Race to the bottom
For my New Year's resolutions in ‘24, I have decided to call more bullshit on service providers and provide some stories that will unfortunately sound all too familiar. My goal is to give our industry a well-needed kick in the ass and challenge providers to think and operate differently.
Let's dig in, shall we?
Insert victim client. They frequently have problems gaining access to laptops. This is the equipment they purchased and own outright. Their providers' hardware team held their hardware hostage on-site at their depot. They could never access a laptop when they needed it most. People were stuck using personal equipment in a bind.
To add insult to injury, the hardware team lacked the skill and foresight to back up user settings and profile data when provisioning new hardware during a warranty repair. This wasn’t a one-time issue. Every time a laptop went out, it was not configured properly. The recipient of a warranty replacement – an executive with a laundry list of critical priorities – would have to set up their laptop from scratch after the inconvenience of sending it out in the first place.
You’re probably wondering why I am ranting about laptops. They didn’t take down a server, and no mailboxes were lost or data destroyed. You’re right! But they wasted your time and money. They made your new hire onboarding experience look like the aftermath of a Florida State University frat party. This leaves a lasting impression and this lack of care about something trivial as a laptop impacts productivity and your bottom line.
The problem with laptop provisioning was just one issue in a list a mile long. The client stopped contacting the provider when there were any problems. They knew it might be easier to solve in-house or work around issues using their most technical non-IT staff. This was a service they were paying good money for too. Here is where the MSP trope of all-you-can-eat models and siloed IT ticket takers fails to deliver service at an emerging company. Let’s be clear, this leads to pain for both the client and the provider. The provider does want to help, but they are unable to assist in a timely fashion due to their support model and lack of skill.
Encountering these types of problems day in and day out started to get the wheels turning for me. Where does this problem stem from? It’s multifaceted obviously, but what is perpetuating it? Is it workflow, skill, quality control, money, or process? There are so many variables and all of this plays into it.
To me, this was a service provider copying the industry standard for a depot model. They saw that larger providers use very inexperienced staff to assembly-line their laptops. They followed suit by staffing it with lower-skill and inexperienced personnel.
The provider thought to use lower-skilled resources for a core service such as Depot because these were just laptops, right? These weren’t Palo Alto firewalls or complex HPC systems in AWS crunching sequencing data. But they missed something so glaringly obvious. Laptops are the first and last experience an employee has with their company. It is the tool that everyone in the company uses to get their work done. Why would you staff a crucial service with low-skill workers knowing what the potential impact could be?
These types of decisions should be obsessed over, and we should regularly review these services to ensure they keep meeting our needs. That means selecting the right hardware with the best service track record with the right specs to last and perform for the entire 3-year lifecycle. The MDM software is scalable and flexible. You can automate the shit out of it and get it to integrate all of your other core systems seamlessly. When a new user starts, they can log into their laptop and get to work without having to worry.
The moral of this story and all of the subsequent stories I am going to tell you is the same. Emerging companies will get tremendous value by partnering with the right consultants to pair them with providers that want them to have a good experience.
Don’t be fooled by MSP tactics in the form of low-cost per-user AYCE (all-you-can-eat) service buffets. Just like real buffets that quality is rarely good and you regret having dined there afterward.
Got an IT Problem you’re trying to solve? Let’s talk about it. To see if there is a solution or provider fit in our ecosystem, contact me at mark@theisisinc.io