Fully Leveraging Autotask! Seriously, is That Possible?
“Why did you reach out to us?”
When we ask MSPs that question, we often hear this statement:
“We are not fully utilizing Autotask.”
Now, that is a pretty broad statement, so when we respond with a clarifying question, what we hear is, “We do not know what we do not know”.
My guess is, what they are trying to say is that there are MSP operational issues in Accounting, Sales and Marketing, or Service Delivery, and their gut says the PSA software should be used to resolve these issues, but...
And that is where the knowledge ends.
We are honored to take on the challenge of guiding MSP owners to know the answer, or to at least provide known information in the land of vast unknowns. We are even more honored to, on occasion, take them by the hand and guide them through the PSA wilderness.
A good friend once told me the solution to resolving any problem is coming up with a great guiding question.
So, this article is to answer the question:
What does Fully Leveraging Autotask mean?
In other words, to help an MSP that feels they are not fully leveraging Autotask, we’re going to provide information on what conquering the wilderness looks like.
Accounting:
For Accounting, the biggest challenge is to integrate an Accounting Software package and decide what the invoicing process looks like…
· Invoice from Accounting Software
· Invoice from Autotask
· How to combine Parts with Labor billing
· How to automate the process, including collections
· Or how to leverage Dashboards or Autotask Live Reports
After integrating the accounting software, the biggest improvement that can be made to the Accounting process is implementing the Cascading Contract Automation (CCA). By implementing CCA, the burden of Invoice Quality shifts from the people (Techs, Account Managers, and Accounting personnel) to the PSA software.
If an MSP is not leveraging the financial dashboard, they are in for a big surprise.
Right from the dashboard, they can:
· Visualize and process Approve and Post
· Find which Contracts are active but expired
· See which Contracts are up for renewal over the next 120, 90, … days
From there, Profitability, Commissions, and Expense reporting is where MSPs could be leveraging the Autotask PSA software more.
Sales and Marketing:
For Sales, it is a little bit more complicated:
· How to use the Opportunities to build a Sales Pipeline
· How to use a quoting tool or quote out of Autotask
· What is the Closed Opportunity transition to:
o Accounting
o Procurement
o Service Delivery
· Or how to leverage Dashboards or Autotask Live Reports
The Sales Dashboards provide information such as:
· List of Accounts and activity date
o Assigned accounts with the oldest activity date
o Assigned accounts with the most recent activity date
· To-Dos and next due date
· Appointments with meeting topic
· Opportunities and their current stage
Autotask Live Reports are leveraged so Non-Sales folks can stay in sync with what is in the Sales Pipeline. Things like Opportunities about ready to close, stuck in Sales Engineering stage, and those that closed over the past week.
Service Delivery:
While we know the Autotask PSA software inside and out, what sets us apart from the other Autotask Experts is our level of knowledge on Service Delivery Operations and our ability to write very complicated Live Reports.
So, as The Autotask Service Delivery Authority, when contacted about the unknown wilderness MSPs are trying to lead their company out of, it typically is due to the Service Delivery chaos.
While Accounting and Sales need very straightforward processes, achieving the same for Service Delivery is very elusive. It starts with dividing Customer Requests into at least 11 different workflows so the software can tell the difference between one ticket and another.
Now that the software knows the difference between one ticket and another, leveraging the 4-levels of PSA Automation becomes possible.
#1: SLA Automation:
Configuring the SLA Automation based on which Workflow the Request is in will inform the Techs what to work on next, and the person responsible for managing all open tickets will know which ones need intervention.
#2: Workflow Rules:
While this is the best-known level of Automation, it is also the most abused. Most MSPs use email notifications to let the Techs know what to do. Not only is this a poor use of the automation, but it also drives the Techs to check their email and further distracts/disrupts them from doing their job. No wonder the Techs are only productive 50% or less of the time.
The best use of the Workflow Rule is for Customer-Facing Communications. And the protocol, according to HDI research, is to keep the Customer updated automatically at each step of the journey from new to completion.
The second-best use of the Workflow Rule is ticket management automation. This includes:
· Building audit trails for Reopens and Escalations
· Controlling Customer Note Added, so tickets aren’t reopened for a “Thank You.”
· Adding Checklists to tickets
· Releasing On-Holds
· Etc…
#3 Dashboards:
Normally you would not think of dashboards as an automation. After all, they just report numbers and nice to know information, right? Yes, in the Autotask default mode, but remember, we are talking about how to leverage the PSA software, and to do that, we need to leverage the other Automations and make the Dashboards very dynamic.
By updating the dashboards so that as time goes by, along with tickets being added and completed, or moving through their cradle to grave lifecycle, well-designed Dashboards are constantly updating.
And this updating is not just changing numbers but also reordering the lists of what to work on next or which ones need intervention. They should also allow the Techs to work all day without leaving the dashboard, unless of course they need to grab their car keys.
#4 Scheduled Live Reports
For live reporting, there are 14 KPIs that come in very handy to improve the Service Delivery Operations performance. They are grouped into three areas:
· Intake and Open Ticket Management
o Workflow Distribution
o SLA Performance
o Service Delivery Forecast
o Project Availability Forecast
o Backlog Ticket List
o Scheduled Tickets with No Future Service Calls
· Profitability
o Resource Utilization
o Mean Time to Resolve
o Reactive Hours per Endpoint per Month
o Labor Profitability Ratio
· Tech Performance
o Real-Time Time Entry
o Re-Open Rate
o Escalation Rate
o First Contact Resolution
Executive:
There are also some very well thought out Executive Dashboards and if you are unaware of those, you should check them out.
Summary: (please note, no affiliate fees here – just years of experience)
So, where does an MSP leader go from here for guidance?
For Executive information, we recommend:
· The Tech Tribe community
· Chris Timm
For Accounting information, we recommend:
· Rayanne Buchianico
· Michelle Bournstein
For Sales and Marketing information, we recommend:
· Robin Robin’s community
For Service Delivery information, we recommend:
· Advanced Global’s Service Delivery Gladiators Community, where we fight the good fight and bring order to chaos.
· Advanced Global’s Service Delivery Foundational Improvement Program
At the end of the day, Fully Leveraging Autotask is seriously possible.
And now that you know-how, we encourage you to go forth and lead your company through the unknown wilderness.
You can do it – and if you need any help navigating that wilderness, we’re here to help.