Have you actually stood up AI and automation as its own line item in your service catalog, or is it still sitting in the “someday” pile behind everything else a client has asked for this quarter?
Security used to be an add-on to the break/fix contract. Then it became its own practice, with its own tooling, its own pricing, its own team. Cloud went through the same shift. AI and automation is going through it right now, and most MSPs are still treating it like an add-on instead of standing it up as its own practice.
That’s a mistake, and the reason is simple: if you don’t own this conversation with your clients, someone else will.
The Conversation is Already Happening Without You
Your clients are already asking their leadership team, their board, or their own staff about AI. They are going to have that conversation with somebody. If it isn’t their MSP, it’s an outside AI consultant, a point-tool vendor, or a competitor MSP who did stand up a practice. Once that outside vendor is in the building solving a real business problem, they don’t stay in their lane. They become the strategic partner, and the MSP that was too slow to move becomes the infrastructure vendor underneath them. That’s a downgrade in the relationship that’s very hard to reverse.
The Proof Point: What a Real Automation Practice Delivers
MIPLY didn’t build this approach in a lab. It’s the same approach our founders run inside Simpatico, their own MSP, on a real accounts receivable operation processing roughly 7,200 invoices a month for a mid-market client.
Before automation: 6 FTEs on accounts receivable, invoice creation taking 4 business days, end-of-day batch reconciliation, average AR aging at 13 days, and an annual AR operating cost of $493,840.
After deploying 1 FTE plus 1 Digital Worker: headcount dropped 83 percent, invoice creation went from 4 business days to under 2 minutes on demand, reconciliation moved to near real time, and AR aging fell to 7.2 days, a 44.6 percent reduction. Annual AR operating cost dropped to $125,800, a savings of $368,040 a year, with the cost of the engagement recovered in 7 months. All five displaced staff were redeployed into revenue-adjacent roles. No layoffs.
That’s not a proof of concept slide. That’s a real operating result inside an MSP, which is exactly why it’s the case we lead with.
What Standing Up a Practice Actually Means
Owning this as a practice, rather than a one-off project, means a few concrete things:
A repeatable process for finding and scoping the work, not a custom pitch every time
A team or a partner who actually builds and maintains the automations, not a reseller relationship where you’re waiting on someone else’s roadmap
A pricing model tied to the outcome the client cares about, not billed by the hour against a project that ends
An ongoing relationship, the same way managed security or managed cloud became recurring revenue instead of one-time projects
This is exactly what MIPLY builds with MSPs, the framework, the coaching, and the peer group of other MSP owners doing the same thing, so you’re not building this practice alone from scratch.
Why the Timing Matters
As clients automate more of their own operational workflow, the number of systems and endpoints an MSP is purely maintaining starts to shrink, and the number of processes an MSP is actively running starts to grow. The MSPs who own that shift end up owning more of the client relationship. The ones who don’t end up managing a smaller and smaller slice of it, while someone else owns the part the client actually cares about.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is an AI and automation practice different from RMM and PSA automation?
No. RMM and PSA automation keeps your own operation running, patch schedules, ticket routing, alerting. An AI and automation practice is a service you sell into a client’s business processes, their sales pipeline, their AR, their HR onboarding, not your internal tooling. A client can have flawless RMM and PSA hygiene on your end and a completely manual invoicing process on theirs. That gap is the opportunity.
Do MSPs need a dedicated team to start an AI and Automation Practice?
You need someone who owns it, but the way in is one process, one client, not a company-wide build-out. Start with a single high-friction workflow and prove it the way the AR example above did.
What resources does an MSP need to start an AI and automation practice, new hires, a developer, a project manager?
Less than most owners assume. You do not need to hire before you start. The first workflow is scoped and built with your existing team, guided through the process, not handed a list and left to figure it out. If you want to move faster than doing it alone, MIPLY partners directly with MSPs to get a first practice up and running within 30 days, no new headcount required to get started.
What if a client says they already have Copilot or ChatGPT licenses?
A license isn’t a practice. It’s a tool sitting on top of a process that’s still broken. The practice is what actually maps and fixes the process underneath it.
The MSPs who build this as a real practice now are the ones who get to have the strategic conversation with their clients. The ones who wait are handing that conversation to somebody else.
Ready to grab the marker? Book a 30-minute discovery call with a MIPLY operator, and we’ll map where an automation practice fits into your business specifically, and how to get it running within 30 days.
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