A Managed Service Provider (MSP) is an outsourced third-party company that takes on the ongoing, day-to-day responsibilities, monitoring, and maintenance of another company – their customer. The MSP and the customer are typically bound by a contract with a standardized Service Level Agreement that defines the expectations and quality metrics of the delivered services.

Common MSP business functions include:

• IT (connectivity, networking, data-backup and recovery)
• Marketing (strategy, planning, copywriting)
• HR (employee on-and off-boarding, payroll)
• Contingent workforce (external workforce requisition, placement, tracking)
• Supply chain (sourcing, procurement, logistics, distribution)