Though unfortunate, COVID-19 has and will continue to affect the sales cycle of modern MSPs. Especially when you are an MSP without the MRR to pick and choose your clients, field services continue to be a part of a happy customer relationship. With remote offerings, work from home setups, you as an MSP are already flooded with numerous requests. However, it is now imperative more than ever that you involve your clients and prepare a BCDR plan. 

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Some of the most common problems post the advent of this pandemic has been

1. Failure to meet SLA for onsite support.
2. Vendor's inability to ship parts within your SLA.
3. Commonly refurbished parts that tend to be faulty

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A culmination of such shortcomings can hamper a network revival and may lead to angry customers and troubled business. Here are a few pointers that modern MSPs can consider to set up a solid BCDR plan.

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Onsite support

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With the sudden influx of remote working population, MSPs are choked to their maximum capacity with customers asking employees to work from home and requiring remote setup. This will most definitely impact vendor abilities to provide their typical levels of support. 

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Vendor shipments

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Many vendors have already been handicapped with the deterring flight operation throughout the globe. Lack of parts availability, shut-down of china, has severely bottlenecked logistics to ensure timely parts shipment to meet the target service level agreements.

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Phishing scams

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With numerous new smart and innovative scams propping up and demanding parts, the shipment has put MSPs in a tough predicament to second guess every genuine request. Though not a novel scenario, the unlikely circumstance of Covid-19 has paved a path for the scammers and phishers to surge, which inevitably causes delays in shipment of alternative/new parts.

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It's time to revisit your BCDR

With the advent of the Covid-19 alerts, it is imperative you reassure and assuage any inhibitions about your quality of service amongst your clients.

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Preliminary subjects to be covered and reassured:

1. Set clear expectations: Detail Client and MSP responsibilities
2. Clarify the change in circumstance and establish amicable resolutions to be met when expectations aren't fulfilled.
3.  Do NOT include conditions of cancellation, driving your business is the only oxygen you have when it is not very easy to breathe. 
4. Remote work and setup: Emergency escalations

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A well-drafted BCDR for the Covid-19 term period will help you establish order amidst chaos, and will reflect extreme professionalism on your part amongst your clients. Even if you have clients who haven't had to face the immediate brunt of the situation, inevitably all your networks will undergo a stress-test when they try to relocate in vast numbers. 

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A tactfully crafted SLA can ease frustration and unhappiness while paving the way for a healthy and productive business relationship. 

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‍Clarify the following options with clear metrics

• Business continuity requirements
• Network Downtimes
• Network scalability in case of on-premise and remote configuration
• The flexibility of how much load their existing configuration can bear.
• Data safety, Data location, and security 

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‍Cyber Security

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Amidst various scams and cyber threats, it is imperative that you continue to keep your clients' data secure while negotiating new terms and conditions. 

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Write an SLA that you can ensure to prevent data leakage and data theft. Ensure to use a trusted DraaS provider, and prioritize restriction of unauthorized data access. 

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‍BCDR

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By clarifying serviceability, both you and your clients know what to expect for post-disaster recovery. Both parties have clear expectations of subsequent steps that need to be taken to meet recovery objectives.