Connecting the pieces: 5 reasons that MSP's should be integrating their core systems

Ever heard the phrase, time is money? It’s never been truer than in today’s fast-paced business landscape. Despite this, IT managed services companies are using dozens of applications and business tools every single day, missing out on the benefits of complete integration between their most used systems.
Integrated solutions will save you money and time, as well as add competitive technology such as automation to streamline your business processes exponentially. In short, with disparate solutions, you may be working harder for poorer results.

Both Professional Services Automation (PSA) solutions, and Remote Monitoring & Management (RMM) tools have become integral elements of running a Managed Service Provider (MSP) operation. But following our theory of integration providing more bang for your buck, are you missing a trick by keeping them separate?

#1 Leverage business and technical expertise in one

Think about how valuable an employee is when they understand both the technical side of your customers IT landscape, and have an eye on the business bottom line, too. That’s what you’re getting when you integrate your PSA and your RMM into one solution.

While the PSA takes care of the business goals – tracking customer relationships, billing, knowledge management, reporting and helpdesk support, the RMM has a handle on the technical minutia; trouble-shooting, problem resolution and planning for proactive maintenance. With these two working in tandem, you get a supercharged solution that leverages the power of technical and business teams hand in hand.

When they work without communication from one to the other, you get the converse negative result, as if your technical teams were not aware of your ultimate business goals or benefits when they visited your customers, causing inefficiency, duplication and mismanagement.

#2 Reduce errors and avoid unnecessary data entry

One of the best ways to see this in action is to think about the process when a ticket is created in a unified PSA/RMM solution. Your RMM platform registers an alert, and in one click – the PSA identifies the device and creates a ticket. No room for human error, no time taken to log in to a separate dashboard and manually input the information, eliminating issues of duplicate data entirely. With disparate solutions your technicians may need to add their own notes about aspects of the maintenance process, while with one unified tool – this is all available automatically, with your PSA monitoring the entire case through to resolution. As well as this, your business is less open to data breaches and cyber-security incidents, as the Ponemon Institute predicts that almost 70% of data breaches come down to human error.

This kind of integration also helps businesses to stay on top of SLA agreements, with information automatically logged on the time a ticket is created and the length of time from response through to solving the issue at hand.

#3 Save time on low level admin tasks

Merging these two tools truly enables you to simplify your overheads and management. Take billing and invoicing for example. Billable time is automatically captured, with every incident tracked and logged behind the scenes.

A single dashboard eliminates the back and forth between accessing your technical information and your customer management. You can allow your PSA to automatically update with relevant device data from your RMM, including device inventory, and real-time changes of your IT infrastructure.

#4 Improve quality of service for your customers

Automating redundant tasks gives MSP’s more opportunity to improve their quality of service. Not only do you save time and money on maintaining two separate solutions, you can also increase profit elsewhere by freeing up human staff to focus on higher-value tasks.

Take customer support for example. Most MSP’s will agree that a key business goal is reducing the time that technicians spend on tickets. Of course, there will always be individual requirements or unique fires to put out. However, by merging the two tools, your technicians can benefit from a cross-product user experience which lets them focus on what they do best, automating the areas which are most repetitive and time consuming, and allowing them to increase the number of customers they can help.

#5 Achieve more accurate and insightful business analytics

This also works on a macro level. By integrating the analytics and reporting for both your PSA and RMM, you can get a more accurate view of your business as a whole. Pinpoint high maintenance customers and where you could be cross-selling or moving clients to new service models that work better for their needs. See cause and effect between the service you’re providing and the alerts that are being received. Which assets are generating the most alerts for example, and what services could you change to make this easier to support? One unified platform gives you a ‘single pane of glass’, and allows you to see how you’re performing, gathering business insights and trends in real-time.

Integrated analytics also eradicate conflicting data which can happen when your PSA and RMM are separate. Business decisions cannot be made accurately when you have two sets of data that disagree with one another, even in part. In comparison – data from a unified RMM and PSA solution has a lot more clout, providing new insights that you couldn’t get from one of the tools alone, alleviating stress in the decision-making process.

Improve your bottom line with proper software integrations

An integrated PSA and RMM solution is a perfect example of how integration can improve your bottom line. Better data, increased communication and collaboration, new opportunities for automation, and improved customer service. It’s easy to see why the future is integrated!

Interested in learning more? Get in touch to schedule a demo.