Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock, you’ll know that artificial intelligence (AI) is the hot trend of 2023.
And while it isn’t exactly new, the Internet has been buzzing about AI over the past few months more than ever before.
We’ve recently witnessed an explosion in AI-generated content - from AI-written articles to AI-generated art to even AI-generated TV shows.
And while some of it is hilariously bad, it’s hard to deny the potential of AI.
While AI may not be at the level of replacing creative human minds (yet), it certainly can replace busy work nobody wants to handle.
Businesses across all industries are scrambling to take advantage of the artificial intelligence gold rush. And managed service providers (MSPs) are no exception.
Print Partner is the dedicated partner to hundreds of MSPs nationwide, providing managed print services (MPS) to your clients. By offloading your print-related tasks onto us, your team can focus on more critical, lucrative jobs, like implementing AI!
This article will tackle four ways artificial intelligence can help your MSP reach maximum efficiency.
1. Data Collection and Client Analysis
When considering AI’s potential value, think about areas of your business that are simple but time-consuming tasks. Think of work nobody wants to do that wastes precious hours of your employee’s time.
One role for AI that could be massively beneficial for MSPs is data collection.
Using AI-powered software, you can tap into your client’s Internet of Things (IoT) and easily organize your client’s information, like their network performance, hardware health, and overall user behavior.
Once your client’s information is recorded and tracked, AI can analyze data and provide insights to help you make informed, strategic business decisions.
AI can also analyze individual client data to identify improvement areas and suggest solutions. And doing so can lead to opportunities for your team to upsell and cross-sell your services.
For more tips on increasing your MSP’s sales, read: 5 Steps to Improve Your MSP Sales
Using AI data analysis, you can improve resource allocation as well. For example, AI can identify which clients use the most resources and suggest ways to optimize resource allocation to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
That way, your team gives individual clients the attention they need. You can avoid devoting too much attention to low-maintenance clients and plan for servicing high-priority ones.
This data may even highlight clients that are not profitable, costing you more money than they’re worth.
For more information on increasing your MSP’s profits and cutting out unnecessary costs, read: Top 5 Ways to Increase MSP Profitability in 2023
Remember that knowledge is power - the more data you collect, the more analysis you have at your fingertips, and the better position you’ll be in for making important decisions for your MSP.
2. Predictive Maintenance
Once you’ve collected enough data and have a reliable way to analyze it, you can use AI to provide predictive maintenance.
Predictive maintenance refers to the use of AI algorithms to predict when a device or system is likely to fail, allowing MSPs to take proactive steps to prevent downtime.
For example, AI algorithms can analyze data from a client's network devices to identify patterns indicating impending failure. Your MSP can then take preventive measures, such as updating firmware or replacing a component before it fails.
“Predictive maintenance takes advantage of the generous data output to identify where small issues are arising in machinery or processes,” reads a blog post from EC-MSP. “This can flag minor issues before they become serious and costly.”
Proactive AI maintenance saves time and money for your MSP. By preventing downtime, you can avoid costly emergency repairs and maintain service availability.
This, in turn, can improve client satisfaction and increase retention rates.
3. Intelligent Service Desk
ChatGPT will undoubtedly have a profound impact across many businesses of various industries.
For those unfamiliar, ChatGPT is an advanced text-based AI program that can create an impressive variety of content - users can request it to write songs, poems, screenplays, etc.
And while the AI-generated content isn’t exactly Shakespeare, the results are often pretty impressive, and many companies will likely use similar technology for their chatbots.
Many MSPs already use chatbots to answer basic questions on their websites. But with the direction AI is going, MSPs may soon be able to cut down on the amount of time their technicians spend on phones drastically.
AI-powered chatbots can answer frequently asked questions and quickly solve everyday problems - you know, the ones your technicians can do in their sleep. This can reduce the workload on service desk staff and free them up to handle more complex issues.
You can also use AI to analyze service desk data and identify areas for improvement. For example, an advanced chatbot can identify the most common types of support requests and suggest solutions to reduce their frequency. This can improve the service desk's efficiency and enhance the overall client experience.
4. New Client Onboarding
Onboarding new clients to your company’s management is often slow and repetitive.
It’s one of those very necessary evils of being an MSP. Onboarding involves lots of busy work, and the MSP doesn’t always have much notice beforehand.
An AI-managed workflow could easily remedy mindless and stressful tasks like onboarding.
Richard Tubb of Smarter MSP describes how MSP clients will sometimes call wanted to onboard immediately:
“Not only is this scenario frustrating, but it costs us, as MSPs, a huge amount of time and money,” writes Tubb. “What should be a low-priority task of setting up a new user, suddenly becomes a high-priority task that means we have to disrupt our day and scramble to do work. However, this scenario — setting up a new user — is ripe for task-driven automation.”
Tubb describes how an AI-powered engine could answer the following questions on each client during the onboarding process:
- Which Active Directory groups the user should be added to
- The Line of Business (LoB) applications the new user will require
- Which file storage locations the new user needs access to
- Which additional cloud applications the user needs a new account for
Using AI-driven operations, your MSP can quickly onboard new clients at a moment’s notice, and you won’t have to do the Monday morning scramble.
Print Partner Support for MSPs
Breakthroughs in artificial intelligence are happening every day. From creative projects to practical applications, we expect AI to be at the forefront of technological innovation for the foreseeable future.
While keeping up with industry trends can seem daunting, Print Partner has your back!
We are committed to supporting our MSP partners in all your endeavors by providing top-shelf managed print services to your clients. Most MSPs are not interested in dealing with their clients’ print devices.
We want to take the burden of print off of your shoulders.
Plus, we’ll pay you! For each deal we close, we’ll pay the person who registers the opportunity at least $500 for the introduction and an additional $250 per $25K in revenue the deal brings us. For the MSP, we’ll pay $1,000 per 11x17 MFP sold, $100 per printer sold, and 5% recurring revenue on the client’s print allotment. And we’ll provide exceptional client service while we’re at it.
So if you want to create an additional revenue stream while freeing up your team’s time to tackle more important tasks than troubleshooting printers, consider partnering with us, a Print Partner you can trust.
