Managing Technicians In An MSP Business For Profitability - Part 1

When running a managed service provider (MSP) business, the single largest part of the overall costs of doing business is the technicians that support your end customer – from straight salary and benefits, to training, transportation and managing the collection of their time, through to billing the customer. In this series of whitepapers, Karl Palachuk goes through the elements that you need to take into account to best manage your technicians’ time. This includes everything from how to structure their day and their priorities, to tracking their efforts to ensure that your business is being run in the most productive manner – ultimately driving the most profitability.

Defining Roles And Responsibilities

One of the most important roles in any service business is the service manager. This is the person who connects your company to your customers. This is the person who keeps your technicians on task, focused on the most important priorities and constantly improving. The service manager is a lot like a conscientious parent who keeps everything going. In this first section we talk about roles and responsibilities. These are based on a managed service business, not a break/fix shop. You can modify these to fit your business model and also ensure they fit comfortably in your own organization.