Many managed service providers are finding that their documentation practices are hurting profitability and preventing them from adopting AI technologies. At XChange August 2026, Lexful CEO Pinar Ormeci explained that relying on outdated or scattered documents is a structural issue for the industry. Relying on outdated or scattered documents is a structural issue for the industry. “You run the world’s IT, but on documents that are out of date, scattered, or that live in people’s heads as tribal knowledge,” Ormeci said. “You think that is a technology problem—but actually, your documentation [practices] are killing your margin.”
The Knowledge Gap
Too frequently, MSPs are seeking to rely on data that is scattered across multiple systems, Ormeci noted. Much institutional knowledge is only stored in the heads of experienced employees, which can be a massive issue when a senior staffer leaves the company or takes time off. The information is effectively lost to the organization. Qnet Managed Services President and CEO Larry Hall agreed that documentation is often fragmented. “For most of us MSPs, documentation is scattered all over the place,” Hall said. “When you get new techs in and techs leave, they leave with [the documentation] somewhere that no one knew about.”
This lack of a centralized knowledge base creates a disconnect between the provider and the client. When technicians cannot easily access the history of a system or the steps taken during a previous fix, they often end up repeating work or guessing at solutions. This inefficiency directly impacts the bottom line. It is not just a matter of lost files; it is a systemic failure to maintain the continuity of the business.
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Preparing for the AI Shift
These challenges have become a bigger issue amid the shift to deploying AI, which needs data that is trusted and structured. Ormeci said AI has fundamentally changed the role of documentation. “Now it is the knowledge layer that powers your AI. It is the context behind your automation and agents. And it is the foundation for faster decision-making and execution at scale.” If the underlying data is flawed or incomplete, the results generated by AI tools will be unreliable, leading to wasted time and potential errors in client environments.
For MSPs, the shift toward agentic automation and AI agents offers a way to close the knowledge gap. Hall suggested that providing technicians with access to an AI agent that utilizes accurate documentation could make the MSP far more productive. “If there was a way that they could just ask the AI agent—which keeps track of that knowledge—and it could just tell them [the answer], now you’re more efficient,” Hall said. This approach moves the industry away from reliance on individual memory and toward a system where information is available on demand.
Ormeci warned that simply attaching a general large language model to existing, messy documentation will not reliably work. The relationship between documentation and AI is symbiotic, not additive. To truly leverage these new tools, MSPs must fundamentally rebuild their information infrastructure to support both human workers and automated agents. The foundation must be solid before the structure can be built upon it.
