Executive Guide
AIMSP
The MSP operating model for the work your reports don’t count.
A plain-English guide for MSP owners
decision digitalAn Automated Instincts frameworkThe MSP operating model for the work your reports don’t count.
A plain-English guide for MSP owners
decision digitalAn Automated Instincts frameworkdecision digitalAIMSP Executive GuideHow busy are my engineers?
How much work does my entire operation get done?
When humans did every ticket action, counting engineer hours was a fair way to measure the work. That’s no longer true.
Automation, managed partners and intelligent triage now close a big share of your tickets. Your utilization report still only counts the hours your engineers logged. So the more your operation improves, the less of it your reports can see. It’s like judging a dishwasher by how many hours you spent at the sink.
That’s what Decision Digital found when we ran ARI on ourselves: 57 months of our own ConnectWise data, valued work our utilization reports had been recording as zero.
This is Decision Digital’s measured result, not a guarantee that every MSP will see the same.
decision digitalAIMSP Executive GuideThree forces get your tickets closed. Only one of them shows up on a utilization report.
Resolve what automation can’t, oversee the systems doing routine work, and build what runs next.
Workflows, agents and intelligent triage that handle repeatable work without an engineer touching every ticket.
Managed services and paid platforms that absorb work that would otherwise land on your team.
All of it is real work. Most of it sits below the line utilization draws. That’s the gap AIMSP closes: one view of what people, systems and partners actually got done.
decision digitalAIMSP Executive GuideAIMSP isn’t “AI replaces engineers.” The title on the org chart stays the same. What the engineer contributes grows.
The hard cases that need human judgment: security incidents, architecture decisions, escalations beyond any workflow or partner.
The judgment layer above the automation. Handling exceptions, reading edge cases, staying accountable for the systems doing routine work.
Designing the workflows, scripts and alert rules that run next. Every hour here pays off across thousands of future tickets.
An engineer who supervised 200 automated resolutions this week did something real. Under utilization, it’s invisible. Under AIMSP, it counts. Over time the mix shifts: less routine volume, more of the work only your best people can do.
decision digitalAIMSP Executive GuideEvery MSP knows the benchmark: 75% of available hours on billable client work. The target isn’t the problem. What gets counted is.
The workflow your engineer tuned Tuesday morning: not counted. The NOC escalation they managed that afternoon: not counted. The alert rule they rebuilt Friday that keeps 200 tickets out of next month’s queue: not counted. AIMSP replaces billable utilization with Deployed Time, the share of hours spent on work that creates value. Three things count:
Traditional billable work. Still the foundation, just not the whole story.
Being accountable for the systems handling routine work.
Capacity creation, not overhead.
What an engineer’s automation delivers while they’re doing something else is reported right next to Deployed Time, not folded into it. Their hours are their hours. The automation is the multiplier.
decision digitalAIMSP Executive GuideAIMSP looks past “closed” and asks how the work actually got done. Every ticket lands in exactly one of six buckets.
decision digitalAIMSP Executive GuideAIMSP doesn’t start with an industry average. It starts with your own ConnectWise history.
For every type of ticket, we find how long it typically takes your engineers to resolve. We use the median, so a handful of marathon tickets can’t skew it. That’s your baseline, called SHRT (Standard Human Resolution Time). Think of it as your internal price list for engineer time. Then three questions put a dollar value on everything else:
If automation handled this ticket, how much engineer time did that save?
If a partner or platform handled it, what would it have cost our own engineers?
If triage routed it automatically, how much dispatcher time did we avoid?
Say a password reset takes your engineers 20 minutes. Automation closed 3,000 of them last year. That’s 1,000 engineer hours that never hit your payroll.
No formulas required. Different kinds of work, translated into one common language: human labor.
decision digitalAIMSP Executive GuideARI, the Autonomy Readiness Index, brings it all together. Think of it like a home inspection report: built entirely from what’s actually there.
How work is really being handled across people, systems and partners.
The labor value being created, avoided or absorbed, in dollars.
Where automation, routing, process or data opportunities sit.
Which areas deserve attention first, and in what order.
ARI isn’t a magic score. It’s a diagnostic report grounded in what your operation has already done. Every figure traces back to your own PSA data, so there are no industry averages or assumptions to argue with.
Operations leadership gets the full report. A separate Executive Brief covers the same findings for ownership.
decision digitalAIMSP Executive GuideIt expands the engineer’s role. It doesn’t eliminate it.
Some work will always need human judgment.
It changes the measurement model, not just the report.
AIMSP is an operating model, not a product.
It’s a framework for running and measuring an MSP.
It’s a loop: measure, improve, measure again.
You don’t abandon utilization. You stop treating it as the whole picture.
decision digitalCATAPULT · AdvisoryWhat is your MSP actually getting done that your reports don’t count? A fixed-scope engagement that runs ARI against your own ConnectWise data and answers exactly that, in three to six weeks.
A read-only connection loads your ConnectWise history into SMARTvault. Included, and yours to keep.
We map your boards, people and system accounts. You confirm each one before anything is counted.
Every ticket sorted into the six buckets, your SHRT baseline built, and the dollar values calculated.
Your ARI report, the Executive Brief and a prioritized roadmap, walked through together.