Kaseya and Gary Pica have teamed up to bring what they call the Revolution Sessions to the managed services community.

I have not had the chance to attend the seminars with Gary at this point but I have started to see a lot of blog posts and information going around about the events.

For the most part the feedback on the events has been positive, which is great. I am curious if anyone has had the opportunity to attend an event and what the experience was like for you.

Andrew Morgan at Kaseya is pretty diligent about following up with me regularly to get us into the Kaseya tool set and I have to admit that their tool is a fantastic one. For the sake of full disclosure I would tell you that we are currently a Zenith Infotech partner and are very happy with their services.

That being said I want to make sure we are unbiased in our blogging about tools and events so please let me know if you have had the opportunity to attend and what you thought of it.

Josh

I came across a blog post this weekend that did a great job of laying out the numbers for a small business when it comes to turning off and unplugging computers for cost savings.

The tools vendors in the industry have either built or are building the functionality for managed service providers to control systems power consumption. In order to take advantage of this functionality in practice and in marketing you will need to be able to share an easy to understand outline like the one below with your prospects and customers.

In this market any savings and any costs you can eliminate to show better ROI on a clients technology budget goes a long way.

Josh

Now let’s talk about electricity. I’m only going to talk about computer equipment but the discussion applies equally well to every power consuming thing in your office. If you leave them on, here’s what each item is costing you every year.

Let’s do some math and assume a 10 user company with LCD monitors for nice round numbers.

Cost when left on: $1629.30

Cost when unplugged: $135.80

Savings: $1493.50

This was something written by the folks over at Citrix to promote their go to assist tool but and is obviously promotional but I thought it was a good reminder for anyone out there not utilizing remote assistance tools to provide their service. If you are still in the truck rolling business the first thing you should do in this economy is figure out how to deliver your support remotely and have your customers be OK with it. Actually they should be thrilled with it because it will reduce the amount of time it takes for them to get their issues resolved. You can still bill your guys out at your normal hourly rate, probably billed in quarter hours, and you will decrease your opps costs by cutting out travel time , cutting out travel costs like gas and parking, and by allowing your team do do more in less time…… that equals higher utilization which equals more money for everyone!

So while these ideas are specific to the go to assist tool we all should be thinking about cutting costs in this economy.

JC

10 Ways to Profit from Remote Support in a Down Economy

A down economy is no time to stick your head in the sand. Instead, it is a time to strategically cut costs and find innovative ways to grow your business.

Here are 10 ways remote support can help you get ahead:

1. Reduce travel costs by making fewer on-site visits.
2. Solve problems faster by enabling reps to access customer computers just as if they were there in person – instead of trying to talk them through the solution over the phone.
3. Increase customer satisfaction, which leads to increased renewal rates, increased referrals and, ultimately, increased revenue.
4. Reduce the number of repeat calls, as customers who watch reps fix their problems learn to do it themselves
5. Increase call-handling capability without adding staff. (This is especially profitable if you charge for service, but still a cost-saver if you don’t.)
6. Streamline management tasks using at-a-glance dashboard and monitoring tools.
7. Save time by getting automated reports sent directly to your inbox.
8. Expand your support capability to more distant geographical areas.
9. Train reps faster and leverage experience using team collaboration and session recording tools.
10. Win more new clients by using remote support as a value in your sales and marketing plans.

Both of these tools seem to be pushing their MSP offerings pretty hard and I am curious if anyone out there has experience working with them that you would be willing to share?

http://www.cymphonix.com

http://www.untangle.com

Let me know your thoughts and as always feel free to email me directly if you prefer a private conversation: jclifford@everonit.com

JC

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