[52] – Changing PSA’s

Welcome to PSA Impact, your podcast for all things PSA, RMM, and MSP with your hosts, Raeanne Buccianico and Chris Tim. Learn how to get the most out of your PSA tool and manage your business by maximizing profitability and increasing efficiency within your MSP business. Let's listen in. Hi, everybody, and welcome to another episode of PSA Impact Podcasts with your hosts, myself, Chris Tim, and my co-host, Raeanne Buccianico. We are an independent PSA series designed to help MSPs worldwide on all things PSA.

You can get your questions answered by Raeanne and myself and learn how to get the most out of your PSA tool and manage your business by maximizing profitability and increasing efficiencies within your MSP. Get in touch with us via all our socials, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and we'll put links to all of these in the show notes. So how are you doing today, Raeanne? I'm doing great today, Chris, how are you? I'm good, thank you.

So Raeanne, what have we got on the agenda for today? Well, we have a question on the Facebook group. This came from the PSA Impact Facebook group of ours, and it's from Jason Miller, who is somewhere in the US, and he has a question regarding moving from one PSA system to another. So it's a very long question, but I'm going to summarize best I can. He started with a PSA called Repair Shopper back in 2013, and now he's grown to a staff of 14, almost 16 techs, and they have a four-person help desk.

They're having trouble getting tickets flowing right and other things, and they are planning to move to Autotask later this year. So his question is, what are the best ways to move from one system like Repair Shopper to Autotask? What are the things to look out for in moving or retaining old data for customers from the old system? And going to Autotask later, what is the best way to get started and train our staff on the new systems? And he also finishes with, by the way, love the podcast.

So thanks for that, Jason. And Chris, what are your thoughts? Well, at least we know one person listens, right? Our only listener. So for him, we'll answer his question.

Again, Rayanne, you know what I'm going to say, right? You know that I'm going to say that this is my favorite topic and actually this one really is because I love talking about stuff like this, that, you know, how can a business get the best out of a PSA tool and all that kind of stuff? So I think what I would honestly suggest in this particular instance, I mean, he was talking about bringing, you know, data in from the old system into Autotask. I would kind of advise against that. I would pretty much say, you know, the best way to do it is to start afresh with Autotask.

So if you were going to go down the route of getting a new PSA tool, making sure that you start afresh. So all the new tickets coming in, obviously the only thing I would bring over would be the customer's details, but things like tickets and all those, I wouldn't keep those or bring those into the system. And the reason for that being is, you know, probably over the years, there's been so many things that, you know, maybe tickets that just haven't been right or just so much mess or, you know, tickets for customers that are no longer customers, all this kind of stuff. And I think this is a really good opportunity to do a cleanup and to say, you know, start again with a brand new clean system, bring all your customers in and then just inform your customers that you're going on to a new system. You know, the look and feel is going to change, the ticketing is going to change, all of that kind of stuff, and then start afresh and maybe keep, you know, a month's worth or something of stuff in the old system and bring, you know, or you can bring, I guess you could bring that month's worth of stuff into the new system, but keep everything, everything else in the old system and just work on the current stuff if you really wanted to bring stuff over into Autotask.

But I would just start afresh from the beginning. So I have some thoughts as well on this because I do a lot of work with, especially Autotask, people moving from one PSA to another. And the first thing that I could say is, this is a lot of work. You probably will not encounter a larger internal project than moving from one PSA to another. Everything about your company is in one place and now you're saying to stop using this one place and start using this other place and somehow get the information from one place to the other.

So I would start by going into Autotask, right? The first things that you need to set up are gonna be the services, the work types, and the contracts. Those are always the first things that I would set up. If you can export the customers from the old PSA and import them into the new PSA, I think you're gonna save yourself a lot of time. If you have a bunch of old useless data that is outdated or bad contact information has gone neglected for years on end, it may be worth your time to just set everything up brand new, just like you said, Chris, start brand new.

I would not drag over 10 years of ticket data from an old system into a new system. Now you're starting with just a messy system. I just simply wouldn't do it, just like you said. Absolutely, I agree. And I think I fully agree with everything you say, Rae-Anne.

I think that the best way to do this is keep it as clean and simple as possible. Start with Autotask by, like you said, by setting things like all your rates in there, making sure that you're putting all the services in, all of those kinds of things, getting it to a point that it's set up and ready to go, then bring your customers in, set up your email passes, et cetera, and then turn it on, let the customers start using it, let the email start flowing in, let your engineers start using the new system. And you could always keep stuff in the old system for prosperity if you need to, or for historical purposes, reporting purposes, whatever the case might be. So, and you're right, it's quite a big task. I've worked with a lot of companies that have moved over from one PSA to another, and it's not an easy thing to do.

Well, it's an easy thing to do to move to a new system, but I think the hardest thing to do is learning new terminologies, obviously getting everybody on board with that, getting buy-in from your staff, your customers, all these kinds of things. And that's probably the hardest part, because if you're gonna start again from the beginning, as long as you're setting it up correctly right from day one and bringing your customers in, it's a fairly straightforward process. It's just a matter of getting everybody used to using the new system. And I think that's gonna be one of the hardest parts. So you touched on one really, really important point here is that you absolutely need to have the full company buy-in.

There cannot be one person in the company that is resisting this change, because one slow cog or broken cog is really going to take the whole process apart on you. The next thing that I might suggest also is, I tell everybody, put together a list, get your customers together into a list, and then also like put it in a spreadsheet or something. I don't care how you do it, but what do you do for them? What services do you provide to them? Which ones are the recurring services?

Which ones are the time and material? What do you do for these customers? And how do you bill them for it? Because that's going to really help you set up those services for the recurring contracts in the new system. Now, this particular company, Jason's company, they're using Repair Shopper, which is a hosted platform.

What he wants to do is shut off Repair Shopper and turn on Autotask. So he may end up losing some of that data. I'm hoping that Repair Shopper has a way that he can at least download some sort of backup of the data so that he can have something to reference without just saying, okay, everything's all gone now, and we're just going to move forward with 2020 and forget that 2019 and years past just didn't happen. So I'm hoping that there's a way that he can at least download his information. But the good news is, is that he has a starting point.

He's been using Repair Shopper. He has his customers together. He knows what he does for them. He knows how he invoices them. So the only piece that's really missing here is probably one, the automation at the invoice level, and two, the workflows from the service desk and making sure that the tickets come in, get received, get dispatched to the right person, and then moved on.

Absolutely. And one of the things you mentioned earlier on, and I just want to touch on that, is the slowness or the broken cog in the system. And it's so vitally important that that buy-in, like I said earlier on, and like you were saying, is I see all too many times that systems slow down. And that's part of the reason why people don't get the best out of a system is because there's one person that's dragging their feet or one person that isn't quite playing the game correctly. And they are normally the ones that put the blockers into place.

And that's the reason why implementations very often fail, right? So it's really, really important to make sure that you have all of that buy-in and make sure that everyone on the team is singing from the same hymn sheet, so to speak, and everyone is actually playing the same game, right? That you're all moving forward at the same time and you're all moving forward with the same kind of common goals in mind, right? Right, so another thing that will keep companies from moving forward in a new system is not dedicating enough time to implement it properly. There's no way that you are going to get it done from one system to another in under a week with only spending an hour to a day on it.

There has to be a complete buy-in of the amount of time it takes to get it set up, to learn the system, to make sure that it's flowing properly in the way that you want it. So if I could give you any piece of advice, Jason, it would be have a clear picture in your mind as to what you want this system to do for you at the end. What will it look like for you and for your company? And get that picture as clear as possible so that you know exactly how to set it up and move forward. Then make sure that you devote enough time and enough resources to put it into place.

Absolutely, and I think one of the things that Jason was mentioning in that post was about what's the best way to move forward with this and to get the best out of the implementation. And I think it's exactly as we've mentioned, make sure that you're dedicating the time and effort to this, right? Because this is a big tool. It's not like just Word or Excel or one of these products from the old days that you can stick the CD in and go next, next, next, finished, and it's all ready to go. You know, it does take a lot of time out of your business and a lot of effort into getting this tool working.

And of course, Rayane, that's where, just as a complete shameless plug, I mean, that's where people like you and me come in, right? That's what we're really there for, is to help companies like Jason, to help him to understand how he can get the best out of the tool and to help guide him down the right path, and help him with that implementation, making sure that he's doing it right, getting the right things in at the right times and all those kinds of things. Sure, there's plenty of Autotask consultants out there like you and me and ConnectWise consultants and other PSA consultants out there that you can reach out to, to help you along, help you understand, somebody to ask questions, bounce ideas off of, but also, using the IT community is another great tool. How are you using Autotask for this? Or how are you handling this in your MSP?

And we have the Facebook groups, you can go to Reddit, there's the MSP subreddit on Reddit, and we've got the LinkedIn group. So there's no shortage of community out there that are willing to help companies like Jason move from one system to another and get things up and running. But if you really do get stuck, absolutely pick up the phone, contact a consultant like Chris or I, or somebody in your area if you can find another one. I don't know that there are too many of us around, but I'm sure that we're around. I was gonna say, Rae-Ann, I was just having a chuckle to myself while you were saying that.

I was thinking, you're mentioning all these PSA consultants and I'm like, I mean, is there anyone else, right? We're the only two, we're the best out there. Well, if I could find them, I would likely hire them. Exactly, exactly. But no, I'm just kidding.

I mean, there's loads of people out there. And as you say, there's so many resources, so many people that you can use. So no, I think this was a great topic, Rae-Ann. I think we talked about a lot of good things that not necessarily specifically about a PSA product, but about how to get the best out of it and how to implement it. Did you have anything else you wanted to cover off on this topic, Rae-Ann?

I don't think so, but I just wanted to say, I know I'm stealing your line, but this is really one of my favorite topics because I spend an awful lot of time working with people trying to start up their PSA. Maybe they never had one before, or maybe they had one and they wanna start anew with a different one. And I spent an awful lot of time with my clients, helping them plan it, helping them implement it. So I tried to offer as many of high-level tips as I could. So hopefully we were able, between the two of us, to answer some of Jason's questions.

Absolutely, and Rae-Ann, I can't reiterate enough how important it is to make sure you plan the system properly and make sure that you're spending as much time as you possibly can on making sure that you're getting the system right. Because it's an expensive system, but it's something that's gonna be very valuable to your business if you get it right. I think you'll find that those people who don't spend a lot of time on it, that's where things go completely wrong in the business when they end up throwing the PSA tool out because it just isn't doing what they're expecting for their business. But actually, most of the time it's because they haven't given it the time it deserves and they haven't given it their full attention. And so they're obviously not gonna get the relevant information out of it because it's not set up properly in the first place.

So I can't stress that enough how important it is to make sure you're planning this first. And then once you've got everything ready to go, then go ahead and start getting the implementation done. So yeah, I mean, great topic again. And if anyone wants to reach out to us, Jason left that message for us on our PSAimpact.net Facebook group. So we are on all the socials, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and also you can visit our own website at PSAimpact.net.

You can leave a message there. Rayanne and I would love to be able to answer your questions and by all means, come and reach out to us at any one of the other events. So all that's left really for me to say, Rayanne, is your PSA is the key to your MSP success. Go out and make an impact on your world today. Thank you for joining us today on PSA Impact.

We hope you've learned something and that you'll join us next time when we answer new questions posed by our listeners.