What does your Service Level Agreement look like?
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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.
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@BRRABill said:
How do you bill the things that are typically automated?
Why would you bill something that you don't do?
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@BRRABill said:
$20-$30 a month per machine to do updates, virus software, etc., but no tech ever touched those machines.
That sounds like a scam to me. Why would someone pay to have no one do anything?
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@dafyre said:
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 like saying America is wrong. Contracts in the US require lawyers. There is no such thing as legal clarity in the US legal system. The only way to "do it right" is to not have an SLA at all.
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For things that are automated we only do those things for clients that use our services in general. They are billed at the amount of time it takes someone to check on those things to keep them running. Took 15 minutes this week to check on backups... that is what we charge for. We also charge for the initial setup of all those systems. If those systems cost us $$ to use then the client pays for that as well.
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@scottalanmiller said:
That sounds like a scam to me. Why would someone pay to have no one do anything?
There is lots being done:
windows updates
virus updates
any required maintenance
And of course the monitoring of all said events.It's just all automated for the most part.
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@dafyre said:
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.
Any idea HOW you can even do that in IT? I would say it is literally impossible. If you use technical terms, the business people cannot understand. If you don't use technical terms then you can't be sure what is meant. I honestly have no idea how that could even be done.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
That sounds like a scam to me. Why would someone pay to have no one do anything?
There is lots being done:
windows updates
virus updates
any required maintenance
And of course the monitoring of all said events.It's just all automated for the most part.
I understand that there is stuff to be done. But if the MSP isn't doing it, why would someone be paying them to do it?
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@scottalanmiller said:
I understand that there is stuff to be done. But if the MSP isn't doing it, why would someone be paying them to do it?
They are responsible for getting it done. They just don't devote very much tech time to it once it is set up. There is no need to.
It's the selling point of all the RMM solutions.
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
I understand that there is stuff to be done. But if the MSP isn't doing it, why would someone be paying them to do it?
They are responsible for getting it done. They just don't devote very much tech time to it once it is set up. There is no need to.
It's the selling point of all the RMM solutions.
Selling RMM is selling a service. That's not hours, that's SaaS. You are paying for RMM access and licensing and whatnot. That's unrelated to billable hours, SLA, etc.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
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.
Any idea HOW you can even do that in IT? I would say it is literally impossible. If you use technical terms, the business people cannot understand. If you don't use technical terms then you can't be sure what is meant. I honestly have no idea how that could even be done.
It's simple. Flat hourly billing... for ANY work done... charge your hourly rate. It's not $35 an hour for helpdesk type support, and $135 an hour for server-side support... Make it say... $75 an hour for everything. Contract states:
"All work done shall be billed at the hourly rate of $75 an hour."
No technical terms, IT People understand it, Business people should understand it, finance people should definitely understand it..
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@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
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.
Any idea HOW you can even do that in IT? I would say it is literally impossible. If you use technical terms, the business people cannot understand. If you don't use technical terms then you can't be sure what is meant. I honestly have no idea how that could even be done.
It's simple. Flat hourly billing... for ANY work done... charge your hourly rate. It's not $35 an hour for helpdesk type support, and $135 an hour for server-side support... Make it say... $75 an hour for everything. Contract states:
"All work done shall be billed at the hourly rate of $75 an hour."
No technical terms, IT People understand it, Business people should understand it, finance people should definitely understand it..
Oh okay that's what we do. I thought that you were saying to make contracts that were easy to read.
The problem comes in when companies want predictable cost and flat rate billing. It's understandable that they want IT as a service.... but how do you make that work without introducing contractual problems?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
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.
Any idea HOW you can even do that in IT? I would say it is literally impossible. If you use technical terms, the business people cannot understand. If you don't use technical terms then you can't be sure what is meant. I honestly have no idea how that could even be done.
It's simple. Flat hourly billing... for ANY work done... charge your hourly rate. It's not $35 an hour for helpdesk type support, and $135 an hour for server-side support... Make it say... $75 an hour for everything. Contract states:
"All work done shall be billed at the hourly rate of $75 an hour."
No technical terms, IT People understand it, Business people should understand it, finance people should definitely understand it..
Oh okay that's what we do. I thought that you were saying to make contracts that were easy to read.
The problem comes in when companies want predictable cost and flat rate billing. It's understandable that they want IT as a service.... but how do you make that work without introducing contractual problems?
Provide them X hours of support at a flat rate every month.
If they go over X hours, then they get charged the hourly rate..."We will provide up to 20 support hours per month to your company for $1,200 per month. All work done will count against your 20 support hours per month. Any work done that exceeds the 20 support hours per month shall be billed at $75 per hour. Support hours refresh on the first day of every month."
