Costly Documentation Mistakes: What MSPs Need to Avoid 2024

Published 8 days ago5 min readMSP Client Retention...

Expensive documentation failures will be the topic of today's discussion. I will give examples of the most common documentation failures of service providers in my experience.

While you are here, Take a look at some of our other Computer Consulting related articles below that may interest you:

Lack Of Continuity

By far the biggest documentation failure among MSPs is lack of continuity. Because documentation is often an expensive task to keep up to date and there is no direct income stream visible from undertaking it, it is often not given the priority it deserves.

It is often an afterthought where either project employees or support desk staff are given very little time to record their actions both formally and informally. Documentation is relegated to “hurry up, we have another task or project”

Changing the perceived importance to support staff and creating a set of documentation guidelines will go a long way to eliminating a lack of documentation continuity.

Not Charging Clients For Documentation Tasks

Documentation tasks are often seen as internal non billable work which is insane in my opinion. Documentation should not form part of any agreement.

The reason for that is simple: Documentation for client environments is always going to require labor investment and it is not out of the ordinary to spend 10 or 20 hours working on a single client document that is so customized that it will never be used again.

It will not ever be used for any other client and so those are dead hours that will eat into your effective hours with any managed service contract you have. Ideally you have clients that understand the value of having technical documentation for their staff.

Not Vetting Clients Properly

Vetting clients so that you eliminate those potential clients that either do not value an organization that has the capability and technical expertise to assist them with their staff documentation or are unwilling to pay extra for this service.

You are unlikely to change a client's outlook when it comes to something as fundamental as the value documentation brings to their organization. You will constantly be fighting an uphill battle and it really is not worth the stress or frustration when you create a documentation equivalent of a work of art that saves their organization a fortune by making their staff more efficient and effective only to have them whine about getting an invoice for the work undertaken.

I used to find the situation where you put a lot of hard work into a document that you know saves the client time and having them complain about being billed for it is one of the most demoralizing situations to be in.

Documentation That Saves You Time

This idea that documentation that saves your organization time that is specific to one client should just be a cost you need to absorb is a huge mistake.

There needs to be a discussion with both current and potential clients where you obtain agreement with the client that if you require documentation written that will save your staff significant time to undertake tasks on their behalf, that you are able to invoice for that work over and above the service agreement you currently have with them.

If your client keeps having the same issue over and over and it takes 45 minutes on average to fix and you know that by creating a document for that process you can cut the time down to 10 minutes then that is not the service provider's cost to bear.

Most providers will look at this situation and will absorb the cost because it ultimately saves them significant labor costs however this is a terrible precedent to create. Have the discussion with the client before the situation actually occurs and explain that a percentage of their monthly agreement needs to be set aside (on top of the actual agreement) for incidentals relating to documentation tasks.

Now you cannot be unreasonable with this, perhaps agreeing to a figure up to 40% of the agreement value per month “COULD” be billed without obtaining extra approvals would be reasonable. This of course would be a sliding scale depending on the size of the monthly agreement. So for example it may be 10% for a 40K agreement versus 40% of a 2K agreement.

As the service provider you could then agree to manage the documentation so that it does not exceed 40% in any one month. These figures are just examples, work out something that works for your company.

Shared Client Documentation Platform

Another expensive documentation mistake I often see is service providers believing that using Sharepoint and sticky tape is a good idea for managing client documentation.

My strong belief is that if you cannot see the benefits of using an off the shelf documentation platform that is able to assign permissions at both the client and provider level on the same data silo then you do not comprehend the topic being discussed.

Sharing the documentation you have created with the client in a controlled way means that you can create documentation that benefits both parties, is easily updated once and at the end of the client relationship can be handed over to them relatively easily.

You need to deliver something that is worth paying for if you are charging for documentation. The client has to see the benefit and it has to be undertaken in a way that is easy to manage.

I have always liked MYGlue, which is the client side of ITGlue. There is a free read only component that allows client staff to access and it makes the offboarding of a client as simple as exporting a PDF with a single click.

Lets not forget that it also creates a situation where a client becomes dependent on the way in which you deliver their information to them. If it is simple and intuitive then a client is unlikely to be happy moving to another service provider that does not offer the identical experience with which they get from your MSP.

It means the client is far less likely to leave your organization if they cannot be sure to obtain the same experience from another provider. I believe that is called stickiness and it is something every provider should aim for.

Lack Of Staff Training On Documentation

Just because you swiped your credit card and have a 3 year locked in contract with a documentation platform such as the Hudu documentation system, it does not mean that your staff are capable of getting the most out of the chosen documentation software.

There needs to be structure and documentation framework put in place. It does not need to be the best strategy, there just needs to be a strategy. Do that and you are ahead of 80% of your competitors.

Internal Documentation Management

Think about the reason other organizations come to managed service companies? Think about the average non technical client and the likelihood of them being able to solve even a single technical issue when compared to even the most inexperienced help desk staff member and what are we looking at, 50 times faster with infinitely better results?

Why? Could it be because your technical employees have seen the same problem 100 times before, they did not have to spend 10 hours sitting in front of a computer screen trying to solve a problem that others can fix in 10 minutes because they have the experience as well as documentation and other more experienced tech staff they can rely on for advice?

I have actually been in that situation on both sides, watching a workmate who had spent 10 hours on a problem implode as he watched me fix it almost instantly. It was not because I was better than him, it was because I had solved that problem and knew how to fix it already.

It is always simple when you know the answer.

Same with documentation for service providers, I have seen what works, what doesn’t across a broad range of company sizes and am able to put strategies in place because I have already rectified the problems someone else does not even know they have yet.

I strongly advise using an organization that specializes in documentation strategies to help implement your chosen documentation platform.

Conclusion

I have detailed the most common and expensive documentation failures that MSPs face. By following what not to do, I find it helps a great deal in any situation especially when it comes to the specialty of MSP documentation and the high level architecture required to ensure a successful outcome.

We have a number of other Documentation consulting related articles listed below that will provide you with more detailed information on a number of related topics:

https://optimizeddocs.com/blogs/consulting/consulting-index-page-01

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