Manage Microsoft 365 licenses efficiently with Cloud User Hub

Are your technicians struggling to find efficient ways to handle manual work? Or is your business at capacity and not able to keep up with the growth of your business?

You’re not alone. There are many MSPs needing easier ways to manage large workloads.

In today’s busy tech space, if your businesses can’t keep up with the pace, you’ll likely face big issues. Many companies are falling short at the most basic of admin tasks, like managing large volumes of Microsoft 365 licenses. Struggling Microsoft Partners and MSPs need to change their way of working. They have an opportunity to get processes up to scratch. To supercharge their cloud service provider (CSP) business and empower teams to be service desk superstars.

What is a service desk superstar?

These valuable team members can:

• Easily offload service tickets.
• Manage multi-tenant Microsoft 365 licenses.
• Stay on top of their ticket queue.
• Control workloads.
• Have smart end-of-month processes.
• Keep on top of their Microsoft reporting.
• Empower customers; and
• Have time to reach new business possibilities.

How can these people do that? Automation.

How can automation help service desk team members?

Without automation, technicians can spend hours working on daily tasks across multiple tenants and users. Unfortunately, repetitive work of this nature can lead to inaccurate customer license numbers, usage, and costs. As you scale, the cracks begin to show. This can pose a threat to customer retention and sustainable growth. Onboarding more clients can also be a sticking point. The more customers you wish to service, the more talent you require.

Automating processes can disrupt this cycle and prevent overheads from skyrocketing. When you can increase accuracy and capacity, automation starts to become an attractive strategy.

Use automation to tame Microsoft Office 365 licenses

Growing and maintaining customer satisfaction is a balancing act. Using manual processes to deploy services at scale is no longer a viable option.

Your tech-stack sets the pace at which your team operates. Service desk teams will struggle to carry out tasks quickly and accurately if they’re using outdated tools that aren’t aligned with the service offering. When multi-tenant environments have high volumes of licenses, to manage, it’s a no brainer. MSPs should use automation to help with service desk success.

1. Use self-service solutions

(NOTE: this section applies to direct Microsoft CSPs only)

• Give customers the ability to understand, access, and purchase their own licenses
• Set up and select products specific to customers. Make it clear what licenses and custom services they can select
• Set the relevant permissions and limit SKU numbers for customers—this is a great time saver
• Promote customer autonomy

2. Easily manage licenses with workflows

You can take automation to the next level and streamline repetitive tasks even more with workflows. Build a set of commands, bundle them together into a workflow [add link to 10 Workflows blog], and set rules to trigger it each time a user needs a Microsoft license added. Not all Microsoft management solutions will allow for this, but those that do make life so much easier for MSPs and Microsoft Partners. And the good news is, these workflows can be set up via no-code processes, so pretty much anyone can manage them.

For example, Cloud User Hub uses Command Blocks and Command Sets to make life easier for service desk teams. If a license assignment request comes through, you can build a simple workflow to manage it. Meaning once set up, you can apply the workflow widely across all multi-tenant environments. That way, if the same request comes through, you won’t need to lift a finger and the Microsoft 365 license gets managed automatically.

3. Use one solution to manage all MSP tasks

We hear from our partners that although MSP software tools help fulfil their business needs, they have to use a large number to complete tasks. Most would prefer fewer tools or even a single solution to manage processes.

Club User Hub allows you to do more with less. You can manage Microsoft licenses, whilst reporting, setting no-code workflows and much more.

For example, you could also use automation to support the growing Microsoft Cloud complexity. The cloud out of necessity has grown at a dramatic pace, especially now most companies offer a hybrid working. Many organizations needed to complete migrations from on-prem to cloud in break-neck pace, resulting in a less than positive experience for many end users. CSPs can lean on automation to help improve that experience by refining their cloud deployments, and managing other elements of their relationship, such as:

• Managing security
• Staying on top of cyber threats
• Fixing issues that other CSPs created
• Upselling their services.

But this naturally can’t all be achieved manually.

Supercharge your Microsoft license management

Even with the best of intensions, relying on manual processes eventually limits service delivery and scalability. With automation, skilled staff can focus on skilled work, while knowing software is delivering back-office workloads more efficiently; and:

• Promote a stronger MSP—customer relationship.
• Have more time to expand service offerings.
• Work more efficiently.
• Have reliable, effective processes.
• Scale business and grow the client portfolio.

Interested in discovering other benefits of automation and how we can help you integrate them into your business? Visit the automation section of our blog

Laura Moise is Sr. Product Marketing Manager at N‑able