Welcome to SMBITPros - make sure to sign up for our RSS feed!

I just got the email below from the folks at Autotask.  What a nice capability to have in your toolkit.  We don’t do a ton of field work, but I would still love this feature.  If you do a ton of field work in your business, you NEED this feature!

MRC

---

Dear MICHAEL,

Ever send a tech to a client site, and the client ends up disputing your bill, after-the-fact?

Did you have to scramble to dig up documentation on that account and then argue with the client about when the tech was there, what he did, and how long it took?

If this has happened to you, then you know the importance of getting written client sign-offs on all work performed on site.

If This Hasn’t Happened To You Yet, Consider Yourself Lucky.

Many of the best service providers have set up a best practice to obtain client sign-offs on all work, and until now it was all manual and paper processes.

The most common way to get a client sign off is to print out a paper “to-go” form before leaving the office. Your tech manually completes the form at the client site. The client reviews and signs the paper. Then you hope the document makes it back to your office. Maybe you scan it into your system, or maybe you just add it to the mountain of paper files for your records.

Alternatively, you could use a specialized electronic signature capture system, which is expensive and not always reliable or legible.

At Last: A Simple, Bullet-Proof Client Sign-off… Using Any Mobile Device.

Well, all that has changed! We’ve just upgraded our software to eliminate the need for your technicians to bring paper sign-off forms with them on site.

Instead, clients view the service details directly on the technician’s mobile device and then they enter their private PIN code, acknowledging the work performed.

A permanent electronic note is automatically added to the service ticket history of the acknowledgement, and a digital receipt is automatically generated and e-mailed to the client who signed off.

Our Customers Love It, And You Will, Too.

“This is a great feature for those of us who have clients that sometimes dispute service work,” said Koen Van Overberghe, an Autotask user based in Belgium.

Our new Autotask Digital Sign-Off process eliminates the time-consuming and wasteful steps of generating paper sign-offs, and leverages the very same mobile devices your techs use in their everyday work – any cell phone or PDA with internet access.

In addition, because sign-offs are captured on the actual ticket being closed by the technician, at the moment the work is complete, there is little chance for errors, delays, or disputes.

Click here and complete the demo request form now, and we’ll show you how you can run your IT business better with Autotask and our new Digital Sign-off feature. Be sure to ask for our special offer.

Best Regards,

Bob Vogel

Chief Marketing Officer

Autotask Corporation

P.S. The Autotask Digital Sign-Off service is the latest in a continuous stream of business automation innovations being built into the Autotask IT Services Management platform. Our software is designed specifically for IT Service Providers, MSPs, IT Consultants, Systems Integrators and other technology solution providers who want to run their businesses, better.

Autotask is accessible on any PC, at any time, without any downloads, Autotask can intuitively manage and automate the key operations of your service business, including complete service desk management, scheduling and dispatching, project portfolio management, sales opportunity and contact management, inventory management, time-tracking, invoicing, and reporting. It integrates seamlessly with most Managed Services software applications, all at a monthly cost less than what you bill for a single hour of service time.

Are you ready to streamline and automate your IT services business like more than 20,000 other service providers? Click here and complete the demo request form.

The Connectwise Summit is my favorite event of the year.  Arnie and crew put on a great event that is educational and entertaining.

I know a lot of our readers are going, and I hope we can connect.

It’s incredibly important to take some time each year to step back to spend some time evaluating your business, your industry, and your individual performance.  If you are in the hustle every day - just keeping up with the daily responsibilities -  you can lose sight of the big picture.  This conference is an excellent time to do that.

It’s also an excellent time to interact with your peers and pick their brains for some best practices and ideas to improve your business.  People in this industry love to help each other out, so meet a ton of people and ask a lot of questions.

If you aren’t a Connectwise partner, find another event like this and get to it!  I think Autotask probably has a similar event, and I hear that their partner community is really good.  Whatever it is, find some time to step back and take a look at things from a fresh perspective.

See you in Orlando!

MRC

PS - SHAMELESS PLUG: I’ll be on the closing panel Friday afternoon.  Come hear me and then let’s have a beer poolside after!

A lot of noise has been made recently about the Master MSP model and the number of new entrants in the space.  Bob Vogel from Autotask referred to them in his post here last week, and it isn’t hard to find a number of other articles on the subject, including these at MSPMentor:

Jamcracker’s MSP LaunchPad: Ready for Liftoff?

Dell’s Next Move: A Master MSP Strategy

At Everon, we’ve always worked with partners (that would normally be our competitors) in local markets to provide IT services in the field; we deliver them field work and they help us provide great service.  It’s not a very big leap for us to turn this into some sort of Master MSP model where we integrate all of our services for the good of both parties.

It makes me curious as to how this compares with the models that are currently out there.  I’ve yet to talk to anyone that is actually working with a Master MSP, so I’m hoping someone out there can give me some insight into their experiences.

MRC

By Bob Vogel, Chief Marketing Officer, Autotask Corporation

During the past three years we have seen a steady proliferation of managed services in this market, and the pace of adoption is accelerating. The growth has been driven by an increase in the number of solution providers getting into the game for the first, as well as from established players increasing the percentage of MSP offerings in their IT services portfolio.

With 20,000 solution providers using our software, we have a bird’s eye view of this trend – measurable both by the percentage of customers who ask us to turn on our MSP extensions that link Autotask with the managed services vendors – including Kaseya, Level Platforms, N-able, Zenith and others – and also through direct polls we take through the Autotask CommunITy built-into our software. The last poll we ran just a few weeks ago revealed that fully 95% of our customers now say that at least 10% of their revenue is coming from a recurring managed IT service… And more than 1/3 of them say they derive more than half of their revenue through Managed Services.

We’re also seeing a new wave of Master MSPs who are making it even easier to get into the game, by offering up turn-key managed services that solution providers can simply resell to their customers. Zenith Infotech jumped into the game early, offering up a virtual NOC, and then Ingram Micro added momentum with its Seismic Offering. Then, Amy Luby’s MSPSN, Do IT Smarter, the Utility Company and a dozen other smaller players began to aggregate basic services, including virtual help desk, patch management, and monitoring – becoming the secret “back-end” delivery mechanism for hundreds of smaller VARs wanting to get into the MSP game without the big investment. Now the likes of NetEnrich and Dell are getting into the game.

What’s wrong with this picture? To put it simply, managed services delivery is entering the mainstream of our business, and the impact is going to be a steady increase in competition and a commoditization of many of the services in your portfolio.

Not only are most solution providers now offering the same suite of services to small and medium sized businesses – many of them are buying and reselling those services from the exact same sources and/or using the exact same managed services platforms to deliver them.

That’s why VARs and MSPs that want to continue being paid at a premium for the services they provide, must find ways to differentiate their business and collaborate with partners who can enhance their offerings and help deliver superior customer service.

We faced the exact same dilemma 15 years ago with the commoditization of computer hardware and software. Resellers had traditionally made most of their money on the healthy margins they realized on the equipment they purchased for their customers. Then, the basic computer networking technology became so pervasive, with so many vendors, that prices dropped, margins evaporated, and Resellers turned to services to make their money – becoming not just computer resellers, but VALUE-ADDED resellers.

That was then. But now that the services you are delivering are becoming commoditized, what is your “value-add” going to be? Are you going to be able to win new customers – and make a profit from your current customers – when everyone is out there offering up network management at $X/month per PC, and $Y/month per server – and each provider throwing something else into the mix, or lowering the price by another $1 a month, just to beat the next guy’s plan?

Now, I’m not suggesting that we’ve gotten to the point where you can’t make money in Managed Services today. But it’s going to get increasingly difficult to make a profit at it, as prices continue to drop, more services get bundled in, and your labor costs continue to rise.

The solution providers who are going to come out on top, in my view, are the ones who develop a clearly identified specialty – either in a proprietary business solution, or in one or more narrow vertical niches that they can establish themselves as “the technology gurus” within their areas of specialty.

The successful solution providers of tomorrow will use Managed Services delivery as a MEANS to their ends, not the end itself — whether delivered by their own staff or through outsourcing to others. The successful MSPs will be the ones who are rigorous about they way they collect and manage the information about their clients’ businesses – not just in terms of the data being generated through their monitoring systems, but data related to the quality of their service delivery.

They will use this data both to regularly justify the value of the services they have already delivered, and to identify new opportunities for selling higher-margin technology services and solutions to their clients.

I have to take my hat off to the crew at Autotask. I recently asked some questions of those working with them and I am shocked to see the response from the community.

Not shocked that they are involved in the community but rather shocked that so many in the community took the time to stand up and speak about their overwhelmingly positive experience in working with them.

We all are busy growing and running our businesses each day and as small a task as it seems it can take a decent effort to share our experience about a vendor. In my experience you are much more likely to have someone take the time speak up about their negative feelings in working with a vendor than to take the time to share a positive experience.

Some one that has had a bad service experience is likely to tell everyone they know about it (these are detractors) while someone who has a good experience is likely to remain silent about it. It is only the user that has a remarkable service experience that takes the time to say good things about the vendor (these are promoters). These promoters are worth their weight in gold when it comes to growing your business and having credibility in the market.

% promoters minus % detractors equals a companies net promoter score.  This comes from Net Promoter Score and is what we utilize at Everon to measure our customer satisfaction. I encourage everyone to use the measure as it brings great clarity for your employees and fantastic insight into your business. I truly believe as stated on their site that “net promoter score is the single most reliable indicator of a businesses ability to grow”.

I do not know if Autotask uses NPS in their business but I would suggest based on the response to my post that they would have a high score in the community indicating a continuation of their fantastic growth and success.

Congratulations to everyone at Autotask and thank you for being out there helping MSPs succeed.

JC

It may seem like a funny question on the surface and as we always say at Everon “what’s the question behind the question”?

Well I am curious if they are easy to do business with?

My experience to date has been with their product evangilists - ever wonder why it seems you see Autotask everywhere, well beyond a big marketing budget they hire independent consultants to be out in the marketplace talking them up.

At first I was impressed that they seemed to respond to blogs and be involved in the community, so much so that I proposed they participate in our blog as Connectwise, Dell, and other have done but things just seemed to go into a black hole from there. Perhaps they don’t feel that a bunch of smart, highly educated, good looking, business minded folks like you and I (that is how I like to think of our readers) are the approprate target audience for their tool?

I am very interested to know if their involvement in the community is just on the surface or if they are truly out there contributing to the community they are so desperately trying to move to their product. One thing I have always been impressed with working with Connectwise is that Arnie- love him or hate him - is out there looking out for each and every one of us day after day.

Anyway, I am curious if anyone else has had a similar experience or if this was just my experience.

JC

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.