How Green is Your MSP?

Adopting Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) protocols has become the norm for many organisations. It goes beyond regulatory compliance and enters the realm of corporate responsibility. For MSPs, this means providing the most reliable ICT services whilst also being responsible and forward-thinking about minimising the environmental impact. Creating more sustainable managed services is a collective responsibility, so here we look at some of the innovative ways that this can be achieved.

Automating value from what you already have

Increasing resource capacity without hiring more people is the holy grail for MSPs but this is easier said than done. Technology and automation are the founding principles for achieving this but not every MSP has the latest systems and tooling in place for comprehensive Service Management. There needs to be an overall shift away from managing tasks and inputs to creating workflows that ensure routine tasks are done accurately and efficiently. It is much easier, safer and cost-effective to scale your operations with workflows, rather than recruiting more and more staff as you grow your customer base.

Using workflow automation, routine tasks such as ticket routing, issue escalation, and client onboarding can be streamlined, freeing up valuable time and resources for more strategic initiatives. Additionally, standardised workflows maintain consistency in service delivery, so that best practices are followed across all client engagements. Leveraging workflows allows improved collaboration and communication between your teams. By defining clear processes and assigning responsibilities within automated workflows, team members can easily track the status of tasks, identify bottlenecks, and collaborate more effectively to resolve issues.

This enhanced visibility into operations helps you identify areas for improvement and continuously optimise processes. Centralising documentation and knowledge within workflow management systems, your MSP can facilitate smoother transitions during staff turnover and ensure that institutional knowledge is retained within the organisation. Ultimately, by embracing workflow automation, MSPs can operate more efficiently, deliver a better service to customers and drive business growth.

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

As well as leveraging Service Management platforms like ServiceNow, MSPs can also harness the power of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). One interesting way these techniques can contribute to environmental sustainability is through predictive analytics. By analysing historical data that reveal patterns, algorithms can forecast future service demands, enabling MSPs to optimise resource allocation and minimise energy consumption. This proactive approach helps reduce unnecessary server loads, cooling requirements and overall energy usage, ultimately lowering the carbon footprint of an MSP’s operations.

These predictive powers can accurately identify issues early or before they even happen. For example, alerts can be raised to carry out proactive maintenance on equipment, reducing the probability of system outages and emergency repairs, which cause unnecessary customer frustration and excess resources to fix.

AI-enabled insights and decision support can empower you to make data-driven decisions that prioritise sustainability by identifying inefficiencies and implementing targeted improvements to reduce waste and environmental impact. For example, algorithms can analyse data from various sources, such as energy consumption metrics and service utilisation patterns, to identify opportunities for optimisation and resource conservation.

Staying lean

The best MSPs take the approach of an athlete. They stay lean to avoid poor performance because they need to be agile and streamlined, as this will help prevent system outages from occurring. To improve resilience, staff need to be ready and well-trained in multiple disciplines to prevent them from being over-staffed, encouraging operational efficiency.

From a lean technology perspective, running physical servers and hardware on-site requires a lot of power. To manage increased electricity usage, MSPs can adopt virtualisation to help reduce the number of servers. In some cases, cloud technologies from third-party vendors may be available to help minimise local energy consumption, although it could be argued that this simply moves the energy burden somewhere else. However, by consolidating consumption in this way it is more likely the cloud provider can find more efficient management methods that being centralised allows.

Cloud and SaaS providers of IT applications and infrastructure are ideally placed to scale their platforms and optimise them based on a larger pool of customer demand, reducing over-provisioning and wastage. It is important to remove obsolete technology from your operations, but it is only one part of the strategy. Once again, we suggest a deep dive into your operating model and analyse what can be optimised, enhanced or decommissioned and swapped out for a better solution.

Embracing a Sustainable Future

MSPs that adopt green practices will likely see benefits far beyond energy savings. These include improved brand image, attracting eco-conscious customers and creating new services. As people want to work for socially and environmentally responsible companies that adopt the latest technologies and techniques, this will help boost employee morale and attract top talent.

The shift to greener practices is not just about being sustainable or following rules, it’s about future proofing MSPs. As the world looks to modern working practices that embrace cleaner and lower energy-dependent solutions to take care of our daily business needs, sustainability is no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have.