How MSPs Can Onboard Customers to New BDR Systems
Onboarding customers to new backup and disaster recovery (BDR) systems is a similar process to onboarding new customers — at least that’s the case for one managed services provider (MSP).
Hilltop Consultants Consulting Services Director Paul Recksiek says his company follows a documented process for onboarding a new BDR system for a new customer.
“A Hilltop project manager handles the organization and timing of each phase of the onboarding using a template saved in our ticketing system,” he says. “After Hilltop Consultants sells a device the onboarding process starts with a phone call to the client to discuss their backup options.”
Hilltop’s project manager typically covers the following points during the conversation:
- How frequently does the client want to backup each server? While not the norm, we have clients that take backups every 15 minutes of their file servers.
- Does the client have retention policies for how long they retain backups? If not, this call is a great conversation starter for putting retention policies in place, both for live data and backups.
- Can all the backup data be synchronized offsite? We have clients that have sensitive data that for legal reasons cannot be stored offsite.
The company then sends a junior technician to the site to do a physical installation, which benefits both the customer and Hilltop, he says.
“The junior technician enjoys the onsite because they get to ‘play with servers’ and the client puts a name to a face that normally only works remote helpdesk,” he says. “The on-site setup process is documented and straight forward, the technician is normally onsite for 30 minutes.”
Afterward, Hilltop network operations center (NOC) engineers complete the configuration remotely according to the options discussed in the original kickoff phone call. Then Recksiek has a follow-up call with the customer.
“This is a great chance to demonstrate the value of their new backup,” he says. “Backup technology has improved so dramatically in the past few years, clients are ‘wowed’ by the speed and ease of restores. I had a client audibly sigh earlier this week when she saw we could restore an entire server in under ten minutes with a few clicks.”
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