AI+Automation Systems for MSP

This Is How A Small IT Firm Won Boardrooms And Grew ARR While Shrinking Headcount

• Growth Right Solutions, llc

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We unpack how a 1999 consultancy became a process-first MSP that clients treat as a strategic partner. We show how internal automation, VCIO strategy, and pragmatic tools drove a 40% ARR jump, 90% satisfaction lift, and seven years of unchanged budget approvals.

• time-sliced expertise model and early scaling pain
• PSA adoption to eliminate manual admin
• internal processes repurposed as client value
• VCIO roadmaps linking spend to outcomes
• onboarding speed from two weeks to four hours
• client pruning and role realignment
• lightweight AI and automation adding ARR
• board-level trust with under-budget delivery
• nonprofit and legal case studies proving ROI
• process as competitive advantage, not software


MSPs are guaranteed to miss out on every chance they do not take.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Deep Drive. Today we're taking a really fascinating look into, well, corporate evolution. It's a true transformation story. It started way back in 1999, actually predating the term MSP, you know, managed service provider. Our goal here is to sort of dissect the journey of this one specific firm founded by Ed Becker. We want to figure out the exact mechanisms they use to shift from being seen as just this expensive IT cost center to becoming a really powerful strategic business partner for their clients.

Speaker:

Yeah, and our mission really is extraction. We're digging into how they evolved step by step. We want to pull out that specific blueprint, you know, the process improvements, the automation. What drove that fundamental shift and how clients saw them? For you, the listener, the key thing isn't just the tech they installed, no. Yeah. It's about spotting the measurable strategic outcomes. Things like um efficiency gains, predictable growth, even revenue generation. Stuff that proved they deserved a real seat at the client's table.

Speaker 1:

Right. And here's the paradox, the thing that sounds kind of impossible when you first hear it. This firm managed to dramatically improve customer satisfaction by 90%, and they increased their annual recurring revenue, ARR, by 40%. Yeah. All while, and this is a kicker, strategically reducing their staff size. We really need to unpack how they pulled that off, right? How they navigated that change and ended up with this blueprint for resilience.

Speaker:

Aaron Powell Okay, let's rewind. Back to 99, the beginning. The initial idea was pretty elegant for its time. Provide expert tech consulting and support, but make it affordable for small, mid-sized organizations nationwide. Their method was uh innovative then, lots of remote support and what they called time slicing expert technicians.

Speaker 1:

Aaron Powell Time Slicing. So clients only paid for the bit of expertise they needed.

Speaker:

Exactly. You didn't have to hire a full-time guru, you just bought a slice, made high-level help accessible.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that makes sense. But that model works great until you start to scale, I imagine.

Speaker:

That's it. The source material shows that by year six, on the surface, they looked successful. Like 12 employees, nearly $2 million in annual revenue, good numbers. But um internally, things were getting bogged down. The sheer overhead, tracking time, billing, managing everything manually, it was really dragging down productivity.

Speaker 1:

Aaron Powell So successful, but kind of inefficiently paddling like mad underwater.

Speaker:

We got it. The system was straining. To keep growing, they knew they needed a radical change in how they operated.

Speaker 1:

That pressure cooker moment then that forced them to look inward first.

Speaker:

Absolutely critical. They realized the first priority wasn't actually serving clients better in that moment. It was serving themselves better. They had to stop drowning in all that admin work, the reams of paper. Yeah. So their first big move wasn't some fancy client-facing tech. It was internal automation, foundational stuff.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so what was that foundational change specifically? What did they do?

Speaker:

Aaron Powell They brought in an early professional services automation tool, a PSA. Think of PSA as like the engine that replaced all the paper, the manual timesheets, everything. It let them finally move to a fully digital back office, tracking time accurately, handling billing, managing resources. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Speaker 1:

Stuff that MSPs kind of take for granted today, I guess.

Speaker:

Aaron Powell Totally. But back then, it was the essential step to kill that massive administrative drain that was basically choking their growth. They were stuck at like 3% growth before that. Got it.

Speaker 1:

Now here's where it gets interesting, right? The shift from just internal cleanup to strategic advantage. Because the improvements they built for themselves, you're saying, became their product.

Speaker:

Aaron Powell Precisely. They started phasing in automation for themselves, ticket routing, patch management, standardized reporting, all the basics. But crucially, they designed every single one of those repeatable processes so it could be reused directly for their clients. It wasn't like here's our internal tool, here's a separate client tool. No, it was a massive force multiplier, reduced their own labor while delivering consistent high-quality processes to customers.

Speaker 1:

Okay. I see the efficiency gain there.

Speaker:

And that internal efficiency directly powered up their signature strategic offering, the virtual CIO program, the VCIO.

Speaker 1:

Right, the VCIO. And that wasn't about fixing tech problems day to day.

Speaker:

Not at all. It was purely strategic, focused specifically on producing tech roadmaps, annual budgets, but budgets that didn't just list costs. They explicitly linked every single proposed tech investment back to clear, measurable business goals for the client. That specific focus, linking the spend to the strategy. That's the exact moment they stopped being just an IT cost. They became an essential investment partner.

Speaker 1:

I I'm still a little skeptical that just like process documents and early software carry that much strategic weight. Wasn't the real impact just faster hardware rollouts or something?

Speaker:

Uh see that's the common misconception. Better hardware, faster rollouts. That's table stakes. Expect it. Process efficiency, that is the competitive advantage. Let me give you a number. Look at one super manual task, setting up a new PC configuration. They took the time needed from two weeks down to just four hours. Wow. Think about that from the client's view. Your new hire used to sit around for two weeks, maybe not fully productive now. They're up and running contributing the same week they start. That's a measurable business critical improvement. Better onboarding, faster time to revenue. That's not just IT, that's business philosophy.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that speed definitely changes the perception of value. I get that.

Speaker:

It really does. And the source stress is, especially in those early days, the automation wasn't always fancy, expensive software, not at all. They got really creative expanding automation to client deliverables. They were scripting spreadsheets, you know, making them recalculate dynamically when data was entered, basically building little custom apps with tools the client already owned, like Excel, automating document templates in Word, creating simple monthly reporting systems for clients, all stuff that didn't require the client to buy or learn some big new complex platform. It was pure process design, clever repurposing of existing tools, not about selling more software.

Speaker 1:

That sounds exactly like that Rube Goldberg machine of early automation, the source mentioned later. You know, different tools kind of bolted together.

Speaker:

That's the perfect description. Disconnected tools, persistence, creativity, making it work before integrated platforms were common. But okay, let's pause and look at the internal results, the transformation inside the MSP itself.

Speaker 1:

Right, the numbers. They strategically let go of some clients, right? About 30%.

Speaker:

Yeah, they offboarded about 30% of their legacy clients, the ones who weren't really a good fit for this new process-driven model, probably the noisy ones. And they replaced them with clients who are an ideal fit. And even after that churn, their annual recurring revenue jumped by 40%. 40%. It shows that focus on quality growth, not just grabbing any client.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's talk about that staff reduction though. Cutting the team from 12 down to seven while ARR and satisfaction go up. That sounds, well, like a potentially rough HR situation. How did the source explain that? Was it just about cutting costs or that's a really crucial point to clarify?

Speaker:

It wasn't framed as just cost cutting, it was much more about alignment. Think about what the automation did. It took over the really repetitive, high-air, frankly soul-crushing manual tasks, the stuff junior staff often did, leading to burnout and turnover. And remember those 30% of clients they offboarded, those were likely the ones generating the most manual work, the most friction, the most dissatisfaction for the staff, too.

Speaker 1:

Ah, so removing the bad work and the difficult clients.

Speaker:

Exactly. By automating the grunt work and shedding the high maintenance clients, the remaining seven employees weren't just doing less work, they're doing better work. They were redeployed to higher value roles, strategic roles, like managing that new VCIO program, designing custom client processes. The work became more meaningful, more impactful. And that's likely a big driver behind that huge 90% jump in customer satisfaction. They got smaller, but smarter, and more focused.

Speaker 1:

That makes a lot more sense. Trading sheer volume for strategic depth. Okay.

Speaker:

Aaron Powell And the core efficiency just skyrocketed that. Staff down from 12 to 7. While their year-over-year growth rate more than doubled, right? From 3% up to 7%.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, a solid, sustainable 7%. And what's really fascinating is how they kept refining. This wasn't a one-and-done thing. Fast forward to, say, 2018 through 2024, they started layering in more modern accessible automation. The source specifically mentions using AI behind the scenes. Basic stuff like open AI models for helping graph communications, automating alerts, client intake processes.

Speaker:

So leveraging the newer tools as they became available.

Speaker 1:

Right. And this modern layer of automation, built on that strong process foundation they had already established, it added roughly another $30,000 in new ARR and just multiplied productivity even further.

Speaker:

Aaron Powell Which brings us to that absolutely stunning efficiency metric, the one that really defines this whole model. The source reports that eventually just two MSP employees were supporting approximately 180 clients.

Speaker 1:

Two people for 180 clients while maintaining or even improving the quality of service compared to when they had 12 people.

Speaker:

That staff to client ratio is almost unbelievable in a traditional breakfix or even a standard MSP model. When you see an MSP supporting like 90 clients per technician, you have to realize something fundamental is different. They haven't just gotten faster at fixing tickets, they've automated away almost the entire administrative burden, they've standardized every repeatable process. That is the end game of operational scale.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So the internal efficiency is undeniable, proven. But now the crucial part, the external validation. We need to shift focus to those board-level business outcomes. The results that really prove the MSP wasn't just saving itself money, but was a true strategic asset for the client. This feels like the most important part for anyone listening today who wants to elevate their own business or their MSP.

Speaker:

Agreed. And the ultimate proof of that strategic partnership, it comes down to financial trust. And this metric, honestly, it's astonishing. For seven years straight, seven consecutive years, client boards adopted every single technology budget the MSP proposed, unchanged.

Speaker 1:

Every single budget, no pushback, no cuts for seven years.

Speaker:

Not a single change reported for seven years. And it gets better. Not only did they trust the plan implicitly, but the clients consistently achieved all their strategic goals while spending only 80 to 88% of what was actually budgeted.

Speaker 1:

Wow. So they delivered the results under budget consistently.

Speaker:

Consistently. Financial predictability, conservative spending, hitting strategic targets. It's massive. Deep-rooted trust.

Speaker 1:

That is completely unheard of for IT budgets. Usually they're seen as these black holes that just constantly need more money. The fact that they consistently underspent while hitting the goals, that's a huge win. Okay, let's dig into some specific examples. The case studies that show it was process design, not just tech. That was the secret sauce.

Speaker:

Aaron Powell Okay, good examples. Let's start with the nonprofit sector. Headcam is always tight there, right? There was a small association, just four people on staff. They managed to achieve 30% growth. How? Simply by using the MSP's basic workflow automation and online member management processes. Stuff the MSP designed. They absorbed that huge growth spurt without adding a single staff member. That's immediate, undeniable ROI.

Speaker 1:

Right. Proving scalability without just throwing more people at the problem. What about legal firms? They often have unique challenges.

Speaker:

Yeah, another great example. A legal support firm drowning in physical documents, high volume stuff. The MSP came in and implemented automated scanning and indexing processes. Relatively simple workflow improvement conceptually. But that simple change allowed the firm to significantly expand their clientele without hiring new people. It directly solved their core capacity constraint through process optimization, not just more bodies or faster computers.

Speaker 1:

Okay, process again. But the source mentioned one win that seemed, well, bigger, more fundamental.

Speaker:

Ah, you mean the small law firm transformation? Yes. That one really hits home, the value shift. It was a tiny firm, just two attorneys. They used the MSP's process design philosophy. It wasn't even about specific software initially. They applied it to digitize 20 boxes of old case evidence, historical stuff. Then, using this newly digitized searchable evidence base, they successfully argued and won a federal international trade lawsuit against a federal agency. It's no longer, hey, is our network up? It's can our MSP's process expertise help us win in court? That is a monumental leap in perceived value from basic maintenance to genuine competitive advantage.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. So when you connect all those dots, the internal efficiency, the budget trust, these client client wins.

Speaker:

The whole arc proves it. This MSP earned its seat in the boardroom, no question. They were trusted to write the tech budgets. They directly influence core organizational goals, scaling a nonprofit, winning a multi-million dollar lawsuit. The value proposition shifted completely. From IT being an expense to IT, driven by process being a strategic asset.

Speaker 1:

And let's hammer this home again for you, the listener, how they achieved those initial massive results. It wasn't with sleek, modern, integrated AI platforms back then. The source explicitly calls it persistence, creativity, and disconnected AI plus automation tools, that Rube Goldberg machine we talked about. It took a ton of manual effort, creativity, and probably some duct tape and prayers to keep those early processes running smoothly.

Speaker:

Which leads to a really important question for any business listening today. Why go through all that Rube Goldberg pain now? The source makes a strong argument here. Modern AI and automation tools make achieving these same kinds of results much simpler, faster, and more accessible. Like starting this month, accessible. Instead of building that whole automation factory yourself, brick by painful brick. Today's MSPs or any business really can leverage partnerships. The source mentions Growth Right Solutions as an example, essentially an outsourced AI plus automation factory staffed by people who've lived this MSP evolution. It lets smaller firms deliver these strategic process outcomes almost instantly, without needing to hire new special staff or invest heavily in new software platforms up front.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so let's wrap this up. Key strategic metrics you should really remember from this deep dive. Think about that budget trust. Seven consecutive years of unchallenged budget approval, the ultimate sign of partnership. Remember that insane efficiency, two employees supporting 180 clients, operational excellence defined, and the ultimate outcome, winning a federal lawsuit directly enabled by smart process design, proof that process is a competitive weapon.

Speaker:

Right. And that leads us to the final provocative thought for you to chew on. If basic, disconnected, frankly clunky automation that Rube Goldberg set up could achieve this level of efficiency, profitability, and strategic influence 10, even 20 years ago.

Speaker 1:

What truly massive organizational goals could you achieve right now? What could you unlock by focusing your energy on applying modern interconnected AI and process automation rather than just chasing the next minor technical upgrade? The blueprint for becoming that strategic partner, it's clearly laid out. And the tools available today, they're easier and more powerful than ever before.