Asterisk Information Security – Building a High-Performance Culture and Modern Business

Before to being acquired in October 2019, Asterisk Information Security Pty Ltd was a boutique cybersecurity consultancy based in Perth, Western Australia. Today, Asterisk is part of the CyberCX group of companies, a workforce of over 600 cybersecurity professionals and over 20 offices across Australia and New Zealand and a global presence in Europe and the US. Its end-to-end cybersecurity offering provides services from strategic consulting and security testing and training to world-class managed services and engineering solutions. 

Building a Modern Scalable Business

An increase in security demands and an unparalleled offering has fuelled the growth of Asterisk over the years. With an increase in customer requirements and solution offerings, the day-to-day business operations within Asterisk became more complex. ‘We were using between eight to nine different applications to manage the business, and because of this, the flow of information through the quote-to-cash process was clunky,’ said Steve Schupp, Executive Director at Asterisk. 

Many existing business processes and technologies were limiting their ability to further evolve and operationally mature, causing headaches and stress to the executive team. Without addressing these, their team would spend time on ‘keeping the lights on’ activities compared to focusing time on projects that would add real value to the business.    

Asterisk quickly identified that many of the applications and workflows they’ve implemented many years back were no longer aligned to the businesses needs today as the business has grown. As time passed, the gap between technology outcomes and business requirements grew wider. With the increased collection of information and data being saved in application silos, it was time-consuming for Asterisk to accurately pull data and transfer information seamlessly through the business.    

By reviewing their workflows and implementing best practices and processes, Asterisk was able to increase billable time recovery by 25% by more tightly allocating and recording time against a project or task. ‘Our profitability has increased at a faster rate over revenue due to the ability to more tightly manage the quote to cash process and deliver greater operational efficiencies through improved resource allocation and management,’ said Steve. 

After reviewing all the technology options within the market, Asterisk selected ConnectWise based on its following capabilities: 

• Integrate time management, project accounting, and invoicing applications to ensure a seamless quote to cash process 
• Run our business from a single platform and have one single source of truth 
• ConnectWise could deliver 85% of Asterisk requirements out of the box 

‘It took us some time to get to a point where we were getting efficiency out of ConnectWise, but when we got there, it was really driving business efficiency. It felt like the gears in the business had just been oiled, everything just started to run smoothly for us from quote-to-cash, everything is now just more efficient,’ said Steve. 

Eliminating Departmental Friction  

One key challenge experienced by Asterisk was the transfer of information internally between sales, technicians, finance, and project managers. Often employees were having to follow up with other employees within different business departments on where an activity was up to and double-check that the information that was being processed was 100% accurate. This double handling and re-checking of information led to time inefficiencies and errors, which led to departmental frustration and friction.  

Removing information silos by implementing a truly integrated application platform ensured that there was now one point of truth for all information. Implementing new workflows alongside new technology and automation ensured that information could now be accurately and seamlessly transferred between departments. An outcome of this process was the reduction of departmental friction and ultimately an increase in operational efficiency, which helped to further build a high-performance culture. 

Planning for Success  

Through the project scoping process, Asterisk worked with their finance team, sales members, engineers, and consultants to understand exactly what their requirements were and how they wished for each business process to run. Asterisk took steps to align their requirements to the ConnectWise workflows so that they were able to receive the greatest business benefits and ROI. Training the Asterisk team was fundamental to ensure that each team member knew how their role supported the wider team and the importance their role played in the overall delivery of products and services and the wider customer experience delivered. 

‘The data that is entered into ConnectWise is crucial to the operation of the entire business. Time is our greatest asset in revenue generation. Having easy access to data on employees, customers, projects, and even business process efficiencies now allow us to better understand not only our revenue and expenses but helps us make more informed future strategic decisions,’ Said Steve. 

Increasing transparency about what was happening throughout the business allowed Asterisk the opportunity to further build a high-performance culture through increasing accountability and ownership throughout the business.  

‘For me as a business owner, there was a high degree of stress, effort, and energy required to maintain and manage the business. However, after implementing the ConnectWise platform and after 12 months of the team leveraging it, I realised that many of my previous stresses were eliminated. This is because I knew that we had the systems and processes in place to proactively identify issues, escalate enquiries, streamline the flow of information through the business, and help deliver continuous business improvement,’ said Steve.