Micro Interview with Grant Bean
Micro Interview from our Micro lesson series with Grant Bean, Managed Services Director, HSO
Stay humble, trust your team and ensure to build strong relationships between your customers and support teams.
What’s your work routine?
Day usually starts with getting kids ready for school, followed by a dog walk to clear my head, and get ready for the day ahead. Its then catch up with the team to make sure we are focusing on our current priorities or dealing with any P1’s that need our attention. Time is always carved out to work on strategic.
- What’s one misconception about Managed Services you’ve come across?
It still amazes me that people see managed services as a reactive service. The true benefit of a managed service is providing proactive services where we do all within our powers to ensure incidents don’t happen and that we keep aligning implemented solutions to the latest advancements in technology and the need of the business.
- What metrics matter most in a Managed Service?
SLAs, NPS, and CSATs are obviously very important metrics in managed services, but again, I feel that if we are having to focus on these metrics, we are doing our job very well. A true metric for me is how we engage in a true partnership with our customers, becoming a trusted advisor to them, ensuring that we get the most out of their system investments. Harder to measure as it's not a formal metric but can be seen when our team are constantly engaged with our customers in terms of how we could do this better or more efficiently.
Something you wish you’d known about your work when you first started?
You can’t do everything by yourself; you need a team around you that brings different skills, views, perspectives and personalities. If you can get this right, you are onto a winning formula
What did your biggest professional failure teach you?
Honest communication is key. The earlier you can get comms out around challenges or concerns the quicker you can get the help, guidance and advice needed to deal with the challenges you face. Hiding problems just makes it harder to fix them.
The #1 thing that helps organisations get value from their managed services?
Truly entering the managed service as a partnership and seeing your MSP provider as an extension of your team. Allow them to understand your business, the good and the bad so that we can provide the best possible advice and guidance to support you.
Your parting piece of advice?
Stay humble, trust your team and ensure to build strong relationships between your customers and support teams.