Four benefits of outsourcing your network operations center (NOC) as an MSP
Growing an organization is an exciting prospect. There’s much to consider as you scale your managed service provider (MSP) business, from expanding sales and marketing to developing a compelling suite of services to hiring the right technicians.
Of course, scaling up an MSP means taking on more clients. And with more clients come more endpoints to monitor, patches to deploy, tickets to close… and the list goes on.
To manage all of these tasks, MSPs may look into creating a network operations center (NOC). But building a 24x7, fully-staffed NOC is an expensive prospect. It’s also time consuming to get technicians up and running around the clock.
MSPs can realize great benefits by outsourcing their network operations center to a trusted partner. The right NOC partner is an extension of the MSP’s in-house team, complementing technicians’ skills and empowering the MSP to rightsize their hiring, focus on priority issues and clients, and grow smartly. It can also help overcome the ongoing skills gap and tech talent shortages impacting MSPs.
Let’s take a deeper dive.
Manage more client endpoints
While remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools and smart use of automation helps technicians tremendously, more endpoints still mean more work.
Day-to-day endpoint management adds up quickly, including the following tasks:
- Responding to client tickets for routine matters, such as password resets
- Updating and patching software
- Responding to and triaging alerts
- Removing viruses and other malware
- Scanning networks for IT asset discovery
- Installing agents on new devices as they join the network
- Checking configurations
- Reviving downed servers or other IT infrastructure
An outsourced NOC can easily conduct these endpoint monitoring and management activities. A strong NOC will integrate with your RMM to ensure all activity is captured and tracked. And, with 24x7 support, they’ll ensure that endpoints are monitored at all times. This is important for supporting good cybersecurity, as unmonitored endpoints present a gap in an organization’s defenses that hackers can slip through.
Take care of routine tasks quickly
There are many routine tasks that MSPs handle for clients (see above). If MSPs spend too much time on these tasks rather than high value, high paying work, it eventually eats into margins.
In addition, spending their precious time on tedious tasks eventually impacts technicians' spirits, motivation, and job satisfaction, too. They want to be working on meaningful work that moves the needle for the client.
Outsourcing routine tasks — such as responding to tickets — to a good NOC can speed up the time it takes to resolve a client’s request. Take, for example, ConnectWise Command, which reduces resolution times by 40 percent and brings MSP workloads down by 30 percent. Meanwhile, the ConnectWise NOC takes 90% of commonly-issued tickets off your team’s plate.
Clients are thrilled with faster service, and your technicians get time back in their day to work on satisfyingly complex (and higher margin) work.
Overcome gaps in skills and staffing
Anyone who owns an MSP can speak to the challenges of hiring and training a team. It can be difficult to find and retain the right employees. And even with a great team in place, technology evolves quickly and MSPs need to keep up their skills and capabilities. While training and investing in technicians is an excellent way for MSPs to build a great culture and grow, it’s impossible to know everything.
A NOC can help your MSP overcome these challenges. The right partner can take over routine, tedious tasks and close the skills gap by bringing in outsourced experts who can complement your team’s expertise.
Beyond the common IT knowledge of MSPs, an outsourced network operations center can provide expert service around:
- Complex network management tasks
- Backup and disaster recovery
- Advanced scripting and sequencing capabilities
- Support for L1 and L2 services
- Experienced agility in an unpredictable market
- And more
With a NOC on your side, your MSP can expand access to the right skills, fill shortages in staffing, and ensure your clients get the best service, no matter what issues arise.
Invest where it has impact
If you’re like most MSPs (and most businesses in general), you’re trying to do as much as possible with the resources you have. When you do invest in something to expand your business, you want those dollars to have impact.
As mentioned earlier, building a NOC in-house is often costly, both in terms of resources and training time. Rather than reinventing the wheel with a homegrown NOC, MSPs may want to invest their resources in other areas that have higher business impact.
By integrating an outsourced NOC with their RMM, MSPs can ensure high quality service without a high price tag. And with the right pricing structure, a NOC becomes a predictable (and scalable) monthly cost.
Embracing an external network operations center for growth
There are many considerations when growing an MSP business. It can be a challenge to build the right team and balance service with cost to deliver.
A great NOC partner can offer the high standards of IT support you expect from your own technicians without a huge price tag that eats into profit margins. MSPs who join forces with an outsourced network operations center can tap into efficiencies, free up in-house technician time, expand knowledge, and more. So don’t “NOC” it before you try it—explore the possibilities today.