Leveraging an IT managed services provider means that you are establishing a partnership between two businesses. As we have seen over the last year, technology is constantly changing, and must be constantly updated in order to best help your business. As such, your MSP should collect data constantly on both your business technology, as well as how they are serving you. This allows both parties to stay on track, so you can stay up-to-date, meet your business goals with the help of technology, and ensure you are getting the best service possible. But what kind of reports should you expect? Read below to understand what is involved in IT service management reporting.
Business Reviews
Quarterly Business Reviews are one method of reviewing business technology, but depending on a business’ needs, these can be done more or less frequently (I.e. monthly, or if needed less, bi-annually). This should be a large part of the reporting/analysis provided to you by your MSP, as it is the framework for continual management of your technology, as well as the roadmap for how to move forward.
The business review reporting will typically include, but is not limited to:
Best Practices
Your MSP will be up to date on the best technology practices for your business, including the best applications to use, optimal storage models, and how to best work within your particular industry.
Assessment of Environment
This is where the data comes in to your reporting. Your MSP will understand how well things are working for you currently based on information they collect about your servers, hardware, user experience, and more. If hardware needs to be replaced, for example, this can be included in your business review. Security is always an important part of this assessment, so vulnerabilities can be recognized and improvements can be made.
Business Priorities
Your business goals, priorities and pain points must be taken into account when creating a business review. The ultimate purpose of your partnership with your MSP is to meet your business goals, so they should fully understand and incorporate them into your review. Knowing the areas you are currently struggling with is important as well, so you can remedy them as quickly as possible.
Technology Strategy
All of the above elements get rolled up into your technology strategy moving forward. This includes plans for replacing or altering any of your technological environment, the management of your environment, and of course the budget for your technology.
Once the review is put together, you and your team will meet with your MSP so you can fully understand where you’ve been and where you’re going with business technology. This aspect of IT service management reporting is arguably the highest priority out of all data collected. It is extremely essential to have some sort of analysis over your technology structure, so you can both plan ahead, and identify points of improvement.
Read a case study on how Managed Services boosted technology strategy here.
Response/Resolution Times and More
In addition to the data collected related to technology strategy, a quality MSP will have information on the service they provide to you. These reports should be available on demand, in order to hold your managed services provider accountable and to show areas for improvement or change.
Tracking items such as the number of calls made to the help desk, how quickly they were answered, and if the call was resolved the first time an inquiry was made are all important things an MSP should be tracking to ensure they are serving you well. On-site calls should be tracked in the same manner, with number of site visits, time to resolution, and more, so that this aspect of your technology management is monitored for service quality.
Tracking client satisfaction is also a good practice. Software such as SmileBack allows end users to rate their experience after calling in for technology help. These reviews are collected to monitor the overall client satisfaction level, both for your company specifically and for how the MSP is serving clients overall. Your MSP should be dedicated to making this metric as high as possible.
Finally, tracking help desk calls, resolution times, and other service metrics allows your MSP to problem solve for you. For example, if an end user has called in with a particular issue multiple times, your MSP can recognize that based on their data, and suggest new training, hardware, or even new applications to help the user get their job done better.
IT service management reporting is a key element to your partnership with your MSP. It holds your provider accountable, allows you to understand where and how your business is using (and will use) technology, and allows for overall strategy improvements, as well as improvements with day-to-day processing. Any good MSP should provide the reports explained above.
