So tonight I am going to ask a question rather than forcing my opinion on you all, although I suspect my opinion will leak out into this post someplace along the way.
What are the CRM / Professional automation tools / time tracking tools that MSPs are using out there?
I was recently reading a blog comment on MSP Alliance and it shocked me to see that a traditional IT provider looking to transition to managed services had asked the question of what CRM tool they should use and the only tools they had stopped to consider were sugar CRM and Salesforce.com. Does it seem odd to anyone else that players like Connectwise, Autotask, and the myriad of others, are not on the list for anyone doing this evaluation?
So this got me to thinking, what is out there that people are successfully using that is not even on my radar?
I recently spoke with a provider that has spent the last 3+ years developing their own internal time and scheduling application, they have a development side of their business so it seemed to make sense on the surface. As we talked about why they had developed internaly and what they wanted their tool to do vs. what our off the shelf tool does (we use Connectwise PSA) it seemed obvious to them that they had spent a lot of time and energy reinventing the wheel. - Not that there isn’t any value in building your own tools under the right circumstances, the circumstances just weren’t there for this provider.
Anyway, I think it would be interesting to know what other are using and if you are willing to share the why of the decision that would be great as well.
If you are not comfortable posting on the site feel free to email me directly as well (please put MSP CRM in the subject if you go this route): jclifford@everonit.com
JC
