ConnectWise Business Transformation Audit Delivers Immediate ROI for Integrity

Integrity Technology Solutions

Headquartered in Bloomington, Illinois, Integrity was a long time ConnectWise partner, but the management team didn’t believe the company was leveraging the maximum possible benefit from ConnectWise PSA. As new features were released, the Integrity team didn’t always learn how to use them and sometimes didn’t review the release notes.

Challenge

Integrity did not know how to fully leverage ConnectWise PSA to maximize company communication and efficiency.

Solution

Business Transformation Audit

Results

Right away, the audit paid for itself in “found” billable hours. As Integrity implements process changes and best practices, the team is using ConnectWise more strategically to drive business forward.

When Integrity Technology Solutions completed its first Business Transformation Audit with ConnectWise Consulting, Integrity president Mary Bennett Henrichs never imagined that it would pay for itself in less than one month. But that’s exactly what happened.

“We’d been using ConnectWise for quite a while, and frankly, we were still using it in many of the same ways we did when we first became a partner,” acknowledges Henrichs. “So we knew we were behind in terms of utilizing all of the new capabilities and that is one of the reasons the Business Transformation Audit seemed so appealing to us.”

Offered by ConnectWise exclusively for its partners, the Business Transformation Audits are a specialized consulting engagement, performed by highly trained ConnectWise experts, that addresses two intertwined aspects of a partner’s business: how efficiently (and fully) the company takes advantage of ConnectWise PSA and the company’s ability to employ industry best practices.

“At IT Nation, it really clicked for us that the audit could change our business. After getting more information and learning about the process, we believed that we could get a significant return on our investment,” Henrichs recalls. The Integrity team was good at using ConnectWise to capture data in service tickets or sales activities. “What we weren’t very good at was using it for automation and efficiency and communication. This was an opportunity to learn to use ConnectWise as a strategic tool rather than a system in which to enter data.”

Initial Assessment Requires Little Time Commitment

For Henrichs, one appealing aspect of the audit process was how little time it required from her team to get started. The first step is an initial assessment, conducted remotely. A ConnectWise consultant completed the assessment of Integrity’s system behind the scenes, with no disruption to business operations and no Integrity staff resources required. “He had some pretty neat tools he used to gather information from our system. Then he reviewed it with us over the phone and sent us the full results so we could see it all in writing,” says Henrichs.

Management had discussed the idea of completing a consulting engagement with ConnectWise before, but had worried it would be too time consuming. Looking back, she wishes Integrity had ordered an audit sooner and would advise other ConnectWise partners to complete one now—not later. “It was very simple—I actually had no idea it would be so easy. Frankly one of the reasons we put it off is that we were very busy and a little afraid that it would require a lot of time. But that turned out to be something that we should not have worried about at all.”

Onsite Consultant Reveals Best Practices and Process Improvements

After the initial assessment was completed, the ConnectWise consultant spent approximately two hours on a conference call explaining the assessment findings. After prioritizing what they wanted to work to improve, Integrity was ready for their two-day onsite visit from their ConnectWise consultant. The goal was to learn to use ConnectWise more strategically to improve internal processes and communication within the organization and with clients.

“He advised us on best practices and that was very helpful to us. We get caught up in our own little world and can forget that there may be better ways to do things or other standards that we should be following,” explains Henrichs. “He had many suggestions for improvements we could make in how we were utilizing ConnectWise that would not only provide better communication internally but also later on would result in better reporting for us as well.”

Henrichs appreciated the skill set that her ConnectWise consultant brought to the engagement and also the fact that he communicated effectively with many different stakeholders, including the executive, sales, and analytical services teams. “One of the things I really liked about our Business Consultant was that he had practical business experience and also had ConnectWise specific experience. The blend of those two things really made our audit successful . . . He really listened to us and understood our business needs and then helped us determine how we could apply best practices to those business needs. I thought he did a great job spending time listening to us, understanding our business, and then making recommendations.”

Business Transformation Audit Paid for Itself in “Found” Billable Hours

One of the things revealed during the ConnectWise assessment was that Integrity wasn’t using the financial dashboard to its advantage. Because the team felt it was doing “pretty well managing the service ticket lifecycle”, it had not identified service ticket management as a priority for the audit. But the initial assessment uncovered 14 service tickets that wouldn’t have been billed under Integrity’s existing processes. These tickets brought enough extra revenue into the company to cover the expense of the audit right away.

“We basically paid for the audit right out of the shoot,” reveals Henrichs. “We looked at this audit from the long term picture of process improvement and not necessarily from a billing perspective. So it was pretty exciting to find $4,534 of additional billable hours.”

Driving Business with ConnectWise as a Strategic Partner

Based on the audit recommendations for using best practices and improving internal processes, Integrity has gone to work implementing changes. The company made some changes to internal workflows and adapted other established processes to be more efficient. Henrichs has already noticed significant improvements. “Our staff is saving time and we’re communicating more effectively,” she says. “The right people are getting right information at the right time. That has really helped our company operate and I think has also improved client satisfaction.”

The most important benefit Integrity gained as a result of the Business Transformation Audit was a change in the way executives think about their business—and the value of partnership with ConnectWise. “Seeing the possibilities about how to use ConnectWise as a strategic tool rather than a practical day-to-day data entry system was the real benefit of the Business Transformation Audit,” Henrichs explains. “Our mindset shifted to thinking about how to use ConnectWise to move our business forward. It really opened our eyes.”

Now that they’ve seen how much their business can be helped by the recommendations they received, Henrichs and her team don’t plan to stop making improvements. “We’ve already talked about doing some of the follow-up audits. We’re getting ready to implement Quosal and the procurement module, so we are talking about doing follow-up remote audits to make sure we get that all set up correctly. And then we’d like to take advantage of some of the other products the consultants offer to help us continue to solve business problems. We’re really excited to be using ConnectWise as our strategic partner to accomplish initiatives.”