Kris Nehring, the co-founder and CEO of Stephenville, Texas-based Nehring Technology, shares three suggestions she'd apply if she were launching an MSP today:

1. Define the standards that are part of your solution – Make sure that you educate your customers, clients and potential customers about what the MSP’s standards are and that there's no grey area.

That's where you can end up losing the most money – when you have these grey or fuzzy edges.

Defining those and making sure that you stay within those boundaries, and that your clients stay within those, is important.

If you're on a fixed-fee model, you want to make sure those are very clear from the beginning.

2. Develop and document all processes and procedures – From top to bottom within the company, document everything from how you provide the service, all the way to how a technician handles a problem or a customer.

Make sure that everything is documented so that you have that consistent answer and experience that you provide each customer.

That also helps when you have new hires come on; everybody knows what's going on.

Trying to keep those standards and procedures established is something you find yourself chasing once you get really busy.

3. Standardize a hiring process – Have a really good assigned process on how hiring is done.

You want to identify a certain skillset and culture that you want to make sure that you're applying when bringing people on.

That way, whenever you need somebody in a hurry, you won't need to rush that process much, and you'll be able to retain good talent from the beginning.

It makes that process, that can sometimes be a little bit daunting, kind of squared away.

I guess I’m speaking to some of the challenges that you have once you're full into it. But if you didn’t do it well at first, you may have to backtrack.

Your staff are your customer-facing people.

You want that to be right from the beginning.

Editor’s note: Comments are edited to improve readability.

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