Your clients need to meet stringent regulations to avoid fines and legal repercussions. As their managed service provider (MSP), they trust you to help them. Balancing the growing demand for compliance with limited resources is complex, especially when workflows vary month to month. However, it’s vital for gaining a competitive edge and retaining clients.
Since client compliance can be challenging, you need a tool that simplifies your job. A professional services automation (PSA) platform does precisely that by helping you navigate the evolving landscape of laws, rules and standards.
Client compliance is complicated. Any advice?
You can leverage your PSA to streamline client compliance, thereby improving accuracy and efficiency. Think of this platform as more than a basic operational tool. It serves as the single source of truth for all client information, communications and documentation.
Originally, a PSA platform was little more than a ticketing system supporting billing automation. Today, it is a central hub for service delivery. You can use it to monitor and manage the entire project life cycle by automating core business processes.
How does PSA help simplify client compliance?
This field is growing increasingly competitive. Market analysts project the managed services market will reach $511.03 billion by 2029, achieving a compound annual growth rate of 6.9 percent from 2024 to 2029. Soon, offering compliance-as-a-service may be key for retaining clients.
Creating a standardized compliance playbook for all clients within the PSA is crucial. With project templates, you can build comprehensive rule sets for the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, the General Data Protection Regulation or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. They can contain predefined tasks, checklists and documentation requirements, ensuring you don’t miss a single step.
Your PSA platform can also help you prepare for and define the scope of an audit, a foundational aspect of any comprehensive compliance framework. It can automate evidence collection, centralize project data and automate risk assessments.
If you run a smaller operation, you may prioritize daily duties over auditing for the sake of efficiency. However, reprioritizing internal reviews can help you identify discrepancies that regulatory agencies and certification bodies would flag, thereby preventing fines and delays.
Are software and systems integrations important?
According to The State of MSP Agent Fatigue in 2025, over half of MSPs experience alert fatigue frequently. For those managing 1,000 or more clients, daily fatigue is a universal experience. Most use four to six security tools, each with its own updates and alerts. The key takeaway here is that you must centralize and automate operations before taking on compliance-as-a-service.
An all-in-one PSA system typically features ticketing, reporting and analytics, time tracking, and security and compliance. Depending on the product, you may get native remote monitoring and management (RMM) or client relationship management (CRM) tools.
Integrations allow you to expand your platform’s capabilities, providing a comprehensive view of your clients’ compliance posture while reducing the burden on your MSP’s staff. By configuring it to act as a centralized repository for compliance-related documentation, you link client accounts, projects and industry-specific regulatory tasks. You want to store risk assessments, policy documents, incident response plans and audit reports.
Integrating core business functions eliminates data silos and improves visibility into operations. By creating a single source of truth, you improve resource allocation, insight generation and client satisfaction.
Do you have any tech stack suggestions?
In addition to integrating CRM and RMM solutions into your PSA platform, you will want to unite your security information and event management (SIEM), endpoint detection and response, antivirus, and patch management systems.
While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, these integrations should fill most gaps. Imagine your SIEM detects a cybersecurity incident. Now, it can automatically create a ticket within the PSA. Since it is connected to all relevant data repositories, the team won’t have to hunt for pertinent details before beginning remediation.
You should build custom workflows and reports within the PSA to provide clients with real-time visibility into their compliance posture. The software should pull data from projects, tickets and asset management models. Its automation features will reduce your workload by facilitating trigger-based tasks, alerts and deadlines.
In addition to simplifying client compliance, this approach can improve other operational aspects. For instance, automating cybersecurity can promote cost savings by facilitating informed decision-making, increasing employee productivity and mitigating human error.
What should I consider during implementation?
Begin by identifying which compliance frameworks matter most to your client base. Then, evaluate your tech stack to determine the ease of integration. Will you have to overhaul your core systems, or will everything integrate seamlessly?
You should strongly consider streamlining audit preparation services by configuring your platform to maintain compliance documentation, access logs, security incident reports and employee training records. This evidence is crucial for proving conformance with regulations and demonstrating value to clients.
If you have multiple ongoing projects, consider establishing a multiclient dashboard to streamline management. Monitoring client compliance posture at a glance will help you identify pain points, gaps and inefficiencies early on.
What’s your advice on selling compliance?
Selling compliance to clients can have a significant return on investment. McKinsey and Company estimates a 1 percent price increase can positively impact bottom-line margins more than a 1 percent decrease in costs or 1 percent uplift in volume.
Evaluate platform and integration pricing to establish a baseline. Consider pricing your MSP as a compliance-as-a-service provider by revisiting your contract structure. You can make the case that your regulatory obligations are ongoing and continuous monitoring is worth the investment. Position yourself as an expert by focusing on risk reduction and operational benefits.
Monitoring your clients’ compliance posture
You unlock your PSA platform’s true power when you integrate it with other core software. It can transform regulatory conformance from a cost center into a strategic asset while reducing the burden on your staff and providing immense value to clients.
As you take on more clients and your team grows, you will encounter data silos and disparate systems. This setup will help you stay accurate and aligned, even when faced with numerous regulatory standards. If you are unsure about incorporating compliance-as-a-service into your offerings, start slow, master your tools and grow from there.
Photo: thodonal88 / Shutterstock
This post originally appeared on Smarter MSP.