Co-Managed IT Support: The 24/7 Coverage Model That Actually Works
There's a moment every MSP owner knows well. It's 11:47 PM on a Tuesday. A client's server is down. Your on-call technician—who just worked a full eight-hour shift—picks up the phone for the third time this week. By morning, they're exhausted. By Friday, they're quietly updating their LinkedIn.
This isn't an isolated event. A Kaseya survey found that 80% of MSPs report being understaffed and overworked, with 62% experiencing high levels of stress on the job. The on-call rotation is often the tipping point—the thing that takes a manageable role and makes it untenable. Support Adventure's analysis of MSP burnout makes this dynamic explicit: when technicians are permanently in an "always-on" posture, performance degrades, clients suffer, and the talent you've spent months developing walks out the door. The relationship between 24/7 coverage demands and technician turnover isn't coincidental—it's causal.
The co-managed IT support model solves this structurally. Not by cutting quality or handing over client relationships, but by distributing work across time zones so the right people handle the right tasks at the right hours. Nobody burns out. Coverage is real, not nominal. And the economics finally make sense for MSPs that couldn't afford proper 24/7 staffing before.
This guide breaks down exactly how the model works, what it costs, how to structure operations, and why Filipino IT professionals have become the preferred offshore layer for MSPs across North America and Australia.
What Co-Managed IT Support Actually Is
Co-managed IT support is a hybrid staffing model where a domestic team and an offshore team work in coordinated layers to deliver continuous coverage. Unlike fully outsourced IT—where a third party takes over client management entirely—co-managed keeps your brand, your client relationships, and your strategic decision-making firmly in-house. The offshore team extends your capacity without replacing your identity.
Think of it as a relay race rather than a handoff. Your domestic team runs the daytime leg: complex escalations, client meetings, onboarding, vCIO conversations, and high-touch relationship work. Your offshore team runs the overnight and weekend leg: monitoring systems, handling Tier 1 and Tier 2 tickets, resolving routine issues, and escalating anything requiring senior attention—with complete documentation ready for your morning review.
The client experience remains seamless. Nobody on your domestic team is woken at 2 AM for a locked account or a printer driver issue.
This is meaningfully different from the "answering service" approach many MSPs attempt first—where a third-party call center takes after-hours calls but can't actually resolve anything. That model generates frustrated clients, frustrated technicians, and early-morning ticket queues piled up like bad debt. True co-managed IT means your offshore team is trained on your tools, your client environments, your runbooks, and your escalation procedures. They're not call-takers. They're an extension of your team that works while you sleep.
Looking at the Konnect after-hours IT support coverage comparison for US East Coast MSPs, MSPs who deploy properly trained offshore teams—rather than answering services—cut overnight escalation rates substantially within the first 90 days of operation, because tickets are actually getting resolved rather than queued.
Why Traditional 24/7 Approaches Consistently Fail
Before building a co-managed model, it's worth understanding why conventional approaches break down so predictably—and why this isn't a resourcing problem that more hiring alone can fix.
The rotating on-call roster is the most common first attempt. You take your existing team and rotate overnight and weekend responsibility. On paper it distributes burden fairly. In practice, it distributes misery. Channel Pro Network's reporting on the link between tech shortages and MSP burnout found that talented technicians who feel trapped in on-call cycles cite it as a primary driver of their decision to look elsewhere—often to enterprise IT departments with defined hours and higher salaries. For smaller MSPs competing for the same talent, this is a structural disadvantage that rotating rosters make worse.
Hiring dedicated domestic overnight staff sounds like the obvious fix until you run the numbers. A skilled Tier 1–2 overnight technician in a major US or Canadian city costs $50,000–$65,000 in base salary, plus employer costs that typically run 28–32% on top, plus a shift differential of 10–20%. For genuine 24/7 coverage that accounts for days off, sick leave, and vacation, you need multiple technicians. You're looking at $250,000–$350,000 USD annually just for overnight coverage—before a single daytime hire.
Tiered answering services solve the phone problem while completely failing the technical one. Clients get a human on the line but don't get their issues resolved. Escalation to your on-call tech happens anyway, meaning you've paid an additional layer that added wait time rather than resolution.
Our MSP staffing crisis analysis documents how all these options have become harder and more expensive simultaneously. CompTIA's State of the Tech Workforce data shows demand for IT talent growing at roughly twice the rate of supply—a structural imbalance that makes the traditional domestic-first playbook increasingly untenable for MSPs under $5M in revenue.
The Co-Managed Model: Three Layers That Work Together
A well-structured co-managed IT support model operates across three coordinated layers. Understanding each one—and how they interact—is the difference between a model that delivers and one that creates new problems.
Layer 1: Offshore Tier 1 and Tier 2 Coverage
Your offshore team handles the high-volume, process-driven work that represents 60–70% of most MSP ticket queues. Password resets, account unlocks, connectivity troubleshooting, software installation, device configuration, monitoring alert triage, backup verification, and standard break/fix resolution all fit cleanly here. They work directly in your RMM, your PSA, and your documentation system, following your runbooks and escalating defined scenarios to your domestic team with complete, structured notes.
This layer operates during your clients' off-hours—overnight and weekends in North American or Australian time zones—which aligns naturally with Philippine daytime business hours (GMT+8). An MSP serving Eastern Time clients can have their Filipino team working a standard 9 AM–6 PM Manila day while covering 8 PM–5 AM ET. No one works nights. Everyone works days. Coverage is real, not nominal.
Layer 2: Domestic Senior Technical Coverage
Your domestic technicians handle complex escalations, client-facing strategic work, and anything requiring deep environmental knowledge, relationship context, or on-site presence. They're no longer fielding routine tickets at odd hours. They're solving the problems that genuinely require their expertise, which makes their work more interesting, reduces burnout, and allows you to employ fewer of them without degrading service quality. During domestic daytime hours, both layers are active simultaneously, enabling collaborative handling of volume spikes.
Layer 3: Management, Coordination, and Quality Assurance
A co-managed model requires deliberate coordination infrastructure: ticket routing logic, escalation thresholds, documentation standards, daily handoff procedures, and communication rhythms between layers. This is typically managed through your PSA alongside daily shift-change calls and asynchronous documentation in platforms like IT Glue or Hudu. Getting this layer right is what separates high-performing co-managed teams from chaotic ones. Konnect's essential tools guide for managing remote IT support teams covers the specific platforms that enable this coordination at MSP scale.
The Time Zone Math: How Coverage Maps Across Markets
The Philippines operates at GMT+8 (Philippine Time), creating meaningfully different coverage dynamics depending on your primary market.
| MSP Market | Client Business Hours (Local) | Philippines Time (Same Moment) | Coverage Approach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eastern USA / Canada (ET) | 8 AM – 6 PM ET | 9 PM – 7 AM PHT | Philippine night shift covers client business hours; day shift covers overnight ET |
| Central USA / Canada (CT) | 8 AM – 6 PM CT | 10 PM – 8 AM PHT | Philippine night shift for business hours; day shift covers overnight CT |
| Western USA / Canada (PT) | 8 AM – 6 PM PT | 12 AM – 10 AM PHT | Philippine early-morning/day shift provides partial daytime overlap; strong overnight PT coverage |
| Australia (AEST) | 8 AM – 6 PM AEST | 7 AM – 5 PM PHT | Near-perfect overlap — Philippine day shift works fully within Australian business hours |
| Multi-region (US + Australia) | Combined 18+ hour window | Multiple shifts | Two Philippine shifts achieves near-complete follow-the-sun coverage |
For Australian MSPs, the alignment is genuinely exceptional. A Filipino technician working a standard Manila day is simultaneously covering Sydney's business hours with near-perfect overlap—a dynamic that MSP Success magazine, in its reporting on offshore staffing adoption among MSPs, notes as the primary reason Australian and New Zealand operators consistently choose the Philippines over other offshore destinations.
For Eastern Time MSPs, the math works differently. Philippine technicians covering ET business hours work afternoon and evening Manila shifts, which commands a modest shift differential standard in the Philippine BPO market. Worth factoring into your cost model, but still dramatically cheaper than domestic overnight equivalents.
What the Numbers Actually Look Like
The financial case for co-managed IT is compelling, but it requires honest accounting on both sides of the equation. Here's what the comparison looks like for a mid-sized MSP serving 200–400 endpoints.
Fully domestic 24/7 model: Two dedicated overnight Tier 1–2 technicians in a US metro, fully loaded (base salary + benefits + shift differential + recruitment overhead), run approximately $80,000–$105,000 each per year. That's $160,000–$210,000 annually for overnight coverage alone—before any daytime hires and before accounting for turnover costs. According to Level IT's analysis of co-managed IT economics, citing Kaseya benchmark data, 68% of MSPs now offer co-managed IT packages precisely because the domestic-only math stopped working for the majority of the market.
Co-managed model with Filipino IT professionals: A skilled Tier 1–2 Filipino technician through a quality staffing provider costs approximately $18,000–$26,000 USD fully loaded per year. Two or three technicians in rotating overnight and weekend shifts runs $36,000–$78,000 annually—a 55–65% reduction compared to domestic equivalents, with no sacrifice in ticket quality for the routine work that constitutes the majority of your after-hours volume. Those same economics show revenue per technician typically rising from $150,000 to $250,000 or more once co-managed models mature, while margins improve from the 30–50% range to 45–60%.
You can run Konnect's cost savings calculator against your own staffing structure to get numbers specific to your team size and coverage requirements.
What Work Belongs in Each Layer
One of the most practical questions when building a co-managed model is ticket routing: what stays onshore, and what goes offshore? The answer comes down to complexity, client relationship sensitivity, and documentation maturity.
Strong candidates for offshore handling include anything that follows a documented runbook: password resets and account unlocks, new device setup and software installation, printer and peripheral troubleshooting, VPN connectivity, Microsoft 365 configuration tasks, scheduled backup verification, and RMM alert triage with defined response procedures. These task types typically represent 60–70% of overnight and weekend ticket volume—process-driven work that doesn't require deep client history to resolve.
Keep onshore anything involving direct client communication on sensitive matters, network architecture decisions, security incident response requiring real-time judgment, new client onboarding, and vCIO-level strategic conversations. These are interactions where institutional knowledge and relationship context matter most.
The offshore hiring best practices guide on Konnect outlines the documentation foundation you need in place before ticket routing decisions make sense—covering runbook development, escalation path design, and the environment documentation standards that let offshore technicians work confidently rather than guessing.
Building the Handoff: What Good Looks Like
The co-managed model lives or dies on handoff quality. A seamless shift transition requires deliberate systems, not just good intentions.
Runbooks are non-negotiable. Your offshore team needs written, step-by-step procedures for every recurring task and defined escalation scenario—not vague guidelines, but actual decision trees with explicit thresholds. "If X, do Y. If Y fails, escalate via Z channel with these fields completed." ScalableOS, in its guide to offshore MSP operations in the Philippines, identifies documented playbooks as the single most reliable predictor of offshore team performance quality, particularly in the first 90 days.
Structured shift handoff notes prevent blind starts. Every shift should end with a brief written summary: tickets in progress, client situations needing context, anything unusual observed. This takes five minutes and saves thirty. Without it, your domestic team starts every morning flying blind.
Escalation channels must be explicit. Define exactly how your offshore team contacts the domestic team for escalations—which tool, which channel, what priority levels mean, expected response times. Ambiguity in escalation channels creates resolution delays and technician anxiety in equal measure.
Regular calibration calls sustain quality over time. A weekly 15-minute call between your domestic lead and offshore lead catches emerging issues before they become patterns. Monthly review of escalation data tells you whether routing thresholds are calibrated correctly. The First 90 Days with an Offshore Team guide on Konnect provides a week-by-week framework for the calibration period that determines long-term co-managed performance.
Addressing the Objections You're Already Thinking About
"Will clients notice the difference?"
In a well-implemented co-managed model, clients experience your brand and your SLAs—not the geography of the technician resolving their ticket. The metric that matters is resolution time and quality, both of which typically improve when 24/7 coverage is genuinely staffed. Filipino IT professionals are selected for English communication quality as a primary hiring criterion, and the Philippines' BPO infrastructure means candidates are accustomed to professional, client-facing communication standards at a level that matches or exceeds many domestic Tier 1 environments.
"What about complex client environments?"
This is a legitimate concern that documentation solves. Your offshore team should never be expected to navigate environments they haven't been briefed on. Proper onboarding means offshore technicians have access to your knowledge management platform, environment notes, and runbooks before they handle a single ticket. Complex escalations route to your domestic team—that's the structural point of the layered model.
"We tried outsourcing before and it didn't work."
Most failed outsourcing attempts share a common root cause: inadequate documentation, insufficient onboarding investment, and expectations misaligned with realistic ramp time. A co-managed model isn't plug-and-play. It requires 60–90 days of deliberate onboarding and calibration. MSPs that invest in the foundation consistently report strong outcomes; those that treat it as plug-and-play consistently don't. Our remote onboarding best practices guide covers the specific onboarding framework that minimizes ramp time and maximizes early performance.
Implementation Timeline: From Decision to Live Coverage
Weeks 1–2 — Foundation and Documentation: Audit existing ticket data for after-hours volume. Identify your top 20 ticket types—these become initial runbooks. Define escalation thresholds. Document client environments. Configure PSA and RMM for multi-team routing.
Weeks 3–4 — Team Selection and Access Provisioning: Staffing partner presents vetted candidates. You interview and select. Tool access is provisioned. Offshore technicians begin training on your systems and shadowing domestic ticket handling before going live independently.
Weeks 5–8 — Supervised Live Operation: Offshore team handles tickets independently with close domestic review. Runbooks get refined from real cases. Expect higher-than-normal escalation rates—that's calibration, not failure. Weekly calibration calls are essential here.
Month 3 and Beyond — Optimized Operation: Escalation rates normalize, routing is refined, and your domestic team starts experiencing what co-managed is supposed to deliver: fewer interruptions, better focus on meaningful work, and genuine after-hours coverage they're no longer personally providing.
The Bigger Strategic Picture
Co-managed IT support isn't only a staffing efficiency—it's a growth enabler. MSPs with genuine 24/7 coverage can serve client segments that previously required it as a non-negotiable: mid-market businesses, healthcare organizations, financial services firms, and multi-location operations. Without it, you're automatically disqualified from those opportunities regardless of your technical capability.
The Konnect remote IT helpdesk cost savings analysis documents a Houston MSP that deployed three offshore Tier 1 agents, reduced ticket response times by 42%, eliminated on-call rotations, and saved $9,200 per month compared to equivalent domestic staffing. These aren't exceptional results—they're typical for MSPs that implement the co-managed model with appropriate onboarding investment.
The Canalys MSP landscape analysis forecasts managed services revenue growing 13% in 2025 even as domestic talent availability continues to lag behind demand. The MSPs building co-managed models now aren't working around a temporary problem. They're building the operational foundation that others will eventually need to copy.
Ready to Build a 24/7 Coverage Model That Actually Works?
Konnect specializes in placing skilled Filipino IT professionals with MSPs across the USA, Canada, and Australia. We handle recruiting, vetting, and the initial onboarding structure—so you spend your time building the coverage model, not searching for the right people.
Our team members are experienced in the tools MSPs rely on: ConnectWise, Autotask, Kaseya, NinjaRMM, HaloPSA, Microsoft 365, and more. We match technical capability to your specific environment and provide ongoing support to help your co-managed model reach full performance.
📅 Schedule a discovery call: https://meet.brevo.com/konnectph
✉️ Email us directly: hello@konnect.ph
Let's build the coverage model your clients deserve—without burning out the team that delivers it.
About the Author
Vilbert Fermin is the founder of Konnect, a remote staffing company connecting North American and Australian businesses with top Filipino talent. With deep expertise in IT support and remote team management, Vilbert helps MSPs access skilled technical professionals without the overhead of full-time domestic IT staff. His mission is to showcase Filipino excellence while helping businesses stay protected, productive, and competitive through strategic remote staffing.
Related Resources
What Is Co-Managed IT and Why It's the Future of MSP Partnerships – Level IT
Managing Burnout in MSP Roles with 24/7 Support Expectations – Support Adventure
How to Navigate Offshoring to Find Skilled and Affordable Staff – MSP Success
MSP Staffing Crisis 2025: Why 52% of MSPs Can't Find Technicians – Konnect
After-Hours IT Support for US East Coast Businesses: Coverage Options Compared – Konnect
Your First 90 Days with an Offshore Team: Week-by-Week Implementation Guide – Konnect
