales and thus more money for the enterprise.
For MSP Employees:
● Reduces repetitive work- MSPs automate repetitive tasks freeing them to handle other important tasks for a business.
● Reduced demands for overtime and urgent tasks- MSP automation helps reduce employee workload cutting on demands for overtime and urgent tasks.
For Customers:
● Faster Response Times- It helps MSPs offer faster response time to customers and are more reliable.
● Improve satisfaction- Automation can help MSPs improve customer satisfaction. They don’t have to keep waiting to resolve their issues.
● Enhanced Trust and Loyalty- A satisfied customer will likely trust the enterprise and remain a loyal customer.
● Lower cost with better services- Since MSPs help enterprises reduce costs, it often translates into the cost of their services to customers.
2What Automation Workflows are Essential for MSPs?
MSPs automate certain processes to make it easier for enterprises to offer better services to their clients. Some of the common automation workflow essentials for MSPs include:
1Automate Report Generation
Reports, whether hourly, daily, or yearly play a significant role in the running of enterprises. The process of generating these reports can be time and resource-consuming.
For example, as an MSP you will definitely need to provide monthly performance and service reports to your clients like say to detailed metrics like uptime, network health, incident resolution times, security events and the likes.
In such a case automating report generation can significantly lower the human labor requirements and time needed to create them. Additionally, it significantly reduces report errors that could otherwise prove costly to the enterprise.
2Automate Alert
Alerts and notifications are crucial because they inform respective teams to handle certain activities or emergencies on time. A good example is a scenario whereby an essential system or network goes down, affecting the client’s business operations. This is where automated alerts can come in handy to notify the MSP and clients immediately thus enabling the IT team to take immediate action.
3Automate Monitoring
Monitoring is an essential component of any MSP. Whether it is network, device, or specific apps, automation ensures that MSPs can monitor the performance, usage, and status of these devices or networks with speed and ease. The IT or relevant teams can easily know the device's trouble and fix it in time.
These kinds of alerts significantly enhance the ability of MSPs to monitor and maintain client systems better.
4Automate patch management
Patch management automation ensures that MSPs can provide up-to-date security for devices, data, and apps. These automations include automatic security patch status, patch updates, and automatic device reboot to affect the patches.
5Automate Virus Scanning
Viruses can damage enterprise devices, corrupt data, or ransom an enterprise. Automation of virus scanning can significantly help MSPs detect and act on these viruses before they cause any damage. This involves scanning the files, devices, and apps connected to the service.
6Automate File Backup
Data loss can be costly and every company including MSPs should backup their file systems. When done manually, it can be time-consuming and the respective teams can forget to backup critical data at the right time. Automating file backup will ensure that MSPs back up their enormous data at the right time so that in case of data loss, a significant size of data can be retrieved.
7Automate Customer Support
MSPs need automated customer support for availability, reliability, and timely response. Handling myriads of customers with diverse issues demands automated customer support. This way, the enterprise can respond to unique customer issues without the need to hire more human resources.
3Best MSP Automation Tools
There are several MSP automation tools that suit various MSPs. Some of the popular MSPs in the market include:
1Datto
Datto is one of the big forces in the MSP automation tools industry. Although known for its backup and disaster recovery solutions for MSPs, it offers other solutions like remote monitoring and management, networking, and cybersecurity solutions. Datto comes as a package of solutions for MSPs and aims at empowering teams to protect, manage, and grow their business.
Who it is for:
The tool is particularly well-suited for MSPs that focus on small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
Features
- It provides 24/7 managed threat detection and response.
- Provides endpoint backup with disaster recovery.
- It offers ransomware protection.
2ServiceDesk Plus MSP
ServiceDesk Plus MSP is a web-based comprehensive solution for MSPs. It delivers MSP solutions including account management, remote controls, reporting, asset management, help desk, and service desk. This tool provides an array of services that support multiple clients from a single centralized console. As the name suggests, this tool is more suited for customer service automation.
Who it is for:
The tool is suited for smaller to mid-sized MSPs looking for a cost-effective automation tool tailored for IT service management and ticketing.
Features
- It supports powerful integrations with native and third-party apps.
- It provides automated billings that help MSPs increase profitability.
- It offers a technician auto-assign feature that automates ticket assignments.
3AirDroid Business
AirDroid Business is a powerful MSP automation tool that allows MSPs to monitor, control, and manage their devices and apps from a central device. This tool allows users to create and edit policies and then deploy them to a target device or multiple devices at once. With this tool, MSPs can seamlessly manage device/data security, usage, notifications, and permissions to ensure productivity and effective utilization of devices. This MSP automation tool is suitable for device-managed organizations.
Who it is for:
If you are a small bisiness looking for a tool to monitor your Android device's performance and want to have automated alerts and reports to give you a full view of your device usage, you can choose AirDroid Business.
Features
- It provides automated operations for you to manage devices remotely, such as rebooting devices, locking devices, factory resetting devices, and more.
- You can get automated alerts to know the status of the devices.
- Automated reports give you a full view of the status of device network connections, data usage, and the like.
4ConnectWise
ConnectWise is another powerful MSP automation tool designed to provide intelligent automation, scalability, and top-grade cybersecurity for MSPs. It provides a variety of MSP services including patch automation, scripting, remote access and monitoring, and sales and marketing. This tool is highly customizable and offers flexible features that support a vast range of your company goals.
Who it is for:
It’s best suited for relatively large MSPs looking for a complete IT management solution with advanced features like RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management), PSA (Professional Services Automation) and IT security features.
Features
- It automates remote system monitoring.
- It offers patch management through easy-to-use policies for Microsoft..
- It supports activity tracking, making it easier to track inventory from distribution to storage.
A Short Summary for Choosing an Automation Tool for MSPs
Well, If you’re looking for automated file backups, then Datto is the ideal choice. If you’re looking into more of monitoring, alerts, automated reporting, and additional functionalities like application management and remote access are required, then AirDroid Business is the best option.
For client management and automated account management, ServiceDesk Plus MSP is the go-to solution while if you’re looking for comprehensive Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) automation, you can go for ConnectWise.
Generally speaking, each automation tool offers specialized features to optimize different aspects of MSP operations. So take your pick depending on your specific needs!
4The Role of AI in MSP Automation
The complexities and challenges involved with dealing with a wide range of customers/clients with unique demands/needs can be enormous. While MSP automation significantly solves these complexities, AI can also work in tandem with MSP automation to provide even better results. AI can help MSP generate automation workflows in the following ways.
Report Analytics
AI is capable of generating useful analytics from a large pool of data with different entries. These analytics are useful in analyzing performance metrics, customer satisfaction, and customer behavior to help MSPs make the right decisions.
Help writing Scripts
AI can input MSP data and generate human-like scripts of various lengths. Most of the available AI script writing tools can generate scripts based on your desired structure and hence help MSPs reduce the cost of hiring human resources for script writing. It also reduces the time and energy needed to write a script.
Intelligent AI customer services
AI tools such as Chatbots and virtual assistance can massively help MSPs engage and respond to their vast range of customers on time. These tools can work 24/7 and hence customers get immediate responses to their queries irrespective of the day or time.
Predictive Maintenance
AI has the ability to predict patterns based on historical data. AI can help MSPs predict potential issues within the client’s devices, data, or infrastructure. This data helps the respective teams to act before the actual failure happens.
5Summary
MSP automation is a game-changer in how MSPs effectively handle client needs and attract more customers without significant additional investment. Whether you are running a small or large enterprise, the key is to choose the right MSP automation tools. This way, you easily get the best out of MSP automation tailored to your budget!
Leave a Reply.