If you are not familiar with these tools you should take some time to check them out as they are both powerful tools for your MSP business – you would use one or the other. We can talk more about the specific comparisons of the tools later.
I have spoken with Arnie Bellini, CEO and founder of ConnectWise many times and they way he describes his tools partner network is fantastic. He says things along the lines of (I’m paraphrasing here) ‘if we are going to beat Dell and Microsoft as they enter the MSP market we need to stop being territorial, break down the walls of our Kingdome, fill in the mote, and work together to service clients’. I have always agreed with this and in fact Everon does not employee field engineers, we give all of our field work to partners so that we can service clients in any area of the country.
I also recently read someplace that Autotask has announced the ability to outsource jobs through their tool as well. Bob Godgart (Autotask’s CEO and founder) explained his vision as making is simple for providers to send tickets back and forth to each other through the Autotask tool. I have not had the opportunity to speak with Bob personally but believe this is the right direction for their tool and the industry.
I have seen a much wider acceptance of sharing information about clients with each other than in the past and I would argue that these types of networks are vital to our success as a group. At Everon we demand a high level of sophistication from these types of partner networks – I dispatch a partner to service my client across the hall the same as I dispatch a partner to service my client in Geneva the way my business is setup and we have yet to find one solution that meets all of our needs.
In fact I would suggest that at some point down the road the providers of the various tools and partner networks should come together, break down their walls, bridge their motes and provide a more powerful more complete partner network than anyone of them has been able to provide on their own.
Wouldn’t that be something!
JC
PS – there are many other nationwide partner networks out there that we utilize or have researched, let me know if you want to talk more about them and our experience.
