How ConnectWise Solutions and a Strong Community Changed the Way One Belgium MSP Operates

DirectIT

Koen Lepez is founder and CEO of DirectIT, an IT infrastructure company located in Belgium. Koen, starting the company in 2013, was lucky enough to be working with two other individuals with a sales and IT background—giving them an edge and multiple strengths. Koen understood the foundation of a good business: successfully delivering products and services to your customers. However, he wanted more. Striving for excellence, he wanted to embody the value of ownership. “For us, the adventure towards becoming an MSP rather than just being another IT partner in Belgium, was focusing on the ownership,” Koen shared. As DirectIT made their way toward managed services, ownership became a core value of the company. Koen and his team strongly believe that to be a managed service provider, you must take full ownership of that part of the business, providing your clients the services they need to run smoothly. This core value shines through their day-to-day operations.

Challenge

DirectIT struggled daily with inadequate project management and billing processes. Their current solution wasn’t intuitive and lacked documentation—keeping them from reaching their full potential.

Solution

ConnectWise solutions enabled DirectIT to streamline their operations, making documentation and project follow-up a breeze. They can proactively support clients and manage tickets and billing through a single pane of glass.

Results

DirectIT can now quickly and easily deliver detailed, accurate quotes to their clients, fix issues before they become a problem, and run their service desk efficiently.

"When we assign a resource to a case, they’re notified and can put in their time all in one simple action. Before, it used to take sending an email, getting it into the package, and then following up. Now, everything gets to ConnectWise Manage a lot easier."

– KOEN LEPEZ, Founder and CEO, DirectIT

From Chaos to Control

Speaking of, day-to-day operations didn’t always run smoothly for DirectIT. Struggling with a non-intuitive platform that lacked documentation capabilities, they found it difficult to support clients to the potential they strived for.

DirectIT’s goal as a company was to work more proactively so they could solve client issues before they started—or worse—caused downtime. “We needed a platform that could anticipate changes and adapt to different IT atmospheres,” expressed Koen.

That’s where ConnectWise came in. Koen searched the market, reviewing different professional services automation (PSA) platforms, and ConnectWise seemed to be the best, most mature fit for them.

Life Before ConnectWise

Prior to implementing a new intuitive platform, DirectIT struggled trying to streamline their project management and billing processes. Without a platform that enabled seamless information handoffs and accurate documentation, their team found it difficult to execute projects and accurately track time.

For Koen and his team, ConnectWise Manage created a new meaning for ownership. “Everything is a ticket and has traceability from A-Z. In our old package, things were followed up on, but never as streamlined. That is something we really appreciate in the software.”

A ConnectWise Manage benefit the team really appreciates is having a centralised dashboard. “We used to have a dashboard with different cases, whereas now, we can really have traceability and ownership per type of customer and type of ticket.”

Thanks to the clear lines of communication, error-proof ticketing, and powerful documentation within ConnectWise Manage, they’ve closed the gap in information handoffs and their service desk operations run much smoother.

Making Quoting a Breeze

DirectIT’s quote and proposal process is another success story. Sometimes, one team oversaw creating the quote and another team altered the quote—leading to miscommunication and lost data.

After implementing ConnectWise Sell, the delivery and follow-up of proposals became easier than ever. They can now create custom templates that outline every detail of their offering so that clients know exactly what they’re getting. Quotes are seamlessly converted to a project and added to calendars without anything falling through the cracks.

The ease of editing quotes also comes in handy. “That is something we really appreciate about the product. We can start with a template and remove the services that aren’t needed so we don’t have a situation where a product wasn’t quoted correctly, and not discovered until the end of the project,” shares Koen.

A Company Built to Impress

Not only have ConnectWise products impressed Koen and his team, but the community has also played a big part in DirectIT’s success. “We chose ConnectWise because of the ecosystem that it entails, and because of the marketplace and the network that go with it,” Koen shared.

From annual technology events like IT Nation, to our ConnectWise University with training, documentation, and other helpful resources—DirectIT has enjoyed becoming a part of the ecosystem that embodies ConnectWise.

“IT Nation was a really good experience for us. We learned a lot about how to optimise our business and how to take it to the next level—and that was an important, strategic move,” Koen noted. “We can talk with partners that have the same challenges in their day-to-day business, and maybe have a different approach to those same challenges.”

In addition to the collaboration and learning that takes place at ConnectWise annual events, Koen loves taking advantage of the resources available on ConnectWise University. From consulting services to in-depth product training, it’s a one-stop shop for everything ConnectWise. “We can go to ConnectWise University and learn about new features. We can educate our staff with videos to learn and adapt to ConnectWise best practices—which goes hand-in-hand with the key values we entail.”