OMG: I Love Zenith Infotech

If you haven't been reading this blog for very long, let me just say I Love Zenith Infotech.

One of the principle rules of success at KPEnterprises (Sacramento's premier small business consulting company) is "If it can be done by Zenith, assign it to Zenith."

One of the consistent messages I hear from Zenith management is "Bring it on. Keep throwing stuff at us until we squeak."

Well, after months of watching from the sidelines, we pulled the trigger this week and integrated Zenith with Autotask. The only real delay was that we had a series of junior technicians and no one who could take on the project and manage it through to completion.

Well, we have a new Level 2 tech with nothing better to do, so we started the integration.

Here's an example of the tickets we saw immediately:

Log Date/Time: 12/09/2009 03:07 AM ET
Account / Zenith Site ID:
Device / Zenith Device ID:
Autotask Ticket: T20091209.0001
Zenith Ticket: 200912090000029
Status / Zenith Status: Complete / NOC Completed
Assigned To: Partner
Assigned By: NOC
Subject: Anti-Virus not synchronized on Server :-SIERRASBS
Notes: This task is to notify you that NORTON Antivirus is Not Updating on Server SIERRASBS. NOC has carried out the necessary troubleshooting and now NORTON Antivirus is updated with Latest Antivirus Definitions. No action needs to be taken from your end. Note: In case, the issue re-occurs, we will troubleshoot further and will update you with the status.
This e-mail was automatically generated for Autotask Account with Zenith PSG of 2DB52820514D4FC4. Please do not respond.

Okay. Whatever. Blah Blah Blah Ginger.

Here's the essence of that service request:

1) We found a problem with SAV updates

2) We created a ticket for the problem

3) We fixed the problem

4) Ticket closed

The sweetest words of all are: Please do not respond.

Not that we don't want a personal relationship, but Zenith found a problem, fixed a problem, created value for our client, and solved the problem. In other words . . .

The first time we heard about this issue is after it was fixed.

How could we respond? Thanks. Imagine the disc space of millions of ticket entries that just said thanks.

- - -

Perspective:

I hear a lot of partners complain that they turned on integration with Zenith and got overwhelmed by the tickets. Oh My God. They're killing me. Boo hoo hoo.

But slow down and read through the tickets.

You got 50 new service requests regarding problems on your client computers. In the span of 5 hours, 45 of these were fixed. In the next 5 hours another three are fixed.

So: Zenith caught fifty issues you didn't know about and fixed 48 of them.

Just because you don't know about an issue doesn't mean it's not there. If Zenith is "spamming" your board there are lots of little things that were going un-done. Time to do them.

We recently went through an extremely busy time around here and I needed to hire some additional help. I have learned an important lesson in all that: You need the right personality to take charge of a project like this. You need to know that you're going to get a flood of tickets. You need to not freak out. And then you need a strategy for getting your arms around the new reality of your bigger, better service board.

For us the Zenith integration is pretty smooth. We're meeting daily to refine the system in response to interactions between Autotask and Zenith. We went through the same thing with ConnectWise. When you take two tools at the core of your business and get them to talk to each other, it takes a little extra attention.

We've loved Zenith for years. Today we love them more.


:-)

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