Instant Scans/Customer Onboarding

Atera’s network discovery function will ease many of the headaches encountered while running an MSP business. Take a look at how network discovery will speed up your service and save you money.

Professionalism

The network discovery function of Atera creates a constantly updated inventory of all equipment attached to the network. Naturally, you will want to bill for all of the devices that your MSP has to manage. However, the network discovery tool is also a great way to spot unauthorized or out-of-scope devices attached to the client’s network.

Constant network scans spot any unauthorized devices connecting to the network, enabling system managers to lock out those devices quickly. What action that should be taken on discovery of these extra devices is a matter of policy, but it will probably trigger an immediate notification to the client because they are going to need to be informed that there will be extra line items on the bill at the end of the month. This notice should be attended to immediately by the contact manager at the client’s site. An exchange over the presence of this new device will involve the decision on whether the piece of equipment was expected to be connected to the network.

Although the Atera remote monitoring and management tool isn’t able to physically unplug rogue devices, it is able to highlight the presence of such equipment for the client to deal with themselves. Logs of activities and information about the duration of the connection will also be needed by the client in the4 event of a legal case.

Capacity Planning

Early system definition enables the MSP manager to plan an accurately-sized support team at the beginning of the service agreement period. You can interview potential new staff as soon as your sales manager moves into negotiations with a new client. Network discovery gives the MSP the ability to source the right number of seats at the right time. So, why wait until the contract is tied down to start identifying available extra technicians? Once the client signs on the dotted line, you can examine the remote system and find out exactly what you’re dealing with by running the network discovery process. When a system sweep of the new client’s site reveals it has much more equipment to support than its managers initially declared, sales managers can get onto the client contact immediately and confirm the extra capacity that the realities of the site requires. Fortunately, the flexible, technician-based pricing of Atera’s RMM and PSA system lets an agile MSP add new accounts at an at an instant. As soon as the requirements revealed by the autodiscovery sweep are confirmed by the client, the operations manager can expand the number of seats it has in the Atera system and call in that new staff. You won’t be caught short-staffed, thanks to Atera’s Network Discovery and scalable pricing.

Billing Support

By getting a granular view of everything in your client’s network, you’re ready to be smarter when it comes down to billing. If your customer has outdated operating systems, firmware or software – here’s how you open a conversation about getting them up to best standards.

If they’ve got newly added workstations and servers, let’s bring them into the fold.

By listing all of the necessary upgrades and changes through clear line items, from aging storage disks or those with installed HDD or bad detectors, through to unmonitored SNMP devices, you get support from Atera on what you can bill for, and exactly how to help your client’s streamline and secure their own environment. See our Opportunities feature for how you can use Network Discovery for upselling and to further extend your relationship with your customers.

Right-Sizing Resources

The network discovery tool creates a log of precisely what equipment is attached to the network at any one time. Thus, it is possible to see what changes occurred in the composition of the system should performance suddenly nosedive.

The ability to get a timestamped record of when devices were added to a network will also support the investigation efforts into a security breach. The system documentation provided by the network discovery system of Atera will become part of the project documentation when the hunt for any rogue device and its actions becomes a security issue.