Professional services automation (PSA) is the part of a managed service provider platform that runs the provider's own business: its client contracts, its tickets, its technicians' time sheets and its monthly bills. A managed service provider, or MSP, is an outside IT firm that acts as the IT department of small companies. The name comes from firms that sell professional services, which means the time and skill of their staff.
PSA starts with the contract. For each client, the contract says what the fixed monthly fee covers, such as routine support for a set number of laptops. It also says how extra work is charged. Extra work is usually charged by the hour, which is the model explained on the page on billable hours.
Every ticket enters PSA, whether a client emails the MSP or the remote monitoring and management (RMM) software raises an alert. Technicians record the time they spend on each ticket. PSA marks each piece of work as covered by the contract or as extra. At the end of the month, it builds each client's bill from three parts: the fixed fee, the extra hours, and the security licences that the MSP resells.
Say an MSP in Indore looks after a pharmaceutical distributor with 50 laptops. The contract charges ₹1,200 per laptop per month, so the fixed fee is ₹60,000. In March, the distributor opens a new branch and asks the MSP to set up its network. This is outside the contract. A technician spends 3.5 hours on it and records the time against the ticket. At ₹1,500 an hour, PSA adds ₹5,250. The MSP also resells 50 endpoint security licences at ₹250 each, which adds ₹12,500. The subtotal is ₹77,750. PSA adds 18% GST, which is ₹13,995. It sends the final invoice of ₹91,745 to the MSP's accounting software.
Most of this bill repeats every month, like the bill of any subscription business. Only the extra hours change.
PSA also tells the MSP which contracts make money. Suppose the technicians spent 40 hours in March on another client's routine problems, all covered by that client's fixed fee. PSA shows that this contract cost more in staff time than it earned. The MSP can then raise the fee at renewal, or replace the client's oldest laptops, which cause most of the tickets. PSA also tracks each ticket against the response time promised in the contract.