Take The PSA Challenge
If your idea of professional services automation (PSA) involves keying Post-it note scribbles into your PDA, it’s time to get some new ideas. Implementing a package designed specifically to handle client requests, log phone calls, monitor work orders, generate invoices, and much more may well be the magic ticket that moves your business from good to great.
It’s not good when “your customers’ success depends on a yellow piece of notebook paper,” says Mark Crall, CEO of Charlotte Tech Care Team in Charlotte, N.C. Crall began using the PSA program Autotask several years ago after adding a few employees to his business of one. What had been manageable solo became less so when he had to start deploying multiple employees. It was hard to manage all the details, and he felt he wasn’t providing the quality of service his customers had grown to expect. What he liked most about Autotask: “No more details falling through the cracks.” The program has also helped minimize the time he spends on administrative tasks, and his employees love it.
While many IT company owners are aware that business management solutions like Autotask exist, they may not know exactly how they work or where to find them. Fewer than 10 percent of IT companies have fully integrated PSA systems, estimates Bob Godgart, founder and CEO of Autotask Corp., based in East Greenbush, N.Y. “People know they need PSA, but they don’t know what it’s called,” he says. Or they may think the software is only for really big companies with deep pockets. One thing they know for sure is that they would love to stop losing billable hours and dropping the occasional ball—if only they could stop putting out fires long enough to figure out how.
PSA PLAYERS
In fact, both Autotask and its industry rival, ConnectWise, are designed to ease the particular pains of IT companies, including small ones. (Autotask and ConnectWise are considered the market leaders in this area, but there are other packages as well, listed in “A PSA Sampler.”) Sometimes these programs blur the line between professional services automation and customer relationship management (CRM) software, but in short, PSA software automates those administrative aspects of your IT business that are less compelling than what you consider your actual work: designing, installing, and maintaining clients’ systems.
Autotask Pro is the flagship product of Autotask, which has been in existence since 2001. Autotask Pro was developed as a Web-based, hosted solution to fit the business models of IT and managed service providers. “It was designed from the ground up so people don’t have to install updates,” says Godgart, who estimates that customers receive seven to nine substantial upgrades per year, in addition to incremental patches. This is a situation that works well for Crall. “I don’t want to be managing my PSA,” he says. “I want to be using it.” Autotask has recently introduced Autotask Go!, a version of the software optimized for IT shops with three or fewer users; it is available on a 60-day trial basis.
ConnectWise PSA was developed by the Tampa, Fla.-based IT company ConnectWise as a means of coping with its own growing pains. According to ConnectWise CEO Arnie Bellini, the product was under development for about 12 years, and has been on the market for about five. Nowadays, a typical customer reaction is, “I can’t believe I did without this for so long,” says Bellini.
Eric Hanson, president of Inland Productivity Solutions Inc. in Upland, Calif., introduced ConnectWise to his company about two and a half years ago. “I saw a demo,” he says, “and it really addressed what I thought was our biggest pain— the management of service tickets.” As Inland Productivity began to work with the product, however, it became clear that the company had another, even bigger pain: “Our workflow—how we did everything,” says Hanson. Installing a PSA program, in other words, can make you clean up your act, even if you didn’t think you needed to.
