How Important Is Your MSP Team’s Documentation App, Really?

If you’re totally fine not knowing how much your managed service provider (MSP) team really uses the important software your business pays a bundle for each month, then move on. This isn’t the place for you.

But if you’re ready to start having real, data-backed conversations about what your team’s tech usage and work patterns look like—and where some collective improvements can be made—then stick around. I think you’re gonna like this.

Consider for a moment your business’s documentation application. Exciting stuff, I know.

But if you're an MSP, chances are you’re using IT Glue, Hudu, N-able Passportal, IT Boost or Confluence as a key tool in your regular workflow. These apps:

• give techs easy access to documentation, or organized collections of how-to guides, about the infrastructure they support;
• dramatically speed up the time it takes to resolve client IT issues; and
• improve the quality of support by establishing repeatable procedures.

Ultimately, these efficiency, consistency and effectiveness improvements mean a better client experience—the highest objective for an MSP, right?

Now think about how you use that app as part of your normal work day.

• When do you use the app?
• How frequently do you use it?
• How does your usage correlate with your personal productivity and success?

You can likely answer those questions pretty easily. But could you answer them on behalf of all your teammates? How is everyone else on your team using that app in their workflows, and how does that differ from what you’d expect?

An audit of your MSP team’s app usage

We add new apps to our tech stack to save money, save time and improve efficiency and effectiveness. But how often do we really take stock of whether our tech is achieving these things for us?

How about a simple experiment.

Analyzing app usage is an initiative your team can run over a short time period—say, two weeks—that can uncover clear information about how the MSP software you have is actually being used. And it's completely free.

By adding on data from everywhere your team members get work done, you build a complete picture of what digital work looks like for your team on a daily, weekly, and eventually monthly and yearly basis.

But everyone needs a simple place to start that's easy to understand. Hence, documentation.

How your MSP team really uses your documentation app

Your business is spending thousands of dollars a year on its documentation app because of its clear business benefits. But how much do you really know about how your team is using it on a day-to-day basis?

• How many hours a week would you assume your team members spend in your documentation app?
• Is the app getting used for every client issue every time, or just sometimes?
• If team members aren’t using it to get the information they need to deliver the best possible client experience, are they using something else or just trying to solve issues on their own?

If your team members aren’t using the app when and how you think they should be, chances are they’re going to make more mistakes, it’s going to take them longer to solve their tickets, and if they’re struggling, they’re likely going to interrupt their co-workers for help.

All of these things come with a cost.

Data that leads to meaningful team conversations

Setting your MSP team up in Produce8 for just two weeks (did I mention it’s free?) gives your business the opportunity to find out exactly how your documentation app is being used as part of your team’s regular workflow. And with that information, you can start to have some pretty interesting conversations.

For example, if you have team members who only use the app occasionally or for quick durations, is there a problem with the application itself?

• Is the content not useful or not being updated?
• Is the app or the content too difficult to navigate?

And perhaps certain members of your team aren’t using the app at all. Why not?

• Is there a training issue with the app?
• Are some of your team members finding it easier to jusk ask others for answers?
• Does your onboarding process need a few tweaks?

Again, your business invests a lot in your technology. Having access to accurate data about how it's really being used—and even how it’s being used in conjunction with other tools—and then having informed conversations about what you’re seeing enables you to take action to improve both your processes and your outcomes.

Let’s dig into this a little deeper…

How your MSP team uses internal vs external knowledge sources

If the data you uncover from this little experiment shows some of your team members use your documentation app only infrequently, while others not at all, then where are they getting the info they need to perform their jobs?

Some industry veterans may understand your clients and their technology so well from experience they won’t need to reference your documentation. But in other cases, your team members are probably looking elsewhere for answers.

While your documentation app is a key internal knowledge source for your MSP, there are some popular external knowledge sources as well that your team members may be leveraging:

• Reddit communities like r/msp;
• MSP and IT-focused LinkedIn and Facebook groups; and
• industry-related Slack channels are all active and valuable sources of real-time knowledge.

We don’t typically think of these as apps in our tech stack, but if your team members start sharing their typical work patterns, you might find these knowledge sources are more important to their workflows than you think.

And this strikes a whole new conversation.

If your most successful team members are using external knowledge sources in their regular workflow:

• does your internal knowledge source need a rehaul;
• should you be encouraging all team members to leverage these external sources; or
• should your business be encouraging a combination of both?

Either way, there are huge benefits to building a better understanding of how great outcomes in your business are being accomplished. And not just by combining internal and external knowledge sources, but also how your team regularly works among all the various applications in your current tech stack.

It’s time to start an app audit initiative with your team

Having informed conversations about your team members’ true usage of your MSP’s key applications isn’t about reprimanding ‘bad behavior’. We’re not in grade school here.

And beginning with your documentation app—a tool that’s only valuable if it’s actually being used—is a great place to start your digital work audit.

Then, you can build out your team’s transparent digital work environment from there so everyone can better understand the habits and patterns of one another to foster more effective and productive digital teamwork. Collectively addressing the struggles and building on the clear wins is a surefire recipe for success.

Ready to get started? Get the data for free and the conversations it leads to could transform your MSP team’s workdays.

10 Simple steps for running your team's app audit

1. Write down what you think the results of your app audit might be. For example: How often is each team member spending in your documentation app per day, and which team members do you think use it most?
2. Communicate to the team that you want to better understand how internal and external knowledge systems get used in their workflow. You can also share this article we put together that explains a bit more about what we’re trying to do for teams like yours.
3. Join Produce8 (in beta) and let us know you want to run the experiment. We’ll get you set up and we'll walk you through the app.
4. Create an account and add your internal and external knowledge sources, such as IT Glue and r/MSP.
5. Get your service delivery team to join and download the browser extension.
6. Let the app run for two weeks.
7. Get together with your team and compare the results against your initial hypotheses.
8. As a team, collectively recommend some changes you can all make.
9. Run the audit again whenever you like, or try it with some other apps. Produce8 will have a free-forever plan, even after we’re out of beta.
10. Let us know how it went!