Don’t Wait for Disaster: Why Regular MSP Health Checks are Critical

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) have become an increasingly popular way for businesses to outsource their IT needs and services. MSPs take care of various technology tasks for clients, such as network management, help desk services, data backups, security, and more. This allows businesses to focus on their core competencies while the MSP handles the IT side.

As an MSP takes over management of a client’s IT environment, it’s critical that they have a regular process in place to assess the health and performance of those systems. This is where MSP health checks come in. An MSP health check is a routine, comprehensive inspection and evaluation of a client’s technology stack. The goal is to identify any issues or vulnerabilities so they can be addressed promptly.

Performing regular health checks is a vital part of being a successful MSP. Without them, problems can go undiscovered and turn into bigger headaches down the road. Health checks help ensure infrastructure remains secure and optimized, and that the MSP is continually meeting the client’s needs. They provide an opportunity to demonstrate value and strengthen the relationship. For these reasons, MSP health checks are a foundational component of managed services.

What is an MSP Health Check?

An MSP health check is a review and assessment of an organization’s managed IT services and infrastructure. It helps evaluate how well current systems, processes, and service delivery are aligned with business goals and identify any gaps or issues to be addressed.

At its core, an MSP health check aims to ensure that the partnership between the business and the MSP is operating smoothly and adding maximum value. It provides an opportunity to step back and take a holistic view of IT operations from a service delivery perspective.

Some key elements of an effective MSP health check include:

• Reviewing service level agreements (SLAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) to confirm services are being delivered per contractual obligations
• Auditing systems management processes like monitoring, alerting, patching, and backups
• Assessing end user support and help desk responsiveness
• Evaluating security practices like access controls, encryption, and incident response
• Examining budgets, licensing, and asset management
• Identifying opportunities to improve efficiency, reliability, or lower costs
• Updating documentation and configurations to reflect current environments
• Validating disaster recovery preparedness

The goal is to understand the current state of managed services, check that vendor responsibilities are being met, and pinpoint areas for improvement or change. This helps strengthen the MSP-client relationship and ensure IT infrastructure needs are being fully addressed.

Why are MSP Health Checks Important?

MSP health checks are critical for managed service providers (MSPs) for several key reasons:

Maintain Service Levels

Regular health checks help MSPs maintain the service levels promised to clients in service level agreements (SLAs). By proactively monitoring and assessing environments, potential problems can be identified and addressed before they cause outages or degradation that impact SLAs. Health checks safeguard service quality.

Identify Issues

Comprehensive health checks uncover weaknesses and issues in IT environments that could lead to problems down the road. By spotting problems early, MSPs can take corrective action to resolve issues before they spiral into major incidents. Health checks provide visibility and insight to get ahead of brewing problems.

Optimize Operations

The data and analysis from regular health checks allow MSPs to optimize operations in client environments. Trends and patterns revealed in health check reports highlight areas for improvement. MSPs can take steps like updating configurations, patching vulnerabilities, or adjusting resource allocation to enhance stability, security, efficiency and performance. Health checks are key for continuous improvement.

Key Areas Covered in an MSP Health Check

A comprehensive MSP health check should cover several key areas to ensure the managed services are operating optimally and securely. Some of the most important areas to examine include:

Service Delivery

• Review service level agreements (SLAs) to confirm services are being delivered according to contractual obligations. Look at metrics like uptime, response times, resolution times, etc.
• Evaluate usage of monitoring and management tools. Are they functioning properly and providing visibility into the customer environment?
• Assess the help desk and make sure support processes are efficient and effective. Look at ticket volumes, aging, categorization, communication flows, etc.
• Check in with customer stakeholders to get feedback on their satisfaction with service delivery. Identify any gaps or areas for improvement.

Security

• Audit patching and systems hardening across endpoints and infrastructure. Ensure security controls are applied per best practices.
• Review malware protection, firewalls, VPNs, and other security tools. Make sure they are properly configured and kept up-to-date.
• Verify user access controls and privilege management. Look for dormant accounts, unnecessary privileges, etc.
• Check security logs and events for anomalies. Make sure SIEM or other tools provide visibility into potential threats.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

• Validate backup jobs are completing successfully and recovery testing is being performed.
• Ensure backup data is properly encrypted, both at rest and in transit.
• Check contingency plans to confirm defined RTOs and RPOs can realistically be met.
• Review DR runbooks and playbooks. Make sure documentation is current and restoration steps have been tested.

Documentation

• Examine network diagrams, architecture maps, configurations, etc. Confirm documentation is complete and up-to-date.
• Review processes and procedures. Make sure all institutional knowledge is captured for smooth transitions.
• Validate accurate asset inventory including hardware, software, licenses, contracts, credentials, etc.
• Ensure client onboarding/offboarding checklists are comprehensive. Look for process gaps.

How Often Should Health Checks be Performed?

MSP health checks should be performed on a regular basis to ensure the ongoing health and optimization of the MSP’s services and operations. Industry experts generally recommend conducting thorough health checks at least quarterly or bi-annually.

Quarterly or bi-annual health checks allow MSPs to stay ahead of any potential issues and proactively address problems before they impact clients. Some key reasons to conduct health checks this frequently include:

• IT environments can change rapidly, so quarterly checks ensure the MSP is keeping pace. New software, devices, configurations and more can be accounted for.
• Performing checks every 6 months enables the MSP to spot troubling trends and nip them in the bud before they cause bigger problems.
• Client requirements may evolve over a 6 month period, so a bi-annual check allows the MSP to proactively adapt and enhance their services.
• Industry best practices evolve constantly. A 6 month cycle allows MSPs to stay up-to-date with the latest standards, technologies, and methodologies.
• Potential security vulnerabilities and compliance issues can emerge. Frequent checks help address these rapidly.
• The MSP-client relationship can be strengthened with consistent reviews and check-ins.

In summary, bi-annual or quarterly checks strike the right balance for most MSPs between being proactive and efficient. Annual checks are often not enough, while monthly checks may be too operationally intensive. Regular health checks every 6 months or 3 months enables MSPs to provide the highest quality of service and support to their clients.

Who Should Perform the Health Check?

There are two main options for who should perform an MSP health check – the internal team or an external auditor. There are pros and cons to each approach:

Internal Team

• Pros: The internal team knows the MSP operations intimately and may be able to perform a more thorough inspection. There are no additional costs.
• Cons: Team members may lack objectivity since they are reviewing their own operations. There can be blindspots.

External Auditor

• Pros: An experienced MSP auditor provides an objective, independent assessment. They are likely to identify areas for improvement that may be overlooked internally. Auditors have extensive expertise from working with many MSPs.
• Cons: There are costs involved with hiring an external auditor. They may not have the same in-depth knowledge of the specific MSP’s environment. Information sharing can require effort.

In summary, smaller MSPs may benefit more from an external review to get an unbiased perspective. Larger MSPs with mature processes may be able to rely on internal checks. A blended approach involving both internal and external oversight is ideal for a comprehensive health check. The key is ensuring the review is regular, rigorous and identifies opportunities for improvement.

What is Involved in an MSP Health Check?

An MSP health check involves a thorough assessment of the managed service provider’s operations, processes, and overall service delivery. The key steps in an MSP health check include:

Assessment Methodology

• Reviewing the MSP’s service delivery processes end-to-end, including service desk, monitoring, management, and reporting. This helps identify process gaps or areas for improvement.
• Conducting customer satisfaction surveys and interviews to gather feedback on the MSP’s performance. This provides insights into the customer experience.
• Assessing the MSP’s team – their skills, certifications, capacity, and collaboration. This helps determine if the team is optimized to deliver services.
• Auditing the MSP’s tools and technology stack to ensure they are sufficient, up-to-date, and integrated. Outdated tools can hinder service delivery.
• Analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) like service uptime, response times, resolution rates, etc. Trends in KPIs highlight improvement areas.
• Reviewing the MSP’s security policies, data protection, and business continuity plans. This verifies the MSP’s preparedness for risks.

Key Steps

• Planning – Define the scope, methodology, timeline, and key metrics for the health check.
• Discovery – Gather information via documentation review, tools analysis, surveys, interviews etc.
• Assessment – Evaluate findings from discovery and compare to industry standards/best practices.
• Reporting – Document assessment results, metrics, benchmarks, recommendations etc. in a health check report.
• Presentation – MSP leadership presents report findings to customer and discusses next steps.
• Follow-up – Customer and MSP agree on timeframes to implement recommendations and improvements from the health check.

Best Practices for MSP Health Checks

Conducting effective MSP health checks requires careful planning, clear communication, and consistent follow-up. Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

Planning

• Schedule health checks on a regular basis, such as quarterly or biannually. Don’t just perform them when issues arise.
• Develop a standard framework and checklist to guide each health check. This ensures consistency across clients.
• Allot sufficient time to thoroughly complete the health check. Rushing through it reduces effectiveness.
• Inform clients of upcoming health checks well in advance. Make sure they understand the process and benefits.

Communication

• Present health check findings in a clear, constructive manner focused on improvements.
• Discuss next steps and priorities collaboratively with the client. Get buy-in on action plans.
• Follow up the health check with a detailed report summarizing results, recommendations, and next steps.

Follow-Up Actions

• Track completion of recommended actions and regularly check in with clients on progress.
• Offer training or assistance to clients on best practices related to issues uncovered in the health check.
• Conduct a follow-up health check within 6 months to validate remediation of any major issues.
• Use health check findings to continuously refine and improve your MSP services.

Regularly performing comprehensive MSP health checks, communicating effectively with clients, and ensuring issues get addressed enables MSPs to proactively optimize their clients’ IT environments and head off problems before they occur.

Potential Challenges with Health Checks

Performing regular health checks can be very beneficial for managed service providers and their clients, however there can also be some challenges involved:

Resource Requirements

• Conducting thorough health checks requires dedicating staff time and resources. MSPs need to ensure they have the bandwidth on their teams to perform checks for all clients on an ongoing basis.
• There may be a need to hire additional staff members who are focused specifically on health checks. This represents an added cost that needs to be accounted for.
• The time investment required for health checks needs to be factored into project planning and staff workloads. Customer projects may need to be deprioritized during times when health checks are being conducted.

Pushback from Staff

• Some internal staff members may resist the addition of health checks to their workload. There could be pushback if they feel too much is being added to their existing responsibilities.
• Health checks may be viewed as an unnecessary use of billable time that could be spent on other client work. Some staff may prefer to focus on break-fix issues.
• There may be a lack of understanding around the long-term benefits and ROI of proactive health checks. Addressing this with education and training can help gain staff buy-in.
• If existing processes need to change to accommodate health checks, staff may resist these changes. A culture shift around the value of proactive maintenance may be required.

To overcome these challenges, MSPs need to properly communicate the benefits of health checks, provide adequate staff training, and develop efficient processes to minimize the resource drain. Gaining buy-in from staff is key to successful ongoing health check implementation.

Conclusion

Regular MSP health checks are a critical part of managing and optimizing an MSP’s services and operations. By undergoing thorough and comprehensive assessments on a regular basis, MSPs can identify areas for improvement, maximize efficiency, and ensure they are delivering robust and reliable services to their clients.

The importance of health checks cannot be overstated. Without regular checkups and reviews, issues can go undetected, processes can become outdated, and service levels can start to lag. Health checks provide the necessary insight and visibility to recognize potential problems or shortcomings before they impact customers.

In summary, MSP health checks provide an invaluable mechanism for MSPs to audit their performance, fine-tune operations, upgrade capabilities, and verify they are operating at peak levels. Just as with personal health checkups, preventative care is far more effective than reacting once issues arise. By being proactive and making health checks a cornerstone of the business, MSPs can thrive and continue delivering successful managed services.