If you’re an IT Service Manager thinking about joining an IT Peer Group, you may be wondering how you’ll benefit.

Here are 3 examples of the value of MSP-Ignite’s Service Managers Peer Group membership to help answer your question:

IT Peer Group Member’s Challenge: Time Management 

Suggestions from the Peer Group:

• Create a list of your Most Vital Priorities (MVP)’s at the end of the day (maybe even after leaving the office)
• Block off time first thing in the morning to address the items on your MVP list (maybe even start before the office opens up)
• Keep the list in front of you and as the day progresses, focus on your MVP list
• Drag and Drop email requests to your calendar and schedule time to do the work
• The list should be reasonable on what you can accomplish in a day (if you find you are not completing everything, then make shorter lists until you do

IT Peer Group Member’s Challenge: Hiring Technicians 

(Background: need to hire an on-site technician with every new client – takes 142 days on average to hire, new contract calls for on-site support in 60 days)

Suggestions from the Peer Group:

• Look to retail, specifically Geek Squad and Staples.  More than half the group reported great success in hiring these types of technical people
• Start the process of hiring when the Opportunity is 60 to 75% probability.  There is nothing wrong with posting for a job that does not exist yet.  Feel free to go through the screening process.  Be honest with the candidate.  There is no obligation until an offer is made.
• Hire a road warrior who can be parachuted into a new Customer site until the right candidate is hired and on-boarded (the added benefit here is that they do the onboarding and also instill company culture to the remote new hire technician).

Peer Group Member’s Challenge: Client Documentation

Suggestions from the Peer Group:

• What products really work? IT Glue, Sharepoint, others
• What does it take to implement? 4-8 hours per Customer is the general experience
• What does it take to maintain?  It does take some billable Resource time at no charge to the Customer; at least on a quarterly basis
• What information needs to be captured?  This was too much for a conference call so it is a parking lot item.  The list is being built via email between calls

For more information on MSP-Ignite’s Service Manager Peer Groups, reply to this article, visit https://www.msp-ignite.com/peer/service-managers/ or contact …