Regular Monthly Maintenance - Lessons Learned

Regular Monthly Maintenance - Lessons Learned

This is Episode 12 of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. 

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Today's topic:  Regular Monthly Maintenance

In earlier installments, I talked about a few key things I learned before I found myself providing services in the SMB space. Two of these combined to create one of the top-five lessons I ever learned - and a lesson that become the absolute foundation of the managed service business model.

Back around the year 2000, there were a few people speculating about whether some piece of the small business consulting world could be flat-fee. But lots of people, like me, had moved from big-business IT support to small business IT. And many of us assumed that two things were required for good tech support:

• Daily backups, which are tested regularly

and

• Scheduled monthly maintenance

Basically, all tech support was on-demand or "break-fix" at the time. I had signed contracts with clients since 1995 because I didn't know that most people didn't sign contracts. I had a couple different price points, and the good price was connected to regular monthly visits.

Essentially, I set up great backup systems and documented them. Then I showed clients how to switch tapes or discs every day. And I offered to train them on restoring from backup so they could test their backups regularly. I was a bit of a fanatic about this.

... And no one ever agreed to test their own backs. This included some very technical clients. We had client contacts who were Novell CNE's, programmers, and generally knowledgeable technicians. These folks, more than most, understood the value of the backups - and thought testing them was a pain in the neck.

Hey, for $120/hour, I'll remove the pain from your neck. 

Monthly maintenance was much more than testing the backups. It was the really boring stuff it takes to make sure systems are working well. We did a checks manually that are automated today by RMM tools. At the time, there were very few remove monitoring and reporting tools, and the few that existed were nearly impossible to schedule. And, for the most part, they didn't do much.

If you look at my "old" 68-point checklist, it gives you a good idea of the manual checks we did. Almost everything on that checklist was either basic common sense (e.g., verify that the anti-virus tool is working and up to date) or something that became an on-going habit after a bad experience (for example, verifying that the server isn't super-low on disc space). You may know the old saying, "Once bitten, twice shy." Once I was bitten, I considered adding a check to the monthly maintenance checklist.

See version 3.0 of the 68-point checklist here. Note that there's a bigger, far more complicated and modern checklist as well.

We also check the activity logs/event logs/error logs. The nature of these varied between operating systems. Over time, clients migrated to Windows systems, and the process of checking logs became easier, of course.

There are three big reasons you should do regularly scheduled monthly maintenance with ALL clients - even if they're not on managed services. First, it really is necessary. Today, with good RMM tools, most of these check-ups are done every sixty seconds. But not all of them (for example, putting human eyes on the event logs). Why are they necessary? Because you find things! You find errors. Notice that there are regular errors. You see that disc space is running low. Rather than find out about something when the client has downtime, you can prevent downtime by paying attention before it happens.

Second, this is a great opportunity to get into the client's office and make contact in a very predictable way. The client gets used to seeing you, and sees you working on their systems. This can (and should) include keeping your eyes on their hardware, testing battery backups, etc. After all, if you're 100% remote, you'll never hear that noisy fan in network rack!

Third, regular monthly maintenance will help you make sales. In part, this is because of the things you'll find. But it is also part of the overall process of taking responsibility for the client's technology. Here's a non-tech story to illustrate how this works.

Many years ago (at my last real job, actually), I worked in downtown Sacramento, and there was a national-brand tire store just a few blocks away. Because they were convenient and had decent prices, I bought a set of new tires from them. Since they also provided regular maintenance (oil changes, lube jobs, brakes, etc.), I started having them do all of my car maintenance.

The, one day, I took my car in for something and they offered a free many-point safety checkup. Of course I said yes. Imagine my surprise when they came back and said that my tires were starting to wear out. The mechanic said, "It looks like they've never been rotated!" I was shocked. As I told him, I'd bought the tires from them AND had them do every bit of maintenance on my car since that day. So, it was very irritating to hear that they had never rotated the tires as part of regular maintenance.

I might be right or I might be wrong in that situation. I'll be happy to discuss that over several beers. But here's the point: Your client will assume that you are taking care of everything on their network. So you better be doing it! This can be summarized by another old saying: "You touch it; you own it."

Ultimately, maintenance prevents problems. That's true with cars, household repairs, and computer networks. And you can ignore it for a long time, but you'll pay the price eventually. For businesses, that price normally includes network downtime. 

Over time, clients learn the value of regular maintenance, especially if you provide them with reports on what you do. So . . .

I found that I had several clients for whom I did regular monthly maintenance on their servers, networks, and desktop machines. I applied updates to hardware, software, and operating systems. I looked things over. I fixed little things and flagged big things. All of this was 100% billable.

I estimated that the regular labor was about one hour per server per month, and about fifteen minutes per desktop per month (average for a year). I hope you can see that that's regular, predictable revenue - truly the basis for managed services. And the overall effect was for the client to love our service and enjoy a much smoother operation. One day, I would offer these clients the same preventive maintenance service for a flat fee. It was an easy sale.

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For the last several years, I've taken the position that most people who call themselves managed service providers do not provide managed services. One big reason for that is the lack of regular preventive maintenance. To me, managed service was literally built on the concept of monthly maintenance.

If you wait for a client to tell you when something's wrong, you're probably not a true managed service provider. And, not coincidently, you're probably not doing regular monthly maintenance.

If you wait for the client to call you when something's wrong, you're providing break-fix support - even if you provide it for a flat monthly fee.

I'm grateful that my experience before and after I launched my IT business led me down the path to preventive maintenance. It has become one of the most important elements of my career for the last thirty years! And, as you can see, I'm very passionate about it.

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Next week, I address the never-ending problem of scoundrels in our industry. I'm not talking about incompetent technicians (see Episode 9), but outright thieves and dishonest business people. I'm not sure entirely why I was surprised that there were so many dishonest people in IT, but I made a lot of money cleaning up their messes!

Up next . . .   Scoundrels Everywhere

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