041: Managed Services Roundtable with Allen Hancock, Luis Giraldo, and Kevin Ginger, Part 1

Recorded March 2, 2014

Sponsored by MoonClerk

This is part one of a special two-part Managed Services roundtable feature six members of the Apple Consultants Network, discussing the benefits of a Managed Services pricing model and how to transition a traditional hourly-billing consultancy into offering Managed Services.

Thanks to our brand new sponsor, MoonClerk – an easy and inexpensive way to collect recurring payments for your subscription services.

Thanks also to our special guests for this roundtable:
Allen Hancock, The Orchard Solutions and Watchman Monitoring
Luis Giraldo, Ook Enterprises and MonkeyBox
Kevin Ginger, kGinger Consulting

Topics:

- using half-day and full-day rates to discourage "tire-kickers" and very infrequent break-fix clients, helping to position Managed Services as a better alternative

- should a Managed Services Provider include Help Desk services? end-user training? value-adds vs. just keeping the systems running

- transitioning from "one-man-show" to managed services consultancy; see also: CCP 013: Easing into Managed Services with Allen Hancock and 010: Managed Services discussion with Luis Giraldo

- developing systems for consistency, standardization to improve efficiency

- Quantifying the Value of Managed Services blog post by Luis

- "first 15 minutes free for $_/mo" is a good first step; relieves burden bulk hours

- business clients are more efficient billing-wise, and from the perspective of delivering value

- residential clients are higher-maintenance, higher-touch, more-demanding, and less efficient

- yet, Allen points out that residential clients can be more satisfying to work with, and when charging hourly it doesn't matter because they all pay the same rate

- enforcing the use of a help desk ticketing system

- user training: why should users use your ticketing system?

- reminding clients to restart

Memorable lines:

- "Hourly billing breeds inefficiency." – Luis (see also: "how hourly billing is the scum of the Earth" in 010: Managed Services discussion with Luis Giraldo)

"All inclusive billing breeds efficiency." – Luis

"We hate spending time tracking time." – Luis

"Allen, is there any way to wire that support menu to a restart command?" – Joe
"And we don't need to save, right?" – Allen
"If they call, their call can be directed to voicemail if they haven't restarted." – Joe
"Spoken like a true 'break/fix man'." – Luis

036: Low Hanging Fruit & Slow Paying Clients

Recorded live February 4, 2014

Topics:

- dealing with clients who are slow to pay

- recurring payment processing options: Ryan said, "jotform.com for cheap forms with Stripe recurring payments" and Allen said "keep the card with Merchant Warehouse; stripe will do this on its own; or recurly.com"

- serving on the ACN Advisory Council as a way to get more involved and give back to the community 

- Printers going off-line and needing to be power cycled

- why kernel_task sometimes pegs the CPU at 100% or more: seems to be related to throttling CPU intensive tasks to cool the system down when it's too warm by prioritizing simpler system tasks

- re: recent discussion on Accidental Tech Podcast about pitfalls in modern technology that our kids will think were crazy: no one mentioned passwords!

020: Client Anecdotes & Rates

Recorded Live October 8, 2013

Topics:

- Quicken 2007 for Lion; migrating from Quicken 2003

- Sam's story about his client's self-help attempt: the client diagnosed a server's startup disk failing, erased the Time Machine backup, cloned a copy of the data to it, and then when the clone wouldn't boot, they called their trusted advisor (Sam) to swoop in and heroically save the day.

- liquid spills, and the accompanying story

- what to do when a client declines a backup recommendation

- Jerry's story of the need for a consultant to support legacy equipment

- Joe raised his rates recently; here's how

- new services; group class offering; break-even analysis

Memorable Lines:

"Step 1: Diagnose drive failure; step 2: erase the backup." - Joe

Picks of the Week:

- PowerBookMedic.com 

- SignMyPad.com  

015: Unplugging and Unwinding

Recorded Live on September 3, 2013

Topics:

- subcontracting for another consultancy

- OnForce

- what we do to unplug and unwind: stare at the wall, sail, hike/backpack, camp, kayak, run, play soccer, play poker, walk, listen to music, listen to podcasts, do yoga

- what you do to unplug and unwind: cook, row, do karate

- podcast recommendations

- standing desk recommendations

Picks of the Week:

- TeamViewer and join.me – Jerry

- Passenger – Sam

- Delivery Status – Joe

Mentions:

- Downcast

- Kangaroo Adjustable Height Desks (not to be confused with Kanguru.com flash drives!)

014: Pricing Roundtable

Recorded Live on 8/27/2013

Sam, Jerry, and Joe discuss rates and pricing after a digression into Mac OS X Server services.

Followup:

- Jerry reports that Find My Mac only works on WiFi; only works when WiFi network interface is listed first in Network preferences set service order; requires Recovery Partition

Topics:

- password manager frustrations; Apple's opportunity to solve the problem with iPhone 5S and iCloud Keychain

- Jerry mentions Ryan Block's idea to prevent iPhone from turning off unless passcode was entered to improve security and allow Find My iPhone

- Sam discusses using Profile Manager to enable Remote Wipe without iCloud

- Mac OS X Server services discussion; in-house email hosting considerations

- rates discussion: how to charge; minimums; project-based billing vs. hourly

- onsite/phone/remote; labor; diagnostics fee; travel time

- discount for contracts/prepaid hours

- whether to post rates on the website

- remote support options: ARD over VPN, join.me, TeamViewer

- remote hard drive shredding vs. occupying space on the workbench to securely erase

013: Easing into Managed Services with Allen Hancock

Joe, Jerry, and Sam are joined by Allen Hancock of The Orchard Solutions and Watchman Monitoring to discuss Allen's "hybrid" Managed Services model.  Allen offers a "Personal Support" option including unlimited quick phone calls and emails for $25/month per person.

Topics:

- Sam discusses some of the stresses associated with Apple Professional Services (APS) projects; normally as consultants we have flexibility and can work directly with clients to address unforeseen issues; but in the case of APS, due to travel and other agreements, APS gigs must be completed in the allotted timeframe which adds pressure

- Sam updates us on his hiring process; interested consultants in the CT-NY-NJ area should contact @IAMSamValencia

- Jerry reports difficulty with Find My Mac on machines with a static IP address; to be continued

- Jerry brings up the pitfalls of full disk encryption using FileVault 2 on an unattended server; in case of an unexpected or soft restart, the system will boot to the FileVault 2 unlock screen, prompting for the encryption password before the system starts up or any services start; this prevents any kind of remote access via screen sharing or remote login; Apple provides a command line tool (fdesetup authrestart) to perform a one-time restart that bypasses the initial unlock; however, this doesn't help if the machine has lost power or become unresponsive; a KVM-over-IP device can solve that, but typically requires a Java app on the client machine to access the remote machine

- Allen identifies a common problem for consultants: how to track and bill for all those random emails and quick phone calls

- Allen's solution: "Personal Support" @ $25 per month, per person; includes unlimited quick emails or phone calls. He estimates this part of his Support Agreement earns him about $2500/month after 1.5 years, based 100 people who subscribed.

- Clients paying monthly for unlimited quick questions encourages them to call on a whim; this leads to billable work too, since anything over 15 minutes would be a billable consultation

- He also offers a Proactive Monitoring service: collecting $10/month per computer; ($15/month for all the computers in a house) results in more billable work as machines report issues to consultant and consultant notifies client with recommended resolution

- His monitoring service received much more uptake; 350 monitored computers bringing in an additional $3000 a month.

- Had two techs on staff at the time.

Mentions:

- ProSoft Data Rescue

Memorable Lines:

- "Death by a thousand 5-minute emails" – Joe