North Country, a leading MSP and point-of-sale vendor, supports thousands of customers across the United States in grocery, specialty retail, hospitality, and managed services. Their mission is clear: deliver a high-touch, white-glove service experience—but do it at scale. As Vice President of Operations Matthew Swanson explains, “We try to provide a high-touch, white-glove type service—but we try to do that at scale so that we can provide that service to thousands of customers that we support.”

The Challenge: Scaling High-Touch Service Across Complex Environments

This ambition presented a significant challenge. North Country needed to manage a complex technical landscape across diverse industries, from restaurants with a handful of point-of-sale terminals to grocery chains with extensive server infrastructure, and even law firms and insurance companies with traditional desktop environments. 

The goal was to proactively identify and resolve issues before customers noticed, while maintaining efficiency and profitability in a competitive market where recruiting skilled technicians is increasingly difficult. “It’s hard to find enough people to service all of your customers at once,” Swanson notes. “These (ConnectWise) tools have helped us fill in those gaps and introduce automations—not to replace positions but to help our people be more effective.”

The Turning Point: Embracing ConnectWise

To achieve these goals, North Country turned to ConnectWise. Swanson recalls, “One of the things that we really liked was the promise of what the platform will help us deliver—to bring in all of our different applications or needs within the service experience and really the entire customer journey.” ConnectWise offered a unified approach, where ConnectWise PSA, ConnectWise RMM, and ConnectWise CPQ  worked together seamlessly to enable smarter decisions and advanced process automation.

Swanson emphasizes the importance of this approach: “We have the ability to have a single pane-of-glass to see the entire customer experience, the entire technical landscape, and also bring together all of the data from ConnectWise CPQ, ConnectWise RMM and ConnectWise PSA to see the overall customer account in order to make smarter decisions and smarter automations and deliver faster, more proactive service.”

This unified approach not only improved visibility but also allowed North Country to analyze trends across its entire customer base. “We could really look at trends throughout the entire estate of our customers and it helped us drive our business and implement solutions that were at wider scale rather than a single customer,” Swanson explains.

Implementation Journey: From Automate to ConnectWise RMM and Beyond

North Country’s journey began with a transition from Automate to ConnectWise RMM, and embracing the automation capabilities through the platform. “We evaluated several different competitive products that were out there,” Swanson says. “And we felt like [ConnectWise] could deliver at a higher level rather than just a third party that might provide a piece of that overall puzzle.” The move enabled deeper data integration, streamlining workflows, reducing manual steps, accelerating issue resolution, and improving the customer experience.

Measurable Results and Operational Impact

The impact of implementing ConnectWise RMM has been significant. North Country achieved measurable improvements in key performance metrics:

• 20–25% improvement in average handle times
• 50% reduction in ticket backlog
• Increased first-time resolution rates and technician efficiency 

Swanson shares, “We’ve seen increases of at least 20 to 25% in what our average handle times are. We’ve seen a reduction of about 50% in our backlog of tickets.” These improvements have resulted in faster response rates, improved resource utilization, and increased customer satisfaction. “One of the things that ConnectWise RMM does for us is to easily connect data points and information in one place rather than have to log into various different portals,” Swanson explains.

Driving Efficiency and Technician Empowerment

Beyond speed and backlog reduction, ConnectWise has helped North Country address a critical industry challenge: talent shortages. “While we do a fairly good job (of staffing talent), it’s hard to find enough people to service all of your customers at once,” Swanson says. “These tools have helped us to fill in those gaps and introduce automations---not to replace those positions, but to help our people be more effective while they’re there because we cannot find enough people to actually solve for (every role we need).”

Future-Proofing Through Partnership

For Swanson, the decision to deepen North Country’s relationship with ConnectWise was about more than immediate benefits. “We thought it was important to evaluate how different point solutions integrate with each other. We didn’t want to experience some of the same sync issues that you might have from various platforms,” he explains. Swanson adds, “What we found with ConnectWise, and what we’re excited about in the future, is that there’s continuous innovation and future investment in the platform. It’s not just a single point in time piece of technology. It’s something that’s forward-looking. It was important for us to partner with ConnectWise as we are confident, they can help drive that journey for both of us.”

Advice to MSPs Considering Asio

Swanson’s advice to other MSPs and IT solution providers is clear: “Evaluate how these solutions integrate—not just at a surface-level but deeply. Look for a partner that’s investing in innovation and future-proofing.”