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Top 7 Benefits IT Process Automation Provides MSP’s 1

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Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………..………3

1. Enables Scalability Without Increasing Head Count……………………..………9

2. An End To Firefighting……………………...………………………………………………12

3. Complicated Scripting No Longer Necessary………………………….….………16

4. Enables Self-Service Remediation………………………………………………..……20

5. Enables a Closed Loop Process From Initial Alert to Close of Ticket….…24

6. Solves Recurring IT problems and Trouble Tickets, Before You're Even

Aware of Them………………………………….…………………..………………………….…28

7. Enables Your Staff to be Better at Providing Better Service & Better

Performance………………………………………………………………………………..………32

Get Started with IT Process Automation……………………………….……..……..…36


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Anyone who understands the role of a managed service provider (MSP)

understands the importance of doing more with less. It’s all about scale and

common sense. The more efficient and effective your performance, the more

success you’ll achieve. The problem though, is that achieving a high level of

scalability is a budget challenge for many organizations, because hiring

additional staff simply isn’t feasible.


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MSP experts agree that stiff competition, budgetary restrictions, and

dwindling profit margins can best be countered by investing in automation.

This holds true even for enterprises that don't struggle with cash flow issues

as their bottom line will still be impacted by hiring additional staff.

On the other hand, if you allow technology to do your heavy lifting,

scalability can be attained without the added expenditure of increased

headcount.


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The ability to outsource and even relocate operation

centers to other areas of the world may provide a

slight advantage in terms of overall cost, but it won’t

necessarily level the economic playing field. The

ultimate goal of every MSP is to deliver the highest

quality of service possible while utilizing the fewest

number of employees.

The best way to do

more with less is by

automating, not

tapping into foreign

markets and moving

your IT department

offshore.


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That said, it’s also critically important that key decision makers do their due

diligence when choosing an IT automation product to work with. Those who

have been most successful in this battle of the fittest have provided some insight

into what to be careful of during the selection process. Most importantly, keep

the concept of scalability in mind. Make sure you choose a product that will be

able to bridge the past with the future, integrating with legacy systems while also

adapting with your changing business needs as they occur.


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It’s also extremely important that the automation platform you choose be

robust. Remember, you’re going to be relying on this system to handle not just

simple, repetitive tasks but also things that are critical to the success of your

entire organization, such as incident management and advanced workflow

performance. Do your homework and make sure the product you ultimately

select is comprehensive enough to handle anything your business may need.

Moving forward, there’s no question that automation will become a critical

factor in any successful MSP's strategy.


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In the future, only those MSP's that embrace

automation and leverage its numerous advantages

will continue to remain competitive.


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There are numerous factors in play when determining an MSP's scalability:

• System Capacity

• SLA Requirements

• Standardization of Offerings

• Geography Covered

Perhaps the most important factor of all though is staff headcount. MSP’s

traditionally require lots of quality IT staff to operate a scalable environment,

but those people can be expensive and hard to find.

Gartner once published a study stating that the “ideal” end-user to IT service

desk worker ratio is 70:1 for organizations using a single operating system on

their network with established standards for installed hardware.


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A 2008 survey by Robert Half Technology found that

the actual reported ratios were 136:1, while the average

“ideal” ratio reported was 82:1.

With headcount no longer a bottle neck, rapid

scalability becomes viable. Automation lets you meet

SLA targets in a consistent, reliable, repeatable,

auditable way that increases the quality of your

deliverables and reduces costs, while still enabling

scalability.

With IT process

automation in place,

the end-user to IT

service desk worker

ratio can increase by

an order of

magnitude, enabling

MSP’s to reach ratios

of well over 1,000:1.


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Take this quick quiz:

If you answered "yes" to two or more of the above questions:

you may be a firefighter, or you may be a staff member in an MSP

operations center.

Do you frequently

respond immediately to

emergency calls and

requests for assistance?

Do you rescue

trapped people?

Do you frequently attend

to fires, accidents,

incidents, and crashes?


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In all seriousness though, if you’re an MSP who’s exhausted from putting out

fires, one of the first benefits you’ll enjoy from IT process automation (ITPA) is

an end to firefighting. With ITPA, you can proactively schedule the automation

of repetitive routine tasks such as disk space cleanup and file operations, while

also automatically remediating problems such as password resets or locked

Active Directory accounts.


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IT process automation can be your

“virtual operator” or “Level 0 Tech

Support”, because ITPA is able to resolve

a lot of problems automatically without

human intervention, before those

problems even get to Level 1.

Pre-empting problems

before they occur, or via

automation while they

occur, eliminates the

need to constantly put

out fires.


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Scripting isn't easy. No matter what language(s) you prefer (PowerShell, WMI,

etc), proper scripting requires a high level of system administrator expertise.

Even with that expertise, if you need scripts for complex processes that touch

multiple systems and applications, they're going to be difficult to create, and

likely error-prone. Scripts are also difficult to maintain, hard to share and re-

use, and challenging to audit. And scripts are usually distributed throughout

IT, not kept in a central repository. So good luck complying easily with auditing

& change management requirements.


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IT process automation offers a better alternative. For starters, there's no

scripting required! You do not have to be a high level system administrator or

programmer to be highly productive very quickly with ITPA. The ITPA tool

usually includes an intuitive drag-and-drop interface of pre-programmed

activities, and pre-built workflow templates.

eyeShare workflow designer


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Automating complex processes with an ITPA tool is not only fairly easy, but much

easier to understand visually. Maintenance, sharing, re-use, auditing, and

centralizing of workflows is also a built-in feature of ITPA tools, making compliance

with auditing & change management requirements a breeze.

Experience has also shown that even top notch system administrators who prefer

getting their hands dirty with script code, still love working with ITPA tools,


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IT process automation not only allows MSP’s to automate many routine, labor-

intensive tasks, it also enables their customers to remediate their own incidents

through a self-service interface as familiar as their smartphone. This customer-

facing mobile interface extends the ITPA tool’s automation capabilities to end

users, greatly reducing an MSP service desk’s call volume for problems like

. And in the specific case of Active Directory account unlocks& password resets

password resets, Gartner has found that users prefer doing it in self-serve fashion

via their mobile devices.

See an example of the Active Directory password reset workflow (using text message).


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http://ayehu.com/resources/top-10-it-automation-processes/active-directory-password-reset-2/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w0QClNuac0





Enabling self-service remediation can be a huge cost saver for MSP’s.

According to Gartner, password resets alone account for as much as 40% of a

service desk’s call volume, and in 2014 the average cost of a call to a service desk

was $17.88/call. Using those two figures, it’s easy to figure out how much your

MSP service desk spent on password resets last year. Just take the number of

password reset requests received, multiply that by 40%, and then multiply the

resulting number by $17.88.


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With an ITPA tool, an MSP can probably reduce this shocking cost to zero (or

very close to it). However, cost reduction is only one benefit of providing self-

service remediation, as end user frustration levels will likely decrease at a ratio

inversely proportional to the increase in their customer satisfaction.


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In most environments today, MSP’s have a network monitoring system keeping an

eye on things and when there’s an incident, an alert gets generated that typically

goes right to a Level 1 technician at the help desk. This is where the process stalls

a bit until the technician creates a ticket in the ITSM help desk application. The

technician then begins the process of remediation, or if it’s beyond their level of

expertise, escalates it to a Level 2 technician. Either way, one of them is then

supposed to update the original help desk ticket, and finally close it out once the

underlying incident has been remediated.


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If they remember, they’re also supposed to go back to the network monitoring

system to update & close out the alert that kicked off this entire disconnected &

very fragmented process.

You start out by using the ITPA tool to integrate your network monitoring system

with your ITSM help desk platform. Now, when the network monitoring system

generates an alert, the ITPA tool intercepts it, parses it, and launches the

appropriate workflow needed to remediate the underlying incident automatically.

.


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While the remediation is taking place, the ITPA tool also automatically creates a

ticket in the ITSM help desk platform, and updates it in real-time by documenting

every step of the incident remediation process. Once the incident remediation is

completed, the ITPA tool automatically closes the ticket, and updates the network

monitoring system to dismiss the alert.

This is another example of how IT process automation can be your “virtual

operator” or “Level 0 Tech Support”, by resolving many problems

automatically without human intervention, & before they even get to Level 1.


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In typical MSP environments, alerts are acted upon by people, and as previously

mentioned, this leads to a disconnected & very fragmented process. Operational

efficiency shouldn’t rely on humans manually responding to alerts. With IT process

automation in place, nearly every technical problem has a pre-defined solution, and

occurrence of the former triggers application of the latter.

Automating problem resolution can reduce

an MSPs workload by more than 70%


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This is especially true for MSP’s remotely managing incidents across multiple client

sites. The environmental complexity of applications, databases, monitoring tools, and

infrastructures is further complicated by today’s highly virtualized architectures and

cloud-based applications. This not only challenges MSP’s with quickly identifying and

resolving issues to meet service level agreements, but also with optimizing resources

in order to remain competitive, expand the business, and increase profitability.

An IT process automation tool helps meet those challenges by providing a

comprehensive Unified Incident Management solution to centrally manage,

automate, and support a large number of remote data centers from a single “pane

of glass”.


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If your staff is constantly putting out fires, coding complicated scripts, and generally

doing a lot of things manually (and reactively), then their expertise, skills, and time

aren't being optimized. IT process automation changes that by enabling your staff

to be proactive, and maximizing their productivity.

Instead of personnel being flooded with alert storms every time an

incident occurs, ITPA remediates the incident freeing up your staff

for more important things.


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ITPA also centralizes incident management via a single pane of glass, allowing fewer

personnel to support a larger number of remote data centers from one single

network operation center. Relieving personnel from the drudgery of incident

remediation also greatly reduces the risk of errors since standardized best-practice

responses are embedded in the ITPA tool's workflow. This in turn greatly improves

system recovery time, which in turn reduces downtime, improves service levels, and

lowers the risk of SLA penalties, or worse, the loss of a client.

IT staffs spend up to 50% of their time

troubleshooting and fixing problems.


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The business of managed service providers is riddled with time consuming manual

tasks. If not automated, these manual tasks can have a negative impact on

productivity, which can decrease service levels and ultimately cut into profits. By

automating these tasks with ITPA, MSP’s have the ability to lower costs and increase

profits, thus enabling staff to be better at providing better service & better

performance to your clients.

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