July 30, 2024

Bonus Episode: Si Se Puede!

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In this special bonus episode of MSP Chat, sponsored by SuperOps, Rich kicks things off by sharing some alarming findings from the new SuperOps State of MSP Efficiency 2024 report, including that a quarter of MSPs don’t have a PSA, over a third don’t track non-billable labor, and over half say they don’t have a way to measure operational efficiency. Erick’s tip of the week then explains why those facts are holding MSPs back and what to do about it.

Then your hosts are joined by SuperOps channel chief Juan Fernandez and Nancy Henriquez, the company’s head of U.S. community, for a conversation about the meaning and value of business intelligence for MSPs that may change how you define that term going forward. And finally, one last thing: A visit with Sara, the AI bartender.

Discussed in this episode:

SuperOps State of MSP Efficiency 2024 Report

SuperOps partners with Pax8 to become the first PSA-RMM platform on the marketplace

Screen-shots anyone? AI bartender debuted in hotel near Disney World

 

Transcript:

 

Rich: [00:00:00] This episode of MSP Chat is sponsored by Super Ops. Super Ops is transforming MSP businesses worldwide by automating and streamlining their service delivery, asset management, and network monitoring and management. Its unified AI powered PSA RMM platform features built in network monitoring, IT documentation, project management, and more.

Plus, transparent pricing and absolutely no contracts. To learn more about how Super Ops can help you build for the future and build for growth, visit www. superops. com.

And three, two, one, blast off. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this bonus episode of the MSP Chat Podcast sponsored by our friends at Super Ops. This is your weekly visit with two talking heads talking with you about the services, strategies and success tips you need. To make it big and manage services.

My name is Rich Freeman. I’m chief content officer and channel analyst at channel master, the organization responsible for the show. I am joined as I am every week on this fine program by your other co host, Erick Simpson, our chief strategist, Erick, how you doing?

Erick: I’m doing well, rich. Thanks for asking. I got big travel plans ahead.

If can get on a plane just like you, Rich, right? Some crazy stuff has happened this week with CrowdStrike and all that. I don’t know if we’ll have time to get into that on this episode, but I think everybody, when they hear this episode, hopefully we’ll be out of the woods and back to some sense of normalcy from the CrowdStrike situation causing this massive outage.

Yeah,

Rich: As we record this, it’s just been a few days, three, four days, basically, since the the giant CrowdStrike incident everybody is all too familiar with. We have folks on the channel master team who, cannot get to places they need to be because of cancelled flights and so on. So the chaos is still out there for a lot of people, especially if like us here, a Delta flyer.

But by the time you are actually listening to or watching this show, fingers and toes crossed, that is all well behind us.

Erick: Hashtag CrowdStrike behind us. Okay. Gotcha. Rich.

Rich: All right. Let’s dive into our story of the week and Erick, no kidding. So obviously this episode of the show is sponsored by super ops.

But that is not why we are talking about this specific item at the beginning of the show. I actually woke up this morning without knowing exactly what I wanted to dedicate the story of the week segment to, and then I saw an email from super ops in which they connected me to their just.

Published 2024 MSP efficiency report. No coordination on our part. It just worked out perfectly. I downloaded a copy of that, gave it a read. I’m going to go through some there’s all sorts of data in there, but I’m going to go through a few specific statistics that jumped out at me and then get your thought as a former MSP and as a consultant who works with MSPs.

So first of all, it’s an MSP efficiency report. Most of the data or at least the data I’m looking at is specifically in the realm of time tracking and the degree to which how effectively MSPs track time, how they use that data. So no huge surprise. MSPs overwhelmingly regard time tracking as something that is very important for running the business.

81% Percent of the folks who perhaps surveyed said that having access to good accurate time tracking data is either very important or extremely important for getting your billing and your pricing, right? 74%. Said time tracking data and having accurate complete data is very or extremely important to capacity resource planning, meaning, figuring out.

Do you have as many people technicians as you need? You need more. When are you likely to need more being able to think ahead to that? 60 percent said that time tracking data barrier extremely important to getting work life balance. So how hard, how many hours are my techs working? How hard are they working?

Particularly in a competitive labor market. That’s something that continues to be important. So everybody is in agreement. Time tracking really matters. And yet Erick, this was a really interesting finding. 38. 6 percent of the MSP Super Ops survey don’t track at all their non billable time.

So they’re tracking the billable time and that’s mostly because it’s in their PSA system associated with tickets, but they’re doing nothing to keep track of how much time they are also dedicating to non billable tasks like technician [00:05:00] training for example. And then there’s another 22.

4% Who are tracking the non billable time, but it’s all one big lump, one big general category. Only 36. 6 percent of the MSPs in this survey are both tracking the non billable time and doing it in a specific way. So they can see how much time goes into each of these tasks and so that. Suggests to me that any utilization number you get out of that 38.

6 percent of folks who aren’t monitoring the non billable time at all is going to be inaccurate at best because they don’t really know they have to make an estimate there. Now this is a little disturbing too. 74. 7 percent, so just a hair under three fourths of the MSPs surveyed in this study use a PSA system.

Memo to self, what are the other one fourth doing? But let’s set that aside. About three fourths of MSPs are using a PSA. 88, roughly 88 percent of those PSAs have tools for generating utilization and efficiency reports. And yet 54. 3 percent of MSPs surveyed in this report say they do not have a way to measure and improve operational efficiency.

So almost all of the folks who said that they’ve got a PSA, they’ve got reporting capabilities in there that could give them that information. They either don’t know that they don’t know how to use that functionality or they’re not really getting useful data because they’re not feeding the PSA with useful information.

Slightly different spin on things, but interesting to me. Super Ops asked the folks in this survey. Let’s just say there was a tool that monitors your time automatically in the background, everything that you’re doing, your time utilization so that it can point out potential opportunities to reduce waste, get more efficient point out, technicians who are maybe overworked and others who are maybe underworked.

Not surprisingly, 88 percent of MSP owners said that sounds great, right? What MSP owner doesn’t want to understand all of those different variables I was just discussing there? More surprising, approximately 81 percent of the technicians said they would be interested in that functionality.

And Super Ops itself said, In the report, we went into this thinking technicians would probably come back to us and say no, actually, I don’t want my boss looking over my shoulder, watching everything I do, tracking it, following up with me about how I do or do not use my time. Et cetera.

And yet the quest for efficiency and the desire to save time is so strong among technicians. It’s absolutely. I am all in on that. So very interesting stuff across the board. And like I said, Erick, there’s more to the report than that.

Erick: So much to unpack. I did download it as well.

Rich today, I just have not had a chance to review it, but let me, for those listeners that are actually watching the podcast, you probably see me cringing at some of that data that you shared, rich. It’s. It’s cringeworthy the number of, or the percentage of respondents that said that they are not tracking their non billable time.

So I’m going to pick that one that a quarter of them are not using a PSA solution. So how was, how does that work? And then the third one does not surprise me that technicians want the black and white. Reporting of efficiency and performance. And I’ll start with that 1 1st, right? That 3rd 1, and this is going to blend into I’m calling an audible on the tip of the week, which I had something planned and you probably saw it in the show notes, but I’m calling an audible.

It’s going to be. Tagging on to this reporting. Because it’s critical. So technicians and engineers rich by, by their behavioral profile. And I’ve worked with hundreds of my brethren and sistren that are technicians and engineers, because I am also an engineer. That’s my behavior. That’s, my background in the enterprise before I became an MSP and all this.

And I’ve gotten trained and certified on behavioral profiling and things like that. I use this in team building and helping partners hire the right folks, making sure that we’ve got everybody in the right seats on the bus making, moving people around to get their best performance because they’re now more aligned with their ideal behavior with their in their comfort zone.

Sometimes we have folks on the team that will do the job, but we have yeah. Erratic performance because they’re working outside of their comfort zone and subconsciously [00:10:00] that’s a burden, right? It’s a mental fatigue thing. It’s it burns you out. So understanding that and I’ve done thousands of assessments over the last call it 20 years, right?

And so there’s a very clear indicator of the natural behavior of a technician versus a sales person, for instance, they’re two completely opposite behaviors, which kind of explains why sometimes there’s a little bit of friction, between these two, because they are complete opposites. But technicians and engineers are data driven.

They are process driven checklist driven sales professionals and folks on the sales team and the customer service team. Are people driven, right? So they’re two opposite ends of how we view things. So Why I say I’m not surprised That technicians and engineers responded that way is because they want to see the data.

They want the numbers Even if it you know, because you cannot they know that you cannot manage what you cannot measure And if they are working in a psa They are measuring their performance So that’s number three. Number two, this one or two, not tracking the non billable work. That is a hole in the ground, Rich, because when I work with partners, the thing that I hear the most is we don’t have enough technicians.

We don’t have enough technicians. And so that’s, I expect to hear that, right? Everybody wants more technicians. They’re throwing bodies at the problem rather than looking at the efficiency and how much they are impacting the technicians or engineers ability to do that which only they can do, deliver billable service.

And what I mean by that, Rich, you mentioned one thing, training. How about all these company meetings? How about, drive time and go back time and redo time because we’re not trained properly. We don’t have the proper tools to do things right the first time, or we’ve got junior technicians and engineers that were asking to punch way above their weight class, and so that causes a lot of inefficiency.

So we’ve got to measure how much non billable time the team is delivering because no one rich believes. That our teams are not working their butts off. Nobody believes that they’re not putting in eight or 10 or 12 plus hours when needed. It’s what they’re focusing on. We need to identify. So let’s get rid of all the noise that prevents them from doing the billable work.

And I look at two things. Rich utilization is this term that everybody thinks measures the performance. Of a technician or engineer or anybody. I look at utilization as being how many hours somebody works. And then I use another term rich called realization. I may have made these things up a long time ago.

I don’t know where I got them from, if I did get them from somewhere, then, thank you for that, but realization is how much time is being applied toward billable work. And sometimes that difference is a chasm. So that’s the other thing. What was the last one? I forgot to say that I had three.

Rich: A fourth of MSPs apparently aren’t using a PSA,

Erick: right? So is that a whiteboard? Are we tracking tickets and showing people how we’re, how we’d, how do we do that? We’ve got to have a platform that allows us to integrate with all of our other platforms that we’re leveraging to deliver service to our clients.

Measure and report on it and help us analyze how we can improve again. It’s a tool that allows you not only to integrate things. automate things better, increase your efficiencies through that automation, but also provide us that reporting that the technicians and engineers need. They’ll do it themselves, Richard.

They’ll, if they, have access to it, they will configure the reports if asked and say, run these reports and report every Monday in our service desk meeting, right? And let’s see how we’re doing. And now when we see that, then we can start identifying why that realization is low. Utilization may be through the roof.

They may be working overtime. But when you say what’s our utilization? Our utilization is 100%. What’s our realization? Like 40%. That’s the number I’m interested in, right? So we’ve got to be able to address that, attack it and create some incentives and give the team the tools that they need.

We talk about training and educating our teams. And it’s a tough order when [00:15:00] they’re tasked to bill at a specific rate or a specific, performance level. But it’s easier for them to do that when they’re not also doing all this other stuff, including admin work. That’s another one, right?

So here’s a bonus tip. I go in and I say, okay what are you spending your time on? 25%, 30 percent on admin stuff, things that, somebody else could do that does not require a highly skilled pricey dragon slaying technician or engineer. Sometimes I’ll come in rich and I’ll say what you guys don’t need is another engineer or technician.

You’ve got five of them here. They’re all spending 25 percent of their time doing admin stuff and documenting stuff. What you need is administrative support, not another technician or engineer offload that noise to someone else. That is their primary role. That’s their role now. And they are more cost effective.

They’re more efficient at it. Bring up those technicians and engineers. To do highly valuable work projects that bring in high margins and billable labor and serve those clients. And now we can scale much more broadly, keep our clients happier, and then stave off the need maybe to hire that next technician or engineer for a bit and do it as we grow, as we capacity plan, as we now are identifying the types of tickets that we’re getting.

That’s another reason to use a PSA and optimize it, Rich. I want only tier one or level one tickets to go to tier one or level one technicians. I don’t want to send them higher level tickets. I want to identify what those things are that can be closed within a reasonable amount of time without having to escalate.

I never want to be sending level one technicians to level three engineers. And vice versa, without a PSA and without reporting and without clearing the noise to allow the technicians and engineers to do that, which only they can do. There’s no way that we’re going to hit our profitability benchmarks. And the work life balance targets that we want for our teams.

Rich: Yeah. And it, and obviously it, it goes beyond the tools, right? No matter how smart you are, you cannot make good decisions if you don’t have data to base those decisions on. And it takes a good tool to assemble that data and then you have to learn how to use it, and you have to use it completely.

Use all of the functionality. You were talking about the non-billable hours issue and tracking that, not tracking that. And it reminded me, I’ve been using this, tool. It’s only been out in the market a few months. I think at this point, it’s called produce eight. And essentially what it does is measure keep track of how much time you spend in the various applications that you use during a typical work day.

And for the longest time, I had a suspicion about how much time I was spending in Outlook doing email, but I didn’t really know. And now I can see And obviously, once you have that data, you can decide for yourself, is that too much time to email? And if it is, then I’m going to set a goal to cut that back and so on.

If you have no idea, you might have a suspicion about how much technician time goes into non billable functions. But if you’re not tracking that and doing it in a specific way, that will point out, as you just said, Specifically, how much time goes into administrative stuff so that you can not just know where time is maybe a leaking that you’re not aware of, but, in a much more granular kind of way so that you can target the responses and get more of it.

You’ve got to have that data and it’s got to be a category by category. Now did we roll together the tip of the week? And the the story of the week. I believe we did rich. All right. Then folks in that case Erick and I are going to take a quick break. When we come back on the other side, we’re going to be joined.

By two folks we’ve known a long time from Super Ops. One is Juan Fernandez. He is their channel chief. The other is Nancy Henriquez. She is their head of U. S. community, and we’re going to have a conversation that touches on some of the topics that we’ve been talking about here before, maybe on a slightly broader level about business intelligence, understanding and tracking how your business is operating so that you can help it operate better.

Stick around folks. We’re going to be right back.

All right. Welcome back to part two of this episode of the MSP chat podcast sponsored by super ops. And we are pleased to be joined by not one, but two executives from super ops Juan Fernandez, who is the channel chief and Nancy Henriquez, who is the head of us community Juan, Nancy. Welcome to the show.

Juan: All right, we’re good. We’re happy to be here, man. This is awesome.

Rich: Yeah, we’re, we are delighted to have you on. Technically speaking, Juan you are a [00:20:00] return guest. You’ve actually been on the show before. But for folks who did not get that episode just tell them a little bit about yourself and what you do at Super Ops.

Juan: Yeah. Happy to be here. And again, for all of you, those that don’t know me or have never heard of me before, I am I like to say that I am a recovering MSP for those of you that are out there that are on your journey.

I can tell you that. There’s life on the other side of an exit. Me and Nancy happened to be a testament to that fact. And I am the channel chief for super ops now. So really excited to be here and to be a part of this and just be able to lend some advice to those MSPs that are growing and scaling their business.

Rich: Yeah, and we I’ve actually known you, Juan, since you were an MSP and same goes for you, Nancy. For folks who have not met you before tell them a little bit about yourself and your past and your role now at Super Ops.

Nancy: Yeah. So again, thanks for having us. So I started my career as a IT professional, I would say at the age of 22 actually right out of high school.

That was when I started my first business was at 22 a local breakfast shop. So I really grew up in this industry and with MSPs and yes, I. opened and sold my second MSP after five years in 2021, ran the MSP that acquired mine before joining Super Ops as the head of U. S. community, and so now I get to have fun and Just talk to MSPs from all over, bring everyone together, bring resources, and as much as support as we can.

Rich: And hang out with Juan, which is always a good thing.

Nancy: Yeah.

Juan: I don’t know if we ever hang out though. That’s far and few between. We actually work, I think, harder here than we did in our previous lives. So it’s interesting. There’s a lot of people that need a lot of help. Trust me, there’s a lot of conversations to be had.

So I don’t think we have any dull moments. I hardly get to actually see Nancy. It’s funny.

Rich: Let’s let’s get into one issue that a lot of MSPs need help with. And I want to dive into it in part because you guys at super ops announced a new tool for your partners called Vision X in June during the the PAX 8 conference.

We’ll get into the specifics of what Vision X is about, but big picture, it is a business intelligence tool for MSPs. And the fact that you can Invested time and effort and money in creating it suggests that you see business intelligence as, if not a pain point, then certainly an opportunity for MSPs.

Talk a little bit I’ll let either one of you kick this off. Talk a little bit about the meaning of business intelligence for an MSP and the importance of having that information.

Juan: I’ll let Nancy take the front end of it. I’ll take the back end.

Nancy: I was going to say the same thing.

You’re the father of VisionX. I think you should go first. All

Juan: I think, when MSPs are looking to make decisions, one of the challenges in our space is that we have a lot of technology at our fingertips. We just don’t have a lot of business technology. I think that MSPs that are looking for new value equations in order to activate value in their business and generate revenue and be able to see themselves into the future in terms of, profitability and scalability and all the other nuances, they need access to that information.

And in the era that we live today, we’ve been so invested in our customers and SMBs, right? The other side of the MSP fence. The customers that we support on empowering them through the thoughtful uses of technology. But, when you think about it and you look at the, it’s like the mechanic story, right?

The mechanic always fixes everyone else’s car, but they never fix their own because I can keep it running and it doesn’t have to look great. And that’s sometimes how we see in the I. T. space and the managed services space that we run our businesses that way. It doesn’t have to work great. I just need to keep it running so that I can help everyone else out and make their cars look amazing and their businesses look amazing.

And I think now it’s always interesting to watch how, the front edge of this blade is sharpened and then how the broad edge of the sword actually maticulates. And we’re starting to see that depth in the managed services spaces. Now we’re going a little bit wider on the back end as that front edge of technology is cutting.

And then we’re starting to see that attrition coming back of all the opportunities from a data perspective for us to be able to use it. And that’s where I get excited because I is building and scaling my MSP and again, Erick, you’re working alongside MSPs and Rich is talking to him for years.

You guys all recognize and same with Nancy, it’s not easy, right? And there’s not a lot of direction on how to get there. There’s a lot of good advice for those that take it, Erick, as we may know, right? Some don’t and then the road to leadership is very lonely. And so it’d be really cool if we had some way points to say Hey, look, I reached this place and this data told me that the direction to get [00:25:00] me there.

And that’s where I think that we’re coming to right now in the managed services area as the data is in front of us. Now we have some tools and techniques and we’ve started to tool on the back end to help provide those waypoints to be able to say, Hey, here’s where you could go. And it’s really exciting to see.

And again, From that perspective, a lot of the stuff that we’re building now is a lot of lessons on things that I wish were there when I was building mine. And I know Nancy and it said the same thing as she’s seen it match your eyes. So Nancy, what are your thoughts on that type of data and how it can improve MSPs?

Nancy: Yeah. I’m going to take it back to when I was just starting my first MSP and doing a lot of napkin math and trying to see if my cost of goods actually made sense with everything that I was doing and my margins were on. And so on and so forth. And I had no clue what I was doing my first business.

That’s why it wasn’t. Complete success. And for my second one, what helped me from the very beginning was going through a Goldman Sachs 10, 000 small business program where we looked at all of the business metrics and measurements that we needed in order to be and run a successful business. And so having that data at my fingertips, Was something that was just shocking.

Like I had no idea that I could get that data. And so now building that into the platforms that businesses use to operate their business just makes that incredibly easier. So to be able to just sit back and say, these are my goals and this is where I want to be. What are the things that I have to tweak or change within my business in order to actually reach that?

And for something to tell you what that advice is or where those pain points are that you can start to maneuver within your business, it’s huge. It’s huge. And I think that it’s something that is needed nowadays since managed service providers are really starting to change how they look at business from an accident.

Entrepreneur previously to now wanting to be more informed and more educated in what it takes to run and grow a successful business. So I think that it’s something that is needed. And we’re just the first step.

Erick: Nancy and thank you both Nancy and Juan for joining us today. It’s awesome. I, last time I saw you guys was in person.

At an event, so hopefully you’re seeing each other more often than I’m seeing both of you guys

Juan: actually seeing us around the same time, my goodness.

Erick: My goodness. So Nancy, you mentioned, I love that, the analogy like napkin math, right? So you’ve, you discovered that at that point and going through that Goldman Sachs experience that you have access to some business intelligence.

But what kinds of business intelligence do typical MSPs have? This is for both of you. What type of access do they have to business intelligence? Where is it that they can get it if they have access to it now? And what kind of access do they need? So what do they have and what do they need? I’m teasing up.

Why you guys went down this path with vision X.

Juan: Yeah, and it’s actually right in front of you, it’s often interesting, and I hate to say that because It’s like a slap in the face. It’s been staring me at the whole time and I Oftentimes when i’m talking to msp’s i’ll go through a scenario and i’ll say hey, let’s look at the problem Let’s ask this question.

Let’s talk about the solution to the problem and i’m like, okay Look at what you just did. You literally know what like what the problem is You figured out how to solve it. You had the process right in front of you. Now you just need to activate it. And that’s the challenge that we have is that we don’t realize that the RMS, PSA and the customer data and our PNL and all of our data is sitting right in front of us and we just don’t know how to look at it differently.

All right. Cool. Just for instance, I was just at the ASCII event and one of the things that we gave away was the customer contract analysis spreadsheet, and it has data like cost per seat.

Cost per customer, the total amount of projects that you’ve done with that customer for the year. You take that and look at the total amount of time against the projects. And you take a look at the total number of tickets that you’ve done against the total amount of time. And it’s really interesting, like the data is right there in front of you.

You can actually see what the value of that customer is and what your net margin percentage is based on your fully burdened rates of all the different calculations. So And it’s not there’s that many numbers there, but the challenge is that we just never taught exactly how to mechanically operate a business [00:30:00] in the managed services area.

So that’s where I think the, the, I would say the slap comes from because it took me a long time to find it. And I was like, how long has this been here? This was a snake. It would have bit me five years ago. So I think those are the things, and again, to your point, when you look at all the things that we have access to, we just don’t know, and I talk about this all the time, like what’s your customers aren’t telling you, what’s interesting is what your business isn’t telling you.

And that’s that you have the information to make smart business decisions. It’s right in front of you. You just have to put it in a certain way. And all of a sudden the Rubik’s cube. Unlocks itself. And that’s where we’ve just basically taken and brought all that data to the forefront and we’re able to actually help take the data that we have based on customer problems issues, technician utilization, tracking and all those things and be able to look at your business and say, Oh, there it is.

And that’s where you can actually look at the string theory of how you can see yourself being successful. So it’s just right there. And I think that some of the, those key components are some of the quantifiable components of the data that we have in front of us. And Nancy, I’ll let you take a swing at that as well.

Nancy: Yeah I’m gonna bring it, just make it simple. I think a lot of the times as MSPs, we are doing so much of working in the business that we are. Inputting data constantly, and we never look at the output of data or the patterns within the data and what it tells us. And so I think that’s one of the things that we have been missing the mark on as m MSPs or as business owners in general, where all we are doing or looking at is where.

Where we’re putting this data, right? Regardless of what the data is, whether it’s going into a PSA, whether it’s going into an arm and regardless of the tool that it’s going into, you’re putting all this data in without actually looking at the big picture and seeing how can I put this data together? How can I triangulate this data in order to get an actual outcome or get a big picture of what’s happening within the business?

And And a lot of the times we don’t know how to do that. And the traditional tools that we’ve had all along haven’t made that easy for us either. I want to double click on what you said. Go

Juan: ahead. Sorry. I’ll let you finish, but I want to double click on that. Yeah, so I was going to say

Nancy: that even when we are looking at reporting and historically speaking, any kind of reports that we’ve gotten are all bad reports because it’s also bad data.

So the, that’s the other side of things. When it comes to the tools that we use and the information that we’re getting out of it, the quality of data that we get out of it is it actually good data? How much of it actually is good data, clean data so on and so forth. So a lot of the times historically, we have not really been able to get the right information that we need to have in front of us in an easy way.

To be able to then make better business decisions

Juan: and I want to add to that because you said something that triggered my mind. We’re so programmed for problem recognition, but not recognition. So all the tools that we use are used to detect problems. And solve problems. They’re not used to detect a lack of profit and solve for profit problems.

And that’s a big concern. And so now when we have this data, we can start to look at it in a different way and say, okay. That problem actually doesn’t equal money. Like that problem is something that is never equaled money. And we always thought it did because it was something we always did.

I attribute it back to cleaning computers. I remember when I did the reverse engineering calculation to say, it actually doesn’t make dollars and cents for me to ever fix your computer. It actually makes more sense for you to buy a new one than it does for me to actually continue to like your return on investment of this is, Move like there is none.

I think I touch it one time in that piece. He’s literally devalued. This is just going to be an ongoing conversation for us. If we don’t just replace it, then you’re always happy. And I never have to touch it, which is great. So I think that when we look at the problem different and we look at it from a profitability perspective, like this, the balance changes significantly in terms of what we do versus what we make.

And that’s where I think the data is actually leading us. Yeah.

Rich: I do want to get into Vision X specifically a little bit at this point, because I haven’t seen a full blown demo. I there’s only so much I know about it, but you’re talking about pulling information together. Making it easier for an MSP to see and act on.

My understanding is, it’s not just that you’re pulling the information together from the RMM and the PSA in one place, as maybe a [00:35:00] reporting dashboard might do, but that there, there’s some work going on there. To steer MSPs in the direction of actionable decisions with that information about which clients are or aren’t profitable and what you might want to do with that.

Talk a little bit about what you guys are doing in VisionX beyond aggregating the information.

Juan: Yeah. If you take a look at it, we have the ability to make smart business decisions now, and I think some of the, you have to understand, like, When we think about MSPs, you have to understand the problem, right?

Some of the problems are is the first problem that we have is it’s the wrong customer, right? And we don’t even know that until six months down the road. And we’re like, Oh my God, this is the worst customer I’ve ever brought into the organization. I got employees that want to quit. I’m not making any money.

What do I do? Do I fire them? Do I take the I have a contract. It’s just a really weird place to be. And so when you think about understanding the problem. Like, how do we stop the problem before it even happens? So if I have the data and I have the ability to adapt. the data to understanding the types of customers that I’m bringing into my organization based on how I actually operate.

Imagine that I knew without a shadow of a doubt, I know this is exactly how long it takes me to onboard somebody. I know this is the right customer profile. This is the one that I make money with. This is the way that I actually go to market. Here’s my current stack. Here’s the current compliances or security products.

And this is the customer type that I. And proficient with now I can make better business decisions, right? If I actually was to say, okay, what does it look like if me and you date and we like, I want to know that we’re going to be successful here. Starting at the very beginning let me run a scan on your environment and understand your infrastructure and understand how long it’s going to take and build a plan and the process and the procedure and the total life cycle value of that customer before I even take you on.

Okay. This is the intelligence that I’m talking about is we’re now fixing the problem before it ever starts. I’m not waiting to after the problem is inside of my house to fix it. You know what I mean? So that’s data intelligence and that’s really what Vision X is looking to do is solving the problem before it even starts.

And looking at the problem in a different lens versus bringing it in and hoping that I can fix it. That’s where we’re at now is we’re working on our far back heel. The second that we take on a new customer, what if we didn’t, what if we were able to work on our front heel, could we run faster if we were at a different angle?

We’re thinking about the problem a little bit differently with vision X is stopping a problem before it happens. And that’s really empowering the MSP to be more intelligent with the data that they have. Before they have to make a decision on action on it. Let’s not action on it. Let’s just be what we say, be proactive on it.

How do, what would happen if we had productive data and customer intelligence? Our employees might be happy. We might actually make some money. We might be able to grow and scale our businesses. Like our futures would be drastically different. So this is where we’re focusing.

Erick: I love this conversation and I’m really.

I’m really a fan of what you’re doing with vision X, Juan, you and I have had many conversations over the years and more recently about, how MSPs are maturing and how we would, how we look at things differently nowadays, but, I’ve got to ask both of you your perspective on this.

Key thing about MSPs, Hey, we’re all recovering MSPs, except for rich, he just reports on the recovering MSPs, right?

Juan: All of us, all of our recovery programs. Yeah.

Erick: We’re all in our 12 steps. I got my, I don’t know, 20 year, maybe chip. I don’t know. But the question is this, right?

How do you encourage or influence a behavioral change in an MSP business owner? Because, I found Depending upon where that individual is, because it comes from the top down this is something that has to come from the top down. Where does that behavioral mindset change for an MSP business owner to say, Oh, This makes perfect sense.

I’m going to go in a hundred percent rather than, some MSPs that may not maybe be at that operational maturity level to see the value and then grab onto it and take advantage of it. Am I clear on the question here? It’s this, how do you influence and encourage somebody to do something?

That they’ve maybe not done and it’s so different than what they’re used to. Is there a challenge there?

Juan: Yeah, I’ll go last. Cause that’s like buyer journey stuff. I love that. That’s psychology for me, but that’s who you take the first run at that one.

Nancy: Yeah, no, I think that funny enough, we were just having a very [00:40:00] similar conversation in the sense that people don’t like change.

It’s it’s a human nature aspect, right? So it’s not just MSPs. It’s any kind of change. You have to be at a point where you are in so much pain that you want to make that change, right? Or that, You’re inspired to do so because you see someone else. So there’s different reasons that push you over that fear of change, but ultimately that within itself is what stops everyone or at least most when it comes to any kind of change.

And when you are talking about your business. That’s something that a lot of people take as if it was a baby or as a child of their own, right? And they think about it in that way. So emotion is put into that which just adds to the fuel of fear of change. But at the end of the day, we are in the business of technology and technology.

Changes. We are in the business of change. And so if we don’t change. That’s something that business owners start to see the fact that they fall behind of their peers, or those that are now coming in with fresh perspectives with a different mindset with a more more of a more of a. Wanting to grow a business and being a business person rather than being a technician or a what’s the term that most people are using nowadays, a computer janitor, whatever it may be right.

So I think that’s where Yeah, there is a challenge when it comes to that. But the more that we talk about the need for change the way that a business operates, business models change over time. So the fact that within itself, like it is the very nature of business to change and evolve.

That’s something that I think eventually. You’ll get it right. And some people will get it. There’s always the fast adopters as well as the slow adopters and all of that. So everybody’s got a little bit in between. But yeah, there’s a challenge, but it’s one of those where eventually it will catch up to you.

I

Erick: have a quick comment to what you just shared, Nancy, and for both of you. So You know, doesn’t a service provider, doesn’t an MSPs lack of change also potentially negatively impact the retention of their client base because clients want to know that you are moving forward as well and improving. And our best clients typically are the ones that want our success as much as we want their success together.

What are your thoughts?

Juan: Yeah, I think that’s the big thing, right? I, I used to fear this a lot back in my technician days and this is still very much alive and well on me today is death behind the desk. And one of the things that was really scared the hell out of me in my younger years was watching me be able to pass these.

These very smart people, just because I had the latest certification and test taking and I started climbing the corporate ladder really quickly. And I wonder why was this an anomaly? Why was I the youngest entrepreneur in these enterprises? And it was because a lot of them stopped learning.

And I start to see the industry doing that. We suffered through that, over the past couple of years where we good enough was just good enough. And we weren’t thinking past the problem into the future. Now the cyber pandemic is upon us right and we have to play catch up because we got to defend against all these other things that advanced while we were just taking care of some other stuff.

And that’s the challenge that we have now right in the manager’s ecosystem is that if we’re not continuing to fast and iterate quickly toward the future. All we’re doing is just failing really quickly, too, and we’re allowing technology to move quicker than us, which we’re going to play catch up again if we don’t hurry up.

Ryan Walsh said he grabbed something from me. He said, I love the hurry up trail. He said, it’s really important for us to hurry up and make. Mistakes now so that we can move quickly into the future because if we don’t continue to make the mistakes and we don’t continue to learn and we don’t continue to iterate around these things and be able to take risks and try to challenge ourselves to move this technology industry forward.

Something or someone else is going to do it. And I think, we talked about change coming at us from a number of ways 10 years ago. And now the technology that we operate in work with is the thing that we should fear the most. And so if we don’t continue to stay relevant. There will be a bigger challenge for us to face and that’s where we’re trying to help MSPs stay out of the minutiae of their business and actually focus [00:45:00] on growing and scaling their business and focus on modern problems and modern value equations so that they can iterate toward that future and so we see it and very well aware of it and rich and love that question because I don’t think many of us are paying much attention to it as they always be there one and I’m like, no, it isn’t.

I’m telling you, no, it isn’t like self healing computers are coming like artificial intelligence technologies on its way. We’re going to change what we do and we need to be thinking about what’s next. So I like it at the same token. We’ve got to have our eyes open here.

Nancy: It’s no different than going back to the mechanic story, for those mechanics driving cars to grow or to grow their skill and learning the computers of cars left behind.

Juan: I hate to say that. And it’s just evolution, right? We’re not still like rolling square wheels around. We’re not lighting fires with sticks I can’t even tell you how to light a fire anymore.

It just happens. It’s not even a flame anymore. It’s electric pulses of energy, right? It’s a very different time, and I think we have to be considering where we’re at and where we stand. So it’s important to pay attention to what, where we’re at.

Rich: The willingness to change is absolutely essential.

It’s a precondition to a lot of what we’re talking about here. But in terms of data intelligence, as you called it one, it’s one thing to have that information in front of you. And it’s another thing to actually act on it on a regular basis, get the most value out of that. I’m just curious if either or both of you have any advice in terms of how to use that data, how to make sure that you’re actually.

Putting it to work. Should people be looking at VisionX or a tool like it every day, every week, every quarter, how do you make sure that you’re not just seeing what’s happening in the business? You’re doing something with it.

Juan: Yeah. I think you have to take your Northstar approach here, right? If you’re not paying attention and you don’t have any way to measure the future or modify the way you’re going to get there, then You’re not going to get there, right?

And I think that’s what I call the Hope Business Fund. I hope something good happens, and I hope that some money rolls in, and I hope that, this day goes great, and that, oh look, a vacation. What, hold on a second there. Hold on. Focusing on how your business operates, there’s people that are working for you.

There are, Families that are being supported by you. There’s a number of things that you have to take very seriously. And when you recognize the impact that you have on not just your immediate circle, but also the world around you, it’s important to your business. It’s important that you understand the numbers behind how your business operates.

If you don’t, then it’s just going to be. I hope it works and I hope it works only last so long and then when something doesn’t and you lose your biggest customer and you didn’t know why you lost them and now you’re on your back heel again and you have to let some people go and you’re not sure how you’re going to make it those are telltale signs of business that needs to be paying closer attention to the way your business operates like you have to do those things and you have to be paying attention to it constantly you need to you.

I hate to say this like you know the morning newspaper for those that used to remember newspapers that used to show up or like your daily news or your daily feed or any of those things like we invest every day in something and now is the opportunity to start paying attention to investing in your business and paying attention the way that works and making sure you have the right information about Making that small change today.

Sometimes the changes are hard. We have to do it all the time, but make the change that’s going to keep you going. That one degree of change today is 180 degrees down the road, right? And so just those little tiny motions towards the future I think are really important. And making those little small changes, paying attention to your data, understanding your business, diving into the numbers, making sure you get it, is only going to get you there.

You pay your dividends at the end. So that’s your thought.

Nancy: I think for me, it’s more and I have to go philosophical on this. It’s more so about making sure that you understand like where you are as a business owner. So it’s not just about the metrics and the numbers and everything else that is, that comes along with building a business, but also making sure that. You want to take those actions. Why would you want to? What is the reason behind it? Because at the end of the day, that’s going to be the driving force behind whatever changes you decide to make or the actions that you decide to take or not take. So understanding where, what you want out of your business and what type of lifestyle you want out of the business, [00:50:00] what are you trying to achieve?

What purpose are you serving? Those for me are where it all starts before you even get to the data to then decide whether or not to take action. So I would say that in all of this technology, it comes back to a Still being humans and making good decisions and deciding what are good decisions for us in different moments of time.

Erick: Juan you mentioned the universal, I think, accepted idea that change is hard. Nancy, you talked about how someone needs to feel enough pain in order to. Propel them to make a change. It reminds me of of that, the story of the guy walking in the park and he sees somebody sitting on the park bench, reading a newspaper and on the ground next to him is a dog and the dog is howling.

And so the guy walking, ask the guy, Hey, is that your dog? And the guy puts his paper down and he goes, yeah, what about it? And the guy says what’s wrong with him? And the guy reading the paper says, He’s sitting on a nail. And so the passer by asks why doesn’t he move? And the answer is it doesn’t hurt enough yet.

So I love sharing that analogy. Change is hard. We got to experience pain, but when we decide to make a change, we have business intelligence, right? Let’s say that you have a partner using vision X and they’ve got this data and they may be faced with, there’s all kinds of ways to increase net profit, right?

You can cut your costs, you can sell higher value services. You can get rid of underperforming clients. You can increase your efficiencies on the service desk. If if a, an MSP is faced with all these options oh, I need to do all those things, which one should they start with? Because these are all difficult decisions.

Firing a client is, if someone hasn’t done that before that first experience can be pretty tough, but after that, it gets easier, right? Cutting costs force or implementing. Performance improvement programs for staff to increase their output or their productivity.

What’s a low if you’re going to stack rank these. What’s the lowest hanging fruit type of action that a partner can take based upon business intelligence guiding them so that they get their feet wet and go, okay, I can do this and then continue down that path.

Juan: Yeah. And I think that bleeds back to what Nancy was saying earlier in terms of how you look at things, you have to, one of the big things for me is There’s some quantifiable components about what I want out of a business and the type of business that I want to run and recognizing that, the term people process technology is actually in the wrong order. It’s actually process people, technology, great process that empower people to deliver technology that creates great culture, and when I think about that’s how I rank them, right?

I want to yeah. I want to create a process so the machine should help the people and the people should help build the technology and the technology should empower other businesses and create great cultures and people should love where they work. So a lot of the decisions that people might make using this data, I think.

Again, for me are one thing, but every MSP business owner in terms of what they’re after in terms of the way they want their lifestyle, if it’s a lifestyle business, or they’re in a solopreneur, or if they’re an enterprise, those decisions are all different. And I think that’s the beauty of what we have the autonomy to create is uniqueness.

And so with that, it allows us to double click on what do we consider perfect, because this is our business. This is our life. This is our world. Cool. Our oyster the way we want to eat it, right? And so when we think about those things, you’ll be able to action those things that drive the KPIs that matter to you.

Because the KPI that is good for somebody else doesn’t mean that’s the KPI that’s good for you, right? And that’s where I think that decisions have to be made and it gives you the autonomy to become a satisfied business owner because this is the kind of business I wanted. Not the kind of business I was told I was should have.

Right? And that’s really where I think, those decisions get to be made is that I now have actionable data that says I want happy employees. What would that look like? Okay, we’ll get rid of these clients that we don’t serve well and increase profitability and increase, the opportunity for them to be empowered like their education, like their time to ticket resolution is so low because these aren’t challenging enough tickets like we need additional projects to challenge them and then actually increase their skills like that’s a completely different pile of KPIs we’ve [00:55:00] never seen before.

Versus how do I get to profitability? Okay I need to get rid of that low performing employee and I need to, increase my margin with that customer. That’s a completely different path to and that’s where I think that you’ll now get the opportunity. And this is how we should be using this data that we have is to like, okay.

What Nancy said, let’s put a few pins on the wall here. What does this equal there? And how does this equal that? And how does this equal that? And now all of a sudden we can change and modify our worlds to get us to those points and that equal success that we’ve defined. So I really, it’s interesting to see.

And again, I think to your point Erick. The beauty of what we have, the autonomy to create is something new and different. And that’s true success. True success comes from happiness. Happiness comes from the people around us enjoying what they do. And now we have the autonomy to be able to look at it differently and say, I don’t have to be happy with something somebody else told me I have to build.

I can be happy with the way I want to do it. And if this power goes out again, I’m going to freak out.

But this is the challenge, right? You got to shift the ebb and flow with problems and it’s part of change. But that being said, that’s where I think we get the autonomy here. And I’m really excited because for the first time I, I can see it. The data is in front of us. And now we have the opportunity to make, whatever perfect and whatever success sounds like and looks like to us a reality.

Rich: I don’t know if you have anything to add on that, Nancy.

Nancy: It just made me think of color by numbers versus creating your own masterpiece. I don’t know about y’all, but I hated coloring in the lines. I always colored outside of it and made my own drawing out of it. A whole coloring page.

So I think it’s very similar in business. Everybody does business their own way. And this gives them the opportunity to do that in a way that they have all the things that they need, all the data points that they need to make good decisions, regardless of whether it’s a good decision for someone else or just for that MSP in particular.

So I, I think that it’s it’s a way to be able to not just be find success in business, but be able to do it in a way that is right for the individual. And that’s something that we don’t touch on a lot of the times when we, even when we talk about business growth, we talk about it being in a certain way or in a certain direction.

And we all know that success doesn’t look like a regular arrow pointing up. It goes in all sorts of ways. And so I think that this allows us to do that in a much more meaningful way. I

Juan: think it’s like alphabets, like all the letters laid on top of each other, just a big old giant squiggly mess.

Rich: We’ve got just a few minutes left here before we we move on, but I would be remiss. Maybe I’ll direct this at you on, I’d be remiss if we didn’t talk at least a little bit. about the other big announcement from Super Ops recently. You guys unveiled Vision X during the PAX 8 BEYOND conference in June.

It was also announced during that show that Super Ops is now an RMM PSA partner with PAX 8. And in fact, the first one they’ve never had. An RMM PSA partner as part of their alliance network, part of their catalog, et cetera. From your point of view at Super Ops, what is significant about that alliance relationship you now have with PAX 8?

Juan: And I would say this when you think about doing something, we could sit here all day long and talk about change, as a good old. Days and it’d be really cool if somebody just did something different, And that would be an amazing thing if that just happened, right?

We can make it a reality and one of the beauties of what took place at beyond was that opportunity to show People that just because it’s never been done before, just because everyone says it can’t be done, just because there’s never been anyone else that’s pioneered that before doesn’t mean we can’t do it.

And I’m really honored to be able to be the first RMAN PSA inside the Pax 8 marketplace. That was definitely a challenge to overcome. There was a lot of opportunity there on both sides to try to make that partnership reality. But, the focus was. The same thing that I’ve impressed upon everybody that has had an opportunity to hear from me in the last months or so is that it’s focused on our partner success, right?

If you can’t hear that and what we’re talking about today and the way we’re tooling, super ops, this is two pretty significant companies back. Say it’s a well known brand and they don’t make easy decisions and they don’t make them very quickly. Never is a long word when you think about it.

You know what it means, and so [01:00:00] for there to be a new reality in a new future It’s an honorable place to be. It’s an honorable place to be in the industry. We announced a number of firsts. I think it actually ran out of numbers that day. I was like, good Lord. Okay, we got seven first times here today.

We announced the first arm MPSA to be inside of Pax 8. Our partnership with Pax 8 Academy plus Super Ops, our partnership with Pax 8. Thank you. Peer groups plus super ops a first market with PAX 8 helpdesk plus super ops. And another one was our fully integrated marketplace to the super ops.

If you think about the total number of first there, that’s a significant count. So not just one. And then we, announced change day, which was also fun. The day we changed the industry. So we just exclamation pointed and put the dot at the end there for fun, but it was more of an inspirational story.

And I want everyone to hear what that was because there’s so many things that people say that I can’t change. I can’t do that. I hear all the time and I’m like. Yes, we can. You just have to really want to and if you really want to be successful in business and you really wanna drive the future forward and you really want to improve outcomes and improve the people and all the ecosystems and the communities that are around you and people that look up to you, you have to be a change agent.

And that’s where I think I get the greatest. Of pride and again, the biggest blessing is that we get to be that and it’s such an honor to be a part of all those things and to be able to just champion that change and lead the industry forward. It’s a little overwhelming when you think about it, but.

It’s setting a good example for what everyone can do in their businesses. And I’m honored to be a part of that journey.

Rich: Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking. I didn’t intend when I asked the question to put a bow on the conversation, exactly the way we’ve done, but we’ve been talking to the audience, to the MSPs in the audience about the importance of being willing to change and the power of that.

And you guys, you’re walking the walk at super ops. Yeah. In terms of. Your business as well.

Juan: It’s an honor. It’s an honor. Again, listening has been the key to our success, hearing it from everybody, what they really wanted and the change they want to see in the industry, those conversations at the bar and the industry and the communities and really listening to, I really wish this would change.

That’s what we did. We just listen. And here we are to help make that change. Cheers to everybody. We’re listening, but it’s same token, hopefully it’s improving your businesses at the same time.

Erick: As I’m listening to this last back and forth phrase came to mind, right? Yes, you can.

I’m just taking away that you guys are pioneering, you’re building these things to enable and empower partners to make that change using business intelligence, making these great alliance relationships with folks like PAX eight. All I, and I just that phrase just popped into my head.

Si se puede. Appreciate you guys being on.

Juan: I love that. And you too, guys, you guys are

Erick: doing the same thing. Yeah. Make

Nancy: some t shirts. Yeah. It’s funny, the thought that came to mind for me was where there’s a will, there’s a way. And so that’s along with it. So

Rich: Juan, Nancy, thanks so much for joining us here on the show.

Juan if folks want to learn more About you and get in touch with you. Maybe following up on this. Where should they go?

Juan: Yeah, absolutely. One at super ops dot com. Again, I’ll give out my cell phone number. 505 270 6558. Feel free to shoot me a text. I answer them all. You can give me a call if you need some help.

You got some amazing folks here. I know Nancy may not be as brave to give her cell phone out, but my wife hates me for doing it. Yeah. But that being said on LinkedIn as well also come take a visit and check us out over at super ops. com. If you guys, we are running some shows.

If you want me and Nancy on LinkedIn, we’d love to introduce you to the product and see what your future could look like, but Nancy how can they contact you?

Nancy: Yeah, so very similar ways. So I won’t give you my last my email because it’s so long. It’s my name dot my last name. Anyway beyond that, you can find me on LinkedIn.

For the younger crowd, you can find me on IG. I like to hang out on Instagram. Beyond that, you also have my cell phone number. It’s 832 212 8373. It doesn’t blow as well as Juan’s, but there it is. You can also text me, call me. I’m here to help.

Rich: Fantastic. Thank you both very much. Folks, we are going to take a quick break here.

When Erick and I come back on the other side of that break, we’re going to chat a little bit about the conversation we just concluded with Juan Fernandez and Nancy Henriquez, maybe have a little fun, wrap up the show, stick around, we are going to be right back.[01:05:00]

All right, and welcome back to part three of this episode of the MSP Chat Podcast, sponsored by Super Ops. Plenty of good stuff to to talk about there, but the thing I’m going to flag, because for me, This is probably the insight that I’m most going to take away from and incorporate in my thinking going forward is just how to think about business intelligence and what the challenge is there and what it means.

To to be doing business intelligence. And if you had asked me before that conversation, I would have told you fundamentally the challenge around business intelligence is assembling the data you need to understand how things are going and then generating useful reports with that information.

Getting the data, visualizing the data. What I, what really struck me from that conversation is all of that is true. And those are challenges and things that you need to think about, but there is also the very important issue of being willing to act on the information, the business intelligence that you assembled.

That is one of those challenges around business intelligence. Even if you’re really good at pulling the data together and generating the reports and taking a look at the reports. If you will not act on what then you’re really not you’re not doing business intelligence is certainly not taking advantage of the tools you’ve got.

Erick: I think you’re spot on rich. I really keyed in on that as well. And candidly, you’re creating a lot more work for yourself when you unearth this data, because you’re going to see just how great or how bad things are. And if you’re not willing to invest the time, energy, and effort into putting a plan together to prioritize.

The things that can give you the best ROI or resolve the biggest pains in an order that you are committed to execute on, then why do it in the first place? You’ve got to know going in that this is another phase of leadership, maturity, business maturity. And understand that you can’t do it yourself.

So as I sit back and reflect on this topic and the conversation that we just had, it’s apparent that you need to be ready to go all in, right? You can’t just dip your toe in the pool and go, ah, it’s too cold and walk away because it takes a lot of time, energy, effort, and money to do this right.

To get the business intelligence, to get the platforms to optimize, to configure, to report. And then to sit down and be honest with yourself and say, okay, this is what I have, how am I going to address the challenges that I have? How am I going to take advantage of the opportunities and who on my team can I rely on to bring in and share this with and help get it done?

Because now you’re managing some of that non billable time that we talked about at the beginning of the episode, rich, and you’re asking other team members to help in. Making change. And as we know, MSPs are juggling fireballs all the time and it’s tough to find time or change. Heck it’s tough to find time, just to fix core operational efficiency challenges as we discussed earlier as well.

So it’s, you gotta be ready for it and you have to be committed. And you have to lead the team through it, because if they feel you’re the sponsor of this initiative, and they get a sense that you’re shaky on it, or you’re really not managing this process properly, then they’re going to lose interest to and once that happens, it’s really hard to regain that traction and that trust.

Get everybody amped up to get after it.

Rich: Yeah. You you don’t know what you don’t know if you’re not assembling and reporting on data, but like you said, you’re, you are wasting a lot of time and probably money if you figure that out and don’t do anything with that information. I think that Two sort of related takeaways would be metrics, data and metrics based on those data are going to enable you to make smarter, better, more effective decisions, but you’ve got to make it part of your discipline to not just look at the data, but to make sometimes difficult, potentially time consuming changes based on what you’ll learn.

Erick: And ultimately you’ll be happier for it. Your staff will be happier for it. You’ll increase the valuation of your company. And you’ll increase your profitability along the way.

Rich: Erick, that leaves us with time for just one last thing on this episode of the show sponsored by Super Ops. It comes to us from Orlando, a city I will be visiting in September to attend [01:10:00] an IT by design event.

Which I believe is taking place at a hotel very near Disney World, which is great because maybe I can go visit the Wyndham Orlando Resort and Conference Center near Celebration, Florida, which is apparently not too far from Disney’s world. And if I do, and I go there between the hours of 9 a.

m. and 2 p. m., I can order a drink at the hotel bar from an A. I. bartender. Now this is not a robot it’s a machine that I believe is in the lobby of this hotel. But there is this AI generated video woman named Sarah. You’re interacting with, and you place your order with her and the machine will spit out.

I probably shouldn’t say spit out, but it will prepare the drink for you. Now there’s, there’s a lot of talk about will AI put people outta work or not? And by and large, and there, there’s actually some data in this news story where I got this from where the numbers are about the same in terms of people who think AI is gonna help me versus AI is gonna harm me.

And in my work if you’re a bartender, you have to at least consider that Sarah, the AI bartender knows how to make hundreds of different drinks and can make up to 120 drinks. an hour. Which is pretty impressive. Difficult for a human bartender to keep up with. Now, the chatter is probably not going to be as good.

You’re not gonna want to hang out at the bar, I think, with Sarah, the A. I bartender. But but then again, 120 beverages an hour. Maybe teamwork is the moral of the story here is you need a human bartender who’s working the customers and then, you Sarah in the background, they’re actually generating 120 drinks an hour.

Erick: Rich it’s I don’t know if it’s I don’t know how I feel about it. Candidly. It’s I saw the news story. I saw a, I watched a a news clip segment where they were showing this thing and it reminded me of, it reminded me of a mashup of a, an electronic gambling machine in Vegas. With when you walk up to some of the fast food restaurants now, and you can just punch in.

You know what your order is before and you don’t have to speak to anybody and then you just pick it up when it’s ready. So it’s that way. Sarah, probably version 2. 0 would probably be a little bit more. Engaging for sure. But the other side of my brain says, man, who wouldn’t want something like that in their house where you can just walk in after a hard day and go, Hey, today, I want a Manhattan or I want a whiskey sour, or I want, name your favorite cocktail.

Probably tell I like whiskey rich.

Rich: And I wouldn’t be surprised if devices like that either exist now or coming along pretty soon. I

Erick: mean, they do have those those coffee machines where you can tell if you want an espresso, a cappuccino, you want this or that and the other thing, and you can get those in your house now.

Rich: Not a stretch, not a giant stretch. Folks, that is all the time we’ve got for you this week. Or at least on this episode of the MSP chat podcast sponsored by the folks at super ops. We are both a video and an audio podcast. So if you happen to be listening to the audio version, but you’d like to check us out on video, go to YouTube, look up MSP chat, you will find us there.

If you are watching us on video, but sometimes you listen to audio podcasts go to wherever it is you get your audio podcasts. I guarantee you. You’re going to find the MSP chat show there as well. Either way, please subscribe, rate, review. It’s going to help other folks like you find and enjoy the show.

This show is produced by the great Russ Johns. He’s part of the team with us here at Channel Mastered. He’d be happy to do a podcast for you too, if you’d like. And that’s just one of the many things Channel Mastered can do for its clients. You can learn all about all of that at www.

channelmastered. com. Channel Mastered has a sister organization called MSP Mastered, which is where Erick works directly with MSPs one on one to help them grow and optimize their business. You can learn more about that organization at www. mspmastered. com. Once again, we thank you very much for joining us on this show.

We’re going to join or join you again. I have another show for you in just a few days. As a matter of fact, and until then, please allow me to remind you that you cannot spell channel without M S P.