Vlad’s Book Club – The Guide to a Successful Managed Services Practice

Before you read any of whats below I just wanted you to know that I have not been paid, commissioned or bribed to provide any of the below. It is simply a reaction to the question that was asked on a Yahoo list questioning whether you can really get $100 of value from $100 book. I find it sad that questions like this are even asked, have you ever (outside of the enforced school system) ever picked up a book about your profession that did not give you some value or at least charge you to do what you do? Anyhow, review is provided for your enjoyment, hope you read it:

The Guide to a Successful Managed Services Practice – What every SMB IT Service Provider Should Know.. Volume 1, Introduction.

The Guide to a Successful Managed Services Practice book is written by Erick Simpson, CIO of Intelligent Enterprise (www.ienterprise.us) and the basic premise of the book is the way that an SMB IT break-fix shop converted their practice to offer managed services. The book describes this process in fine detail and goes beyond telling you what you already know – it addresses the concerns most SMB IT shops have with moving to managed services. It breaks down different business models, different approaches to providing services, marketing ideas, product offerings as well as serving as a guide on how to do it all.

Erick first walks you through the concept of managed services beyond the definition of what managed services actually means to your business. He talks about why you would consider managed services offerings to begin with, how they will affect your cash flow, how they will affect you both before, during and after the transition takes place. If you are afraid of what offering guarantees and SLA’s will do for your business the book paints a very clear picture of what happened with Intelligent Enterprise and offers you some numbers to consider for yourself.

Erick then moves into the “deliverables” of managed services – what you actually promise to do for the client. He gives lists of popular software used and discussed in the SBS community, explains how they fit into the puzzle and explains why you would consider certain tools. Every aspect of monitoring, helpdesk and management of “managed” services is explained, detailed and linked. This is the key value of the book, it consolidates all the information so you can start to formulate your game plan. In addition, each section is filled with best practices and ideas you may want to consider. As a matter of fact there is a full chapter describing all the various pricing models and implementations of managed services.

Finally, Erick moves into the marketing and management of managed services. If you’ve ever seen Erick, he is no Robin Robin. He neither looks nor sounds anything like her. The book is completely devoid of flash and spectacle, it goes straight to the difficult questions that anybody considering this book would ask themselves – How do I sell managed services? How do I sell it to the existing clients? What do I bring to the first meeting? What about the cost analysis? Do I just sit in front of my potential client and fill out the Technical Assessment Toolkit forms? Those are not the pretty or joyful subjects, but they are critical to your success and will prepare you for difficulties you face in running your business.

This is covered in the first 200 pages of the book that you can read in two evenings. First glance at the book will leave you with the impression that Erick had a large section of a Brazilian forest to clear out as the entire thing is double spaced. We gave him quite a hard time about it but as I was reading through it I found it helpful to write down my own notes and my own impressions on some of the ideas presented in the book.

The rest? There are extra 100 pages that provide collateral you will need as you move through the managed services. These are worth while even if you currently have a plan under way or are just growing your managed services practice and are trying to save time. These include sample agreements, sample spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations on how to pitch managed services, a flowchart of your helpdesk issue routing/escalation process. As much as the first 200 pages are the ideas and concepts on how to consider managed services, the last 100 pages are literally resources you can use immediately to get started. All these tools are included on the CD along with some presentations that I frankly have not watched.

The final, and perhaps most worthwhile reason to spend $100 on this book is that it will give you a lot of reasons to formulate, revise or evaluate your plans. My company lives and dies on managed services and our SLA – if you’re not up, we’re not eating. This has been our premise since day one – when email is down people tend to call and they are not happy to hear my voice. Those are the expectations we have set for our clients, that’s why we’ve been in business for over ten years. If that is your goal, if you want to truly make money and build a sustained business that is ethical and responsible both for your business and for your client, you need this book. I didn’t need this book. I got it anyhow and I flipped through it as I do with all of my business books. Then I found an interesting chapter and read through it in less than a minute. Then I went back and forth through the book before deciding to actually sit down and read it completely. Then I started writing down notes. Then I called my partners, then my friends, then we hammered it out on the SBS Show. Then we looked at all the ideas, all the concepts, the entire story and we found holes in our management process. Was the book worth $100? Oh yeah.

So will buying this book give you $100 worth of value? Absolutely not. This is not a reference book that will save you a couple of minutes here and there when you run into a bump. But if you do take a few days to actually _read_ it and a few weeks to consider all the ideas, best practices, suggestions and collateral.. Your only regret would be not getting this book sooner. You can get the book at www.managedservicesuniversity.com and I’ll just give you one final incentive – If you don’t like the book and think its absolute trash it is about an inch thick and Erick has been an active participant in the SMB community.. so if you really hate it you’ll be able to throw it at him at the next big IT event and have a good chance of hurting him.