Resource Planning 101: How to slay chaos in your MSP

Clients are the problem!  Or at least how we process their requests is.  You see, the MSP Service Delivery chaos is caused by clients’ requests vying for the same resource(s) at the same Bat Time and same Bat Channel.  And like any great superhero, it’s up to a Service Delivery Gladiator (the Service Coordinator) to fight the good fight and bring order to the chaos. 

The number one tool in a Service Coordinator’s tool belt to slay the chaos is resource planning, and request segmentation is the first step in resource planning process. 

The benefit of request segmentation is to divide the many different types of client requests into separate workflows so each workflow can be conquered (optimized).  The optimization of workflows takes on many different forms, such as different SLAs, which also drive client communication, different skillsets, different teams, and various scheduling techniques like: 

• Review and assigned 

• Scheduled remote 

• Scheduled on-site 

• Scheduled in a block 

• Recurring schedule 

• Or none of the above (Hint: sent to Sales or Procurement) 

With request segmentation in-place, we can move on to triaging the client requests.  Triaging goes way beyond dumping it in a queue and letting the techs figure it out.  But if that’s the triage process you’re using, then you have no need for our superhero.  The most important function of the triage process is leveraged resource planning, and it’s up to the superhero to do it and do it well. 

Before applying resource planning in the triage process, any good superhero will take these preliminary steps: 

1. Ensure the ticket is in the right client’s name 

2. Take note of the ticket contact, as VIPs and company liaisons tend to have a different relationship with the MSP and therefore a different engagement process may be expected 

3. Review and clean up the description so everyone who reads the ticket can easily pick up the facts and nothing but the facts 

4. Edit the title to be the best summary of the description 

Now, let’s pause the triage process here to discuss how the resource planning process works upstream of this moment.  Days earlier (maybe weeks?), our superhero and the Service Manager looked at the data and pre-determined how many hours of incident response and how many hours for service request response would be needed and pre-positioned or blocked out resources for each workflow.   

NB: The key word here is PLANNING and since this word is not in an MSPs vocabulary, we offer Wikipedia’s definition here:  

Planning is the process of thinking about the activities required to achieve a desired goal. It is the first and foremost activity to achieve desired results. It involves the creation and maintenance of a plan, such as psychological aspects that require conceptual skills. There are even a couple of tests to measure someone’s capability of planning well. As such, planning is a fundamental property of intelligent behavior. An important further meaning, often just called "planning", is the legal context of permitted building developments. 

Also, planning has a specific process and is necessary for multiple occupations (particularly in fields such as management, business, etc.). In each field there are different types of plans that help companies achieve efficiency and effectiveness. An important, albeit often ignored aspect of planning, is the relationship it holds to forecasting. Forecasting can be described as predicting what the future will look like, whereas planning predicts what the future should look like for multiple scenarios. Planning combines forecasting with preparation of scenarios and how to react to them. Planning is one of the most important project management and time management techniques. Planning is preparing a sequence of action steps to achieve some specific goal. If a person does it effectively, they can reduce much the necessary time and effort of achieving the goal. A plan is like a map. When following a plan, a person can see how much they have progressed towards their project goal and how far they are from their destination. 

WOW, there is a whole host of MSP sins packed into that definition.  No wonder our world is chaotic!  The difference between the Autotask PSA software and other PSAs is its Live Report capabilities, which can help you fully leverage the Autotask PSA software.  As a result, you can plan, think, manage, forecast, prepare, etc. 

Looking at historical data in Autotask (the only PSA that can provide this information, BTW...) can help you make a service delivery forecast (SDF) of future required hours per workflow and allow you to [resource] plan accordingly.   

Examples include: 

• Lay in the scheduled recurring visits in a pattern where the assigned techs (both Primary and Secondary) are always available and where the established schedule protects future project scheduling.  Using an Excel spreadsheet to map the scheduling is a powerful way to attack this. 

  • Note: We haven’t discussed monitoring alerts yet and this is where they fit the best – since have a high priority, the daily monitoring checks should be scheduled in advance as recurring visits. Assume the checks will take 5-6 minutes per day per Managed Service client which is 30-minutes per week (or an hour for every 2 clients).  Once you reach the threshold of 64 clients, you likely need to hire another tech. 

  • Also:  Keep in mind it may take longer to open a recurring ticket, put in the tech’s time, and close the ticket than to just do the check.  So, make the recurring tickets in the Autotask zero account, track the time in a block, and average the block across all clients, and factor the average into the per client profitability report (Oh, yeah...did we mention Autotask is the only PSA software that can do this? – the averaging, not the scheduling) 

• Know how many hours of critical response is needed each day.  Pre-designate one of the best techs and flexibly schedule so they are available immediately when a call comes in.  Using IM to speed up the engagement process, oftentimes the designated tech is talking with the client before the ticket is created. Now, isn’t that sweet? – no chaos! 

• Know how many hours are needed for the rest of the Widget/Queue workload.  Make sure this availability is always available, and 3-days-out, block out time for the go-to Techs over the next three days for all workflows that are reviewed and assigned (added to the Ready to Engage widget) 

• Know how many hours are needed for the calendar scheduling workflows 

• Schedule projects where they fit, leaving room for all the other workflows coming in over the next 3 weeks.  We recommend going out 4 weeks to schedule the project work (it’ll take some time to transition from sales, project plan, parts procurement, etc) 

• Always be aware of how many hours are still available.  Communicate this number to Sales as Project Availability.  They can use this information to drive urgency, as a tool to close deals. 

For more information on resource planning, please reply to Info@AGMSPCoaching.com 

- Steve and Co.

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