How to use free Asset Management tools to grow your MSP

For the past few months I’ve regularly been getting on my soapbox and sharing with anybody who will listen how I feel many IT solution providers and Managed Service Providers (MSP’s) are focusing too much on Servers and as a result are missing an important revenue opportunity with Client workstations. I recently wrote a blog post for the MSP Business Management web-site entitled Four Ways to Build your MSP through Client Workstation Maintenancewhich suggested MSP’s can make money from:-

• Backing up critical Workstations
• Workstation Security
• Quarterly Maintenance for Workstations
• Asset Management

The importance of Asset Management

The last of these four, Asset Management, is probably the most important to MSP’s as once you understand what assets a client has in their infrastructure, it opens up all sorts of other opportunities for you to upsell to a client including hardware upgrades, licensing compliance, and software deployment to name but three. But many IT Solution Providers who are transitioning into Managed Services struggle to capture complete client Asset Management details because most Remote Monitoring & Management (RMM) tools are aimed at MSP’s with clients who are under contract. If your client isn’t paying you for Managed Services but instead works with you on a Break/Fix basis, then most IT companies will hesitate to install an RMM agent that will incur a regular license cost for a client who they might not bill for weeks or months at a time. Many a time I’ve mused (out loud) to RMM vendors that in an ideal world, IT companies would be able to source this tool for free to enable them to quickly transition into Managed Services *without* incurring any costs.

A free Asset Management tool

So it was with interest that David Hay, Head of Partner Development at GFI Max, shared with me recently that GFI Max had heard quite enough of my incessant moaning on the subject committed to offering their Workstation Agent, complete with full Asset Management features, to their clients for free. To get the full story, I asked David if he’d be happy to join me on a recorded Skype call so I could get the full details from him to share with my blog readers. Here’s the recording of our 6 minute call.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO14L_G9S64&feature=youtu.be

(Thanks to David for his time, and Scott at GFI Max for kindly offering to polish the video up for us).

Conclusion

So, in a nutshell:-

• A GFI Max Dashboard account is free to setup.
• You can deploy the GFI Max Workstation Agent using the “Free Asset Management” template to as many workstations as you like at no charge.
• You can turn on any additional chargeable Workstation features (such as Take Control Remote Access, Managed Anti-Virus or Workstation Monitoring) at any point in the future.

Have clients on Break/Fix? There’s now no downside to deploying the GFI Max Workstation Agent for free. You won’t be billed for it, and it’ll help you find new opportunities with the ability to turn on remote control whenever you need in the future. I applaud this move from GFI Max as a way to effectively reduce the barrier to entry of deploying an RMM tool for IT Solution Providers to zero – now the challenge is thrown down to IT companies. Get out there and make some money through Asset Management!

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