Fixing MSP Short-Staffing Part 2: Workload
Key takeaways:
The short staffing dilemma
What’s the REAL truth?
Workload, simple yet powerful
Find. Benchmark. Analyze.
Your next steps…
Short staffing. These days, who isn’t dealing with this common dilemma?
If you’ve been trying to tackle those pesky short staffing woes, you’re far from alone.
The painful truth is many MSPs have struggled with how to deal with this common dilemma.
And then there’s the burning question: are your Techs overworked…or underutilized?
That depends on who you ask.
Your Techs say they can’t keep up. More help is needed.
Hmmm, are they really overworked? And are more Techs the right answer?
Your Accountant says hell no: those Techs of yours are underutilized, definitely not overworked.
What’s the real truth? Who knows…because it’s impossible to get a straight answer when their timesheets aren’t even complete.
And while we’re on the topic of efficiency: where does this come into the picture? If the Techs worked smarter, not harder, would all the work get done with the existing Service Delivery staff?
These are tough questions and hard ones to answer - if it were that simple, you'd have figured it out years ago.
So why haven’t you figured it out yet? One reason is because of how much time it takes. Spend just a few minutes of your scarce time, and follow our thought process…
There are three components that go into knowing the right decision:
Utilization (Supply/Inventory)
Workload (Demand/Sales)
Service Delivery Efficiency (Technician Effort / Noise per Seat)
Each of these three components merits a discussion on its own.
A Short-Staffing exercise takes a few hours to get through. If you'd like me to walk you through the process, please let me know.
In Part II of our newest series, I’m going to tell you all about…
Workload:
The Workload is a simple calculation of (# of tickets * Average Hours per Ticket). However, to get to the true Workload number, it’s better to understand what workflow each ticket is in.
The Workflow grouping we recommend is:
Widgets – tickets that fit into the dashboards and can be worked on at-will. This is typically any request estimated time to take <4 hours.
Calendar – Engagements that need to be scheduled with the customer and tickets with estimated hours >4 but <16 hours.
Projects – Engagements requiring >16 hours of estimated labor.
Alerts – Engagements shorter than the time it takes to create a time entry but is a full man-week for every 80 customers.
Preventative maintenance – another person for every 80 customers.
New customer onboarding – depending on the company's growth expectations, onboarding project work should be set aside and pre-scheduled. This allows account managers to sell even in very busy seasons and provides the best customer onboarding experience. It’s so important not to choke growth or provide a bad customer experience with a new customer that it merits setting aside the time. And in the unlikely event sales don’t deliver a new Customer, I’ve yet to see that allocated time wasted.
Finding the Data:
Perform a ticket search for all Service Delivery tickets completed last month using the fields: Ticket Number, Total Hours Worked, & Contracts. Export the list to Excel, and rename the tab "Data." Copy all tickets with Total Worked Hours
= 0 to another tab and label the tab “Noise”
= to or >16 to another tab and label the tab "Projects."
= to or >4 to another tab and label the tab "Calendar."
Delete the tickets where Total Worked Hours = to or > 16 "Projects."
Add another tab and label the tab "Widget."
Delete the tickets where Total Worked Hours = to or >4 "Calendar & Projects."
Alerts take about 6 minutes per day per Managed Service customer to process completely and move any needing remediation to the Triage queue. This equates to 30 minutes per week per customer.
Preventative maintenance takes at least 2 hours per month to check the basics of a Network Administration checklist and look around the network for things either facing EoL or not matching the recommended technology stack.
New customer onboarding is a budgeted growth number. The typical MSP is looking to grow the customer base by 24 customers each year – more if the churn rate is high.
Benchmarking:
For the Widget, Calendar, and Projects tab, SUM the Total Hours Worked to get the monthly total. Multiply this number by 12, and then divide it by 52 to find the Weekly Hours Needed each week for each workflow.
For Alerts and Proactive Maintenance (unless you have real data), multiply the # of Managed Service customers by 0.5. These are the hours per week needed to provide a minimum level of Managed Service support.
There’s about 80 hours of work in onboarding a new Managed Service customer: 40 on the techs and another 40 on the non-billable support team. 40 hours X 2 per month X 12 months / 52 Weeks is ~18 hours per week.
Adding all these numbers together gives you a realistic Total Worked Hours per week needed.
Analyzing:
Dividing the Total Worked Hours needed per week by the 4 levels of Utilization will tell you the # of techs you need at each level. The reason for breaking down the Total Worked Hours needed to the different workflows is so you have a running start at determining what skill level you are over/understaffed at.
Subtracting your actual Utilization from the Industry Standard of 28 hours per week will provide you with the # of hours per Tech you are under/over-utilized. Multiplying this number X your standard Role Rate shows how much per week the Under/Over Utilization is costing you.
If the opportunity cost in lost billable hours scares the bejeebers out of you, schedule a call with us to discuss how to move your Actual Utilization closer to the industry average.
A short-staffing exercise takes a few hours to get through and can be overwhelming to navigate on one’s own. Please schedule a call if you'd like some assistance!
Next week, we’ll pick up the discussion with Service Delivery efficiency and continue this 4-part series until we get all the way through the Short-Staffing exercise. Stay with me…you won’t regret it.
If thinking about your Service Delivery workload is a wake-up call, and you want someone to guide you through the improvement process, either:
Download the Unshackled: Freedom from Service Delivery Issues eBook
Schedule a Call with Advanced Global to discuss the next steps.