Comments on Small Biz Thoughts by Karl Palachuk: The Five Best Decisions I've Made In My Business: ...

Karl, Some great thoughts and I believe you are r...

2010-08-16T03:03:33.653-07:00

Karl,

Some great thoughts and I believe you are right in saying that no matter which tool you decide to go with reference RMM it will always be a learning curve, especially as tools become more intuitive and broad.

I'm not sure if you have seen the community site http://www.MSPcomparison.com the members could really benefit from your insight and choices if you are willing to share.

I totally agree with Karl's opinion about Zein...

2010-08-15T20:55:08.152-07:00

I totally agree with Karl's opinion about Zeinth. It is an amazing tool that will make your lives more easy and your business more profitable. I would recommend that you get one person in your company to learn it from A-Z. I mean have this person dig so deep that they are telling Zeinth how things work. If you do this you could probably, I say probably because I don't have any data yet to support this, decrease your work load by around 65%, allowing your time to be spent focusing on the more profitable, BILLABALE TIME.

Think about that for just a second 65% of a normal work day is 5.8 hours. If you could fill only 2 hours of that time, with billable time and you charge a rate at (low ball) $100 an hour. You will make $200 a day, $1000 a week, and $52,000 extra a year (per technician). This would leave you 988 hours a year to; focus on other aspects of your business, spend time with your family, or generally enjoy life more. I don’t know about you but that’s worth WAY more than what it costs to have Zeinth.

Interesting stuff Karl, I look forward to numbers ...

2010-08-14T00:38:36.352-07:00

Interesting stuff Karl, I look forward to numbers 4 to 1.

We've enjoyed working with Zenith much more than Kaseya, having knowledgable techs at the end of a chat session 24/7 is a real asset. Still looking forward to your blog post / webinar on getting the best utilisation out of Zenith ;-)

That 10% stat is so true. The scripting side of Zenith has a lot to offer, but I'm finding it a steeper learning curve than Kaseya was. We have just managed to get the agents working for our new customer audits though.

Nick

Well . . . 1. There's a learning curve with ...

2010-08-12T10:16:33.387-07:00

Well . . .

1. There's a learning curve with any of the RMM/patch management tools. It has been many years, but I think we got the basics of Kaseya in place within a month. Probably took us a year to dig in and make it do everything it should be doing.

2. Zenith was about the same, although I think the basic setup and configuration was closer to a week instead of a month. Two reasons for this. First, we had done it all before with a different tool. Second, we didn't have to build a server, install SQL, configure everything, and manage the system. As a cloud-based service, Zenith's initial setup is super fast.

As I mentioned, we ran them both for more than a year before we made the switch. At that point, the server hardware was three years old and we were looking at building another server for Kaseya, plus all the maintenance licenses. The total outlay was a big bump in the road.

3. We were quite resistant to letting a third party take over some of the actual maintenance. We tip-toed into this for a few months. But we had great support. I've blogged before about our experiences here. See http://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/search/label/Zenith%20Infotech

4. As for techs, we have varied between three and five over the last few years. The mix of duties with Zenith is a separate blog post. But, basically, Zenith handles most of the maintenance and we have very little to do.

Note on using tools: My friend and business coach Josh Peterson from Taylor Business Groups was just telling me the other day that the manage service tools (including Kaseya and Zenith) are VERY under-utilized by technical consultants. It's like Microsoft Word. We each use about 10% of what they're really capable of doing. Imagine how much we could do if we slowed down and learned more about the capabilities of the toolset!

1. So, from the time you started with Kaseya, how ...

2010-08-12T09:29:21.658-07:00

1. So, from the time you started with Kaseya, how long did it take to you configure it to catch all of the "issues"?

2. How long did it take to configure Zenith to catch all of the "issues"?

3. What criteria did you use when you decided to use a 3rd party (Zenith) for certain support issues?

4. How many techs do you employ and what are their responsibilities with Zenith in the mix?