Turn A Backup Scare Into A Managed Services Sale
By The Business Solutions Network
An MSP turns a medical practice’s BDR (backup and disaster recovery) failure into a $1,500-a-month managed services deal.
Like many VARs and MSPs, Ben Pearce, president of ACP Technologies, has faced his share of sales objections over the years — sometimes even when discussing very basic concepts, such as backing up computers and servers. One way the MSP has learned to minimize objections is by offering a free network assessment and letting the results speak for themselves. This strategy came in handy recently when a medical practice manager, who had originally turned down ACP’s free assessment offer, called back looking for a second opinion.
Data Loss Gives Healthcare Practice New Respect For Managed BDR
When ACP first contacted the manager three months prior and was inquiring about the prospect’s IT security and compliance needs, the manager assured 
the salesperson everything was working fine. “A friend of one of the physicians at the practice took care of all their computers, and his prices were much better than ours,” says Pearce. “We offered to do a free network assessment just to double-check, but the manager politely declined and said he would keep our information handy if he changed his mind. A few months later, someone at the practice accidentally deleted several files, and the IT person was unable to recover them. Shortly after that, the office manager remembered our previous conversation and asked if we could help them get their files back.”
After investigating the medical practice’s backup system, ACP discovered it was using the backup program that comes standard with Windows, and the most recent backup had been two months earlier. “It was originally set to run each night, but a Windows update or some similar event caused the backup to stop and no one ever caught it,” says Pearce. “Although a few documents, spreadsheets, and electronic medical records were gone forever, it was a good opportunity for us to show them how a managed BDR solution could prevent that from ever happening again.”
ACP recommended the medical practice use Veeam Backup Essentials for small businesses and follow a 3-2-1 approach, which means three copies of their data, including two onsite copies (one with Veeam and a second with their Windows backup system) and one offsite. “We like Veeam because since we started using it four years ago, we’ve never lost any data,” says Pearce. “Plus, it works with VMware and Hyper-V virtual environments, which allows us to perform system restores in less than an hour on a variety of SAN (storage area network) or NAS (network attached storage) devices. We also like that Veeam gives us the flexibility to use our own co-location center for the off-site backup.”
BDR Creates Perfect Segue To Network Assessment And Managed Services
After addressing the client’s BDR situation, ACP recommended a network assessment to check for other possible vulnerabilities. “We use Network Detective from RapidFire Tools, which probes a client’s network and provides a risk analyses summary,” says Pearce. “The tool looks at several areas such as PC patches, antivirus licenses, password strength and update frequency, and other security metrics.”
Not surprisingly, the report unveiled several areas where the healthcare practice was below standard. “Their Active Directory showed 30 users who had not logged in within the past 30 days,” says Pearce.
After the network assessment and the initial consulting process, ACP also recommended a HIPAA risk assessment, which the MSP performs through a third -party provider. After signing the deal, ACP began its managed services onboarding process, which, Pearce says, is a 120-step process from beginning to end and ran five weeks. The medical practice was convinced it needed ACP to manage all of its IT assets as well as copy machines, fax machines, and phone systems. Some highlights include installing Continuum remote monitoring and management (RMM) probes on the client’s servers and network, replacing the client’s legacy antivirus with Webroot SecureAnywhere, and setting up Tigerpaw Software service management.
The managed services offering costs the medical practice $1,500 a month, which is about three times as much as it was paying previously for its software licenses and break-fix IT services. “The difference now is we are remotely monitoring their systems and keeping everything running smoothly, their data is safe from hardware failures, malware threats, and disasters, and they are HIPAA-compliant,” says Pearce. “This client who started out being skeptical of IT companies and managed services has now become one of our biggest allies.”