So, we have successfully completed the migration or setup of support and have moved over to the standard ongoing management of your environment.

When you partner with an MSP like us, what does all that mean?

Over this short blog and series, I’ll explain what that looks like.

Proactive Backup Management

First things first, we proactively manage your backups. Whether it’s local server/PC/files or cloud/M365/SharePoint files, our team receives daily reports every morning to verify that backups have worked and data is protected. If they fail, we investigate the root cause and get these fixed. Often, failures are due to internet or network issues, or a common issue we see is that the local NAS has been turned off. It takes a bit more than just checking success on an email, as sometimes there are false positives. We check things such as the volume of data backed up, the time it took, and also the change in data.

Security Posture Review

In the same strategy, we take a look at your security posture. Although automated notifications from our partner Sophos send alerts to our service desk team, we still check our dashboards to ensure there is nothing else going on. These alerts, when they do come through, are managed by our team. We check the alert type and determine the impact. If action is needed (e.g., firewall offline so you probably have no internet), we then prioritise or reach out to find out what is happening.

Monitoring with “The Dude”

We also have a proactive system called ‘The Dude’. The Dude is a tool we use to monitor your key asset uptime. If a site or specific system (file server, printer, phone system – depends on you) goes offline, it’ll pop up as a red alert on our dashboard. We monitor this throughout the day so we can act if needed to minimise downtime.

Regular Updates

Next up on the dailies, we look at updates. Most updates are now managed by software automatically, but some will need our involvement. Usually, this is more of a fortnightly job depending on the update type, but as required we will manage exceptions or manage outage windows with you.

Hardware and Software Asset Review

Your Account Manager will also regularly review your hardware and software assets to identify and proactively manage the replacement in line with your business strategies. This could be PCs, computers, firewalls, servers, but also reaches down to things such as wireless access points, UPS/battery backup, and switches.

Minimising Downtime

The most important part of having an IT partner is for them to minimise your downtime wherever possible. Our approach is to proactively work with you to identify risks and minimise them. This is not just cyber security risks but also the risk of lost productivity due to insufficient equipment. When you invest heavily in great people, you need to have the right tools in place to make their jobs easy. All of this work can often go unnoticed but has a profound effect on the amount of reactive work we need to do. Reactive work is always the stuff that impacts your team and business. Our goal is to reduce the number of tickets you need to raise to ensure smooth sailing.

Transition to Reactive Support

Reactive support covers your traditional “I cannot do this,” “I need this,” “Can you help me with” type questions. Most of our reactive work is end user support. When one of your teams cannot find an email, cannot load a website, their computer or internet is slow, and everyone’s favourite, they cannot print. These issues, while we try to avoid them in fully managed customers, will always pop up. The key here is about how we respond.

First Call Resolution

In our team, we have a dedicated tech who is allocated and answers your calls. When you call us, you speak directly to a certified experienced tech. They focus on fixing the issue on the first call, remotely. This is a key point for our clients, delivering instant results and getting people back on track straight away where possible.

It is common in our world, among many, that the first person answering calls is either a trainee/junior or just an admin person who takes details for a tech to call you back. This is a major point we wanted to change in our business so that the first call is a tech, the issue gets resolved, and your team can focus on doing what you do best. Like anything, not all issues can be resolved remotely or without additional investigations. When this happens, our senior techs get involved and we schedule them to take up the task ASAP.

Daily Team Meetings

To ensure our team works as one big collective from Account Management, Service/Support, and Business Management, we do a quick daily meeting. This meeting is to talk about what is happening in our business and to share knowledge of any changes to our customers. This quick bite meeting ensures that we as a team are working together to help our customers.

Conclusion

Partnering with an MSP like us means proactive management of your IT environment, minimising downtime, and ensuring your team has the support they need to stay productive. From managing backups and security to providing first-call resolution and daily team coordination, we strive to keep your business running smoothly.

Stay tuned for more posts this month as we dive deeper into what we do and how we can help your business get the most out of your IT investment.