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How Can I Make My MSP Better and More Profitable?

Picture of Michelle C

 

Most MSPs don’t struggle with knowing what “good” looks like. The struggle is making progress when BAU is loud, customers are impatient, and the Service Desk is doing its best impression of a fire station.

 

So, if you’re asking “what do I need to do to make my MSP better and more profitable?”, the answer isn’t to work harder.

 

It’s this: build a Continual Improvement habit that runs across the whole business, not just the Service Desk.

 

That’s also why Continual Improvement is my favourite part of what I do. Not because it’s fluffy, not because it’s a “nice to have”, but because it brings the best kind of challenges to the table; you get to apply proper problem solving across the whole business, and you can see the impact quickly.

 

Why Continual Improvement makes an MSP better and more profitable

Profitability in an MSP is rarely one big lever. It’s usually death by a thousand paper cuts:

    • rework
    • inconsistent ways of working
    • handovers that leak time
    • recurring issues that never get fixed properly
    • “free” work that becomes normal
    • poorly thought through pricing models
    • key-person dependency
    • decisions that live in someone’s head instead of a process

 

Continual Improvement is how you spot those cuts, stop the bleeding, and build a business that runs with less drama.

 

It helps you:

    • save time (less chasing, less rework, less “where are we up to?”)
    • protect margin (less non-billable work, less leakage, better cost-to-serve control)
    • reduce risk (fewer blind spots, less dependency on heroes, less customer dissatisfaction and complaints)
    • speed up action (ideas turn into owned work that actually gets done)

 

That’s the compounding effect. Small wins that stack up.

 

Continual Improvement isn’t just for the Service Desk

The Service Desk is often where improvement starts because it’s where the noise is. But if you keep Continual Improvement boxed into the Service Desk, you miss the bigger opportunity.

 

In a healthy MSP, Continual Improvement is not a department. It’s a habit. It’s a way of running the business.

 

Because the Service Desk often ends up carrying the consequences of everything else:

    • messy sales and/or project handovers
    • unclear onboarding
    • inconsistent tooling
    • weak internal comms
    • “we’ve always done it this way” processes

 

This is where profitability shifts - not by squeezing people harder, but by removing friction: fewer handover failures, fewer repeat incidents, less “free work”, and more consistency.

 

Where to look for improvement beyond the Service Desk

Service Delivery (beyond tickets)

This is the stuff that makes customers feel like you’ve got your act together:

    • onboarding and offboarding
    • service reviews and reporting
    • escalation paths and ownership
    • recurring incidents and problem management
    • incident comms (and preventing the next one)

 

If you improve Service Delivery, the Service Desk benefits automatically. Fewer surprises. Fewer escalations. Fewer “urgent” tickets that are only urgent because the system is wobbly.

 

Sales and pre-sales handover

If you want to see chaos in its natural habitat, look at a bad handover.

 

Continual Improvement here might mean:

    • tightening what gets promised vs what gets delivered
    • improving discovery questions
    • standardising what “ready for onboarding” looks like
    • making sure the Service Desk isn’t finding out about a new client when the first ticket arrives

 

This is one of the quickest ways to reduce friction and protect margin, because it stops you delivering something you didn’t price for.

 

Operations and ways of working

This is where you win back time and sanity:

    • meetings (too many, too long, no decisions)
    • decision-making bottlenecks
    • internal comms chaos
    • prioritisation (and reprioritisation… and reprioritisation again)

 

If you want “more profitable” without burning people out, this is often where the gold is. Not glamorous, but massively effective.

 

Tooling and tech stack

Not “buy more tools”. Just use what you’ve already got properly:

    • cleaning up PSA workflows
    • standardising categories and templates
    • reducing duplicate data entry
    • making sure automation doesn’t just create faster chaos
    • tightening roles and ownership so the system supports the process

 

A messy tool stack creates invisible work. Invisible work kills margin.

 

Finance and commercial hygiene

This one doesn’t sound fun until you see the margin uplift:

    • billing accuracy
    • time capture
    • cost-to-serve by customer
    • “free work” that’s easier than pushing back
    • discounting because value isn’t clearly justified

 

If you want profitability, you need commercial clarity. Continual Improvement gives you a way to tackle this without it turning into a blame game.

 

People and capability

Often the lever that makes everything else stick:

    • onboarding new hires
    • training plans that don’t rely on tribal knowledge
    • coaching and feedback loops
    • role clarity (who owns what, who decides what)
    • reducing key-person dependency

 

If you improve people systems, you improve consistency. If you improve consistency, you reduce firefighting. If you reduce firefighting, you free up time for improvement. That loop matters.

 

Customer experience (the stuff they don’t always say out loud)

Customers don’t always complain when something’s off. They just quietly lose confidence.

 

Continual Improvement here might mean:

    • response and comms expectations
    • spotting “red flag” customers early
    • handling complaints without it becoming personal
    • feedback loops that lead to action (not just a survey score)

 

Retention is profitability. Confidence is retention.

 

A quick note on problem solving (you don’t have to be the hero)

One of the reasons I love Continual Improvement is that it gives you a structured way to spot obstacles early and stop them turning into “normal”.

 

A lot of the value is in asking challenging questions to solidify what the real issue is:

    • What’s actually getting in the way here?
    • Where does this break down most often?
    • What’s the cost of leaving it as-is?
    • Who is closest to the problem day-to-day?
    • What does “done” or “good” look like?

 

You don’t always need to find the solution yourself. Sometimes the best outcome is:

    • defining the problem properly
    • brainstorming options with the team
    • pulling in someone who’s done it before
    • or finding a specialist who can help with the tricky bit

 

That’s still progress, and it stops you “fixing” the wrong thing.

 

Don’t hire (or create) a team of “yes” people

Continual Improvement only works when people feel safe to challenge what’s not working. If everyone nods along and follows direction blindly, you’ll get compliance, not progress - and the best ideas will stay trapped in people’s heads.

 

If you’ve got a lot of “yes” energy in the room, start changing the order of how you lead discussions. Ask for thoughts or questions and always get their responses before you share your own view. You’ll get better input, you’ll spot risks earlier, and you’ll build a culture where improvement is something the whole team owns, not something you push from the top.

 

The “1% better” approach (without the motivational poster)

You don’t need a massive transformation programme to make your MSP better and more profitable. You need a repeatable way to make progress.

 

Do this for a month:

    • pick one improvement theme (not ten)
    • choose one or two actions a week
    • make them small enough to finish
    • review what moved (and what didn’t) every week
    • keep the list visible, owned, and boringly consistent
    • rinse and repeat

 

That’s how you build momentum. That’s how you stop improvement being something you “do when you have time”. You have to make it part of how you run the business.

 

If you want to make this easier

If Continual Improvement currently lives in spreadsheets, meeting notes, or someone’s head, you’re not alone. That’s normal early doors - but it doesn’t scale.

 

The goal is simple: keep improvement work visible, owned, and moving alongside BAU.

 

Oprising is a strategic improvement tool for MSPs - a centralised location for Service Desk improvement work, in a separate lane to daily customer tickets.

Assess your Service Desk, identify gaps and priorities, get suggested actions and add your own, then assign ownership and track actions to completion in one place.

 

Focus on what matters, ditch the chaos, get stuff done.