Five RMM Must-Haves for World-Class MSPs

Most MSPs recognize that remote monitoring and management (RMM) is essential for supporting customers efficiently. But how do you know which of the many solutions available will deliver the performance and the business transformation services your practice needs to survive and thrive?

Consider these five must-haves when evaluating a RMM platform:

1. Monitoring to the max: Monitoring is the cornerstone of a managed services business. It’s what allows the MSP to deliver its services in a proactive manner and gain visibility into the customer’s environment. Monitoring also keeps trouble away, and, as a result, it’s what matters most to your clients. So don’t cut corners when it comes to this all-important service. For starters, make sure your RMM platform supports a broad range of operating systems. You want all your client devices covered. Also, an MSP should be able to see all devices at all customer locations in a single listing for ease of monitoring. MSPs need to have a level of control, too–including being able to set or customize thresholds for events that will trigger alerts sent to you and your technicians via email or SMS.
2. Core capabilities: At minimum, your RMM platform should meet your needs and those of your customers with the ability to automate routine IT tasks, monitor IP-enabled devices, remotely manage and control devices and provide detailed performance reporting. It should also support additional revenue-building services such as managed endpoint protection, backup and disaster recovery, auditing, and compliance and mobile device management.
3. Ease of administration: Taking a deeper dive, make sure your RMM platform also offers the value adds that will put ease of administration front and center for your team. For example, can you create automation policies using a drag-and-drop interface? How about PSA integration? Make sure your RMM solution works well with your PSA platform so that you can save time, close tickets faster and tackle projects with ease under a single pane of glass. In addition, regularly scheduled management activities in your RMM platform will ensure that your work is performed on task and in alliance with client business needs. Remote troubleshooting–for registration editing, printer management, command prompt execution and more–should also be executable without interrupting the end user. And when it comes to remote assistance, it’s important to be able to support end customers without the need for them to install the software ahead of time.
4. Flexibility for the win: Roughly 80% of the MSP marketplace is dominated by “responsive” customers who see IT as a cost and only call when they have a problem to be fixed. To reach this majority, an MSP needs to offer a flexible licensing model for trialing services rather than deploying full versions. This opens the door for customers not yet ready to adopt full-fledged managed services. Accordingly, it’s essential that your RMM platform supports this flexibility, with modularity that allows you to sell single solutions (like backup or antivirus) as managed services. This lets you bring more customers onto your dashboard and allows you to sell to customers of all IT maturity levels.
5. Reporting the right way: When everything is running smoothly–which it will be with the right RMM solution in play–then reporting serves as the important proof point for the work you’ve done, oftentimes in the background, for your customers. How much or how little reporting you choose to provide your clients with is up to you, and it may vary by customer. First,  you want to be able to offer both tactical and business-level reporting, including a look at long-term trends, to give your clients a perspective on what might lie ahead in their IT landscape. Second, it’s essential to be able to customize your reports according to clients’ unique business needs. Here’s where a drag-and-drop interface can make a difference with your RMM platform–allowing you to quickly pull in what you’d like to include or eliminate what you’d like to leave out. Lastly, an MSP should be able to run reports without worrying about the impact on the monitoring server.

Remember that world-class RMM goes beyond software to include the essential business transformation services you need to identify, price and go to market with the right set of services in the shortest time possible. An experienced, partnership-oriented RMM vendor will provide support for all of these aspects of your business, guiding you every step of the way to run your practice more efficiently and profitably.

Frank Colletti is vice president of sales for SolarWinds N-able, a global leader in remote monitoring and management (RMM) and service automation software. In this role, he is responsible for building the sales infrastructure and culture that supports the company’s managed service provider (MSP) partners worldwide, including new customer acquisition and vertical market efforts. With more than 16 years of experience in sales leadership, Colletti brings an in-depth understanding of sales and MSP expertise to N-able. Since joining the company in 2003, he has made significant contributions to the success and year-over-year growth of N-able and its MSP partner community. Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.