What does your Service Level Agreement look like?
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@BRRABill said:
@Minion-Queen said:
We do MSP work but do not price the work on a per machine basis. Just doesn't make sense for us at all. If clients want high quality work then they pay for it. Most MSP models even if an MSP starts out with good intentions doesn't stay that way long term. Per machine means least amount of effort put into keeping things working correctly.
But the per machine is generally for "maintenance" type stuff. Updates, patching, etc.. Automation takes the effort out of that, which is why per machine pricing makes sense to a lot of MSPs.
Except it also encourages a lack of maintenance since pro-active work costs money and reactive makes money. So it is a model that is hard not to have contractually putting customers and suppliers at odds.
It's not the worst model, by any stretch, and I like it in some cases. But it has some major drawbacks that need to always be considered and addressed.
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@BRRABill said:
The SLA is an equation to regulate both sides of that issue.
Sort of, but it assumes "as soon as possible" isn't going to happen. An SLA means that the vendor has no incentive to beat the SLA, it makes a target level of laziness. If the SLA says four hours, you can bet it will be four hours. Without an SLA, it might have been five minutes.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@BRRABill said:
The SLA is an equation to regulate both sides of that issue.
Sort of, but it assumes "as soon as possible" isn't going to happen. An SLA means that the vendor has no incentive to beat the SLA, it makes a target level of laziness. If the SLA says four hours, you can bet it will be four hours. Without an SLA, it might have been five minutes.
Yes but on the flip side no SLA can mean 2 days from now.
Not saying you wouldn't lose the client, but they'd probably move to someone with an SLA offering.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@BRRABill said:
The SLA is an equation to regulate both sides of that issue.
Sort of, but it assumes "as soon as possible" isn't going to happen. An SLA means that the vendor has no incentive to beat the SLA, it makes a target level of laziness. If the SLA says four hours, you can bet it will be four hours. Without an SLA, it might have been five minutes.
Plus it also protects your nights and weekends. Not in guaranteed time, but 9x5x5 vs 24x7x7.
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@BRRABill said:
Yes but on the flip side no SLA can mean 2 days from now.
Then you get a different vendor that is working with you. You are thinking that an SLA fixes a bad vendor or bad relationship. That's a very bad way to think of an SLA. If the vendor could not get there before two days, the SLA becomes useless. If they could get there but didn't bother, why are they your vendor?
In no case does the SLA help, but it does break things.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@BRRABill said:
The SLA is an equation to regulate both sides of that issue.
Sort of, but it assumes "as soon as possible" isn't going to happen. An SLA means that the vendor has no incentive to beat the SLA, it makes a target level of laziness. If the SLA says four hours, you can bet it will be four hours. Without an SLA, it might have been five minutes.
Plus it also protects your nights and weekends. Not in guaranteed time, but 9x5x5 vs 24x7x7.
That's not an SLA that does that. That's just hours of coverage. You could argue that hours of coverage is a form of SLA, and I can see that, but generally I would think of them as different things. Do you look at the Taco Bell front door and refer to their hours of operation as their SLA? If not, I think it's a different thing.
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Yeah, I consider them one in the same.
Again, not doing it ourselves but rather from looking at a lot of other MSPs, most of them bundle response time in with hours of operation. And it's just RESPONSE time, not resolution time.
Perhaps we are talking about different things.
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@BRRABill said:
Yeah, I consider them one in the same.
Again, not doing it ourselves but rather from looking at a lot of other MSPs, most of them bundle response time in with hours of operation. And it's just RESPONSE time, not resolution time.
Perhaps we are talking about different things.
No, talking about the same things. And I can see why you would combine the two things, but everyone has hours of operation and no one calls them their SLA. I get that technically, pedantically we can consider everything from the list of skills and services, to regions supported, holiday schedules and hours of operation all being called SLAs, but that's not what people mean when they talk SLAs normally. Related, of course.
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Resolution time should not generally be in an SLA, if you can guarantee a resolution time it implies knowledge of the issue and why would things be broken if we already knew what was wrong
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I see it this way... you should be partners with your MSP. When there is an emergency and the world is falling apart, do you want your MSP pointing to an SLA showing that your outage and disaster is none of their concern? When your MSP is idle or bored and would be happy to do work to help, do you want them not doing it because you are outside of official hours?
You want your MSP being part of your team. SLAs mean you aren't looking at your MSP as a team member but an enemy you need to keep in line. It's fundamentally the wrong approach to a business relationship. Work together towards a common goal, don't start the relationship with the assumption that you are out to get each other.
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OK, then how do you determine what they can call for?
Or do you not care since it is all billable?
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@BRRABill said:
OK, then how do you determine what they can call for?
That's Scope, not SLA. That's rather different.
But in general we do billable hours so that, like you said, these kinds of issues do not exist at all. The can ask us to come over and make grilled cheese sandwiches for all that we care.
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Or fix the coffee pot (yes I have done that before).
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That's the great thing about "billable hours." Scoping and SLAs are terrible, they generate all kinds of costly overhead that has to be absorbed by the customer in the long run. They create adversarial relationships. They make for excuses and "us and them" thinking. It's just bad. It makes the relationship about lawyers instead of about getting the job done.
Billable hours you do whatever work is needed, whenever it is needed. Customer is free to use other resources if they need, vendor is free to do whatever work is needed. Tech doesn't have to sit around spending their time determining if they are doing allowed work. Customer doesn't have to wonder what is and isn't covered. No one is spending all of their time investing in finger pointing, everyone can just work together.
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When I consulted I did no SLAs, no Scope, just billable hours.
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@brianlittlejohn said:
When I consulted I did no SLAs, no Scope, just billable hours.
I'm not saying that you can do that 100%, but there are really great reasons for avoiding big legal bindings and focusing on getting things done instead.
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@scottalanmiller I just saw all that as extra overhead. I had enough clients that didn't want it that I wouldn't take a client that did.
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@brianlittlejohn said:
@scottalanmiller I just saw all that as extra overhead. I had enough clients that didn't want it that I wouldn't take a client that did.
Makes sense. Adding any SLA or Scoping adds huge effort and overhead. And often you have to do scoping before there is an agreement which can mean getting turned down for work and having to carry that cost on to new clients which makes each client harder and harder to be cost effective for.
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Not to get all preachy or religious or anything... But there's a couple Bible verses I always think about when setting up a contract to work for someone... It's mentioned a couple of times to "Let your yes be yes"... I take that to mean if it takes a team of lawyers to figure out what the contract says, then you are doing it wrong.
That's not to say don't use contracts. But write them in such a way that everyone understand them and is on the same page when they are signed. So you can say "Yes, we will work with you..." And if / when the customer says "We no longer wish to work with you," then that is okay too.
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How do you bill the things that are typically automated?
Most MSP levels we saw, that's all they do.
$20-$30 a month per machine to do updates, virus software, etc., but no tech ever touched those machines.
