No matter the size of your MSP, IT assessments are an essential tool to evaluate your own performance as well as your customers’ systems. They help keep you on track and adhering to best practices, and they help you demonstrate work progress and value to your customers. But can an IT assessment help you convert your break-fix clients to fully managed partners? We think so! We recently sat down with Scott Davis, Sales Engineer at Liongard to learn more about the power of IT assessments for MSPs and how the right data can help convert customers.
First, what is an IT assessment?
Scott: An IT assessment is a way an MSP can monitor their customers, almost like a health check. It’s going through a process of analyzing customer systems to see what’s there and make sure they match up to best practices for documentation, security and so on.
What things should MSPs look for while performing an assessment for a client?
Scott: Some of the common things MSPs should be checking for during their assessments are things like user counts to make sure all users are the same across systems and to identify and remove old users to make sure they no longer have access to customer systems.
They’ll want to take a look at their server count and workstation count to cross-check and ensure no workstations have been added without authorization, but this is also helpful to analyze progress and performance.
Firmware should also be looked at to check which version is currently being used and if there are any recent updates that can be implemented. Verifying that you’re updating and patching those systems is crucial to keeping customers protected.
IT assessments should also include data backups. Is data being properly backed up? This can include a test recovery of data or a server recovery to make sure all data is being collected and backup systems are performing correctly. Because at the end of the day, a backup is only as good as the validated information you retrieve.
How can Liongard help make IT assessments easier for MSPs?
Scott: The great thing about Liongard is it gathers information from all the different components that an MSP sees at their customer sites on a regular basis and actually puts it all into one portal, or panel, for easy access and reference.
For example, using the Reports feature I can create a quarterly checklist for customers and access my Liongard reports to make sure everything is aligned, and also perform some analysis and validation on performance and other metrics that I can then turn into a vCIO-type report for the customer.
How can an IT assessment help MSPs demonstrate value to their customers?
Scott: At the end of the day, it’s all about security. It’s about reassuring customers that you’re there for them and that you’re taking care of their business. The customer has a trust relationship with their MSP and if you’re not able to show progression, what you’ve done and what you’re going to do, then it’s hard to build that trust. IT assessments help MSPs really show their customers all of the back-end work that is keeping their company systems secure.
Liongard gives you the capability to view all of the historical data you need in a timeline so you can show exactly what work has been done and what impact it has had on the business. It shows progression and also demonstrates that you’re taking the security of their data and information seriously.
Can IT assessments help MSPs convert break-fix customers to fully managed partners?
Scott: Absolutely. With break-fix customers, or any non-fully managed customer where you don’t have that trust relationship, the value of an IT assessment is in the data. It gives you an opportunity, as an MSP, to start a conversation with your customer and get on the same page in terms of goals. You can use the assessment to create a roadmap for your customers that shows them that progression of, here’s where we were, here’s where we are, but more importantly, here’s where we need to be in the future and also we have a plan to get you there.
Want to learn more about using Liongard to perform assessments that convert break-fix customers to managed partners? Schedule a demo for a personalized walk-through of our platform and discovery the power IT assessments can have at your MSP.