When I speak to VARs about the managed services industry, it is commonly defined by two key services: network management and security management. However, for VARs that seek to provide managed services to the growing and highly underserved market of small businesses, managed services must include more than network and security management.
Although those services are essential to the model, small businesses need more. Small businesses seek a partner that operates as their entire IT department. For example, VARs must provide a communication path to clients that allow for resolution of user issues in a timely and effective manner. This can be easily achieved with an incident management process that enables client requests to be defined and tracked to completion. The Service Desk commonly serves as the contact for your customer for all IT-related issues or incidents. In addition to logging and tracking user requests, the Service Desk provides a first-level of remediation by solving issues over the phone.
Incident Management ensures that problems are escalated to the correct resource. In this way, if clients are experiencing a problem with their accounting application, the appropriate resource is consulted. Once the incident management process has been defined, the Service Desk is responsible for managing the problem to resolution.
By utilizing the incident management process, the Service Desk can ensure that a MSPs support resources are focusing on the issues that have the greatest urgency and potentially the greatest impact on your customer
