Managed Services in a Month - How it Started

Managed Services in a Month 

- Lessons Learned, Episode 41

September 2007 was a big month for me and for my business. I'd been writing my blog for awhile as well as speaking across the US and UK on "managed service." It seems hard to believe today, but that phrase really didn't mean anything before 2006 when Erick Simpson and I released books with that name in the title.

So, in September 2007, I got an email from someone who said, "Managed Services doesn't work for me." And as I'd often answered that question from the stage, I tried to put an end to this conversation by blogging the answer once and for all. See https://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/2007/09/managed-services-doesnt-work-for-me.html.

LOL. I didn't put an end to the conversation - I started a much bigger one.

The same day, I wrote a blog post simply entitled "Managed Services in a Month." See https://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/2007/09/managed-services-in-month.html.

I made a simple promise: I'll show you how to completely change your business model in thirty days. I then proceeded to write ten LONG blog posts on how to accomplish this. I gave lots and lot of details and tried to make it as practical and step-by-step as I could. Plus I answered a few questions. I finished with a final note on prepayments September 22nd.

My blog exploded - in a good way.

My personal email was inundated with emails and questions. My blog traffic went through the roof. Several people told me that they checked my blog every day for the next update. 

I wanted to make this material more accessible to readers, so I collected it all up and reposted on a site so the posts were in chronological order (blogs are the reverse of that by default).

That's when I realized this could be a book. And I began making that happen. I filled out more details on several topics, integrated answers to questions into the context of the book, and added a few additional chapters. 

That's how Managed Services in a Month was "born." About 80% of it was written in a series of blog posts. And by early 2008, the book was in print. It has been in print since then, expanding with the second and third editions. 

The lesson I started with was, "You can completely revise your business model in one month." The lesson I finished with was, "I can write a whole book in one month if I try."

I am eternally grateful to this community for making the initial blog posts popular, and for making Managed Services in a Month the best selling book on managed services for seventeen years - and counting.

All comments welcome.

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Episode 41

This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. 

Leave comments and questions below. And join me next week, right here.

Subscribe to the blog so you don't miss a thing.

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Absolutely Unbreakable Rules for Service Delivery - Class Starts Sept. 9th

Align your personal and professional goals while creating “standard operating procedures” to automate successful habits!

This 5-week course starts September 9th

9am Pacific 

Taught by Karl W. Palachuk, Author and Coach

Only $399/student

Sign up at IT Service Provider University

This class will help you:

• Define YOUR company’s rules for greater success
• Learn great “best practices” for your company
• You will take actions to improve your business before the class is over
• Improve your profit
• Improve customer service

Class Description

Includes the book The Absolutely Unbreakable Rules of Service Delivery in PDF format.

This course covers the most important “rules” you need to follow to create a massively successful IT Consulting business. Based on Karl’s three decades of experience running successful businesses – and helping others do the same.

How can you guarantee that your company delivers great service, has a great culture, and still manages to stay profitable? You need to follow certain “Unbreakable Rules” for success. Best-selling business author and coach Karl W. Palachuk draws on more than twenty years of owning and running service-based businesses to present the rules his companies live by.

These rules will help you align your personal and professional goals while creating “standard operating procedures” to automate successful habits. Notice that “The customer is always right” is not on the list. Why? Because everyone knows that’s not true. Customers are frequently wrong, or would make bad decisions if we didn’t help them to make good decisions.

Palachuk doesn’t waste your time giving lip service to worn out platitudes. Instead, this book is focused on building a great, successful business in the 21st Century. And since the rules are absolutely unbreakable, they will stand the test of time and the changing business environment.

In addition to his unbreakable rules, Palachuk gives advice on identifying your own unbreakable rules. Branding, he says, is everything you do in your company: The way you hire, the way you greet customers, the way you document processes, the way you invoice, how you handle difficult conversations, and much more. Your business is a reflection of your beliefs and values. It should be built with intention, not something that “just happened.”

Some of these rules help you make money. Some of them keep your work standards high. Some build culture. All of them help your employees and client to understand the culture that embedded in your brand. This book will help you identify and codify the core elements of your success. It will also help you build the definitive list of absolutely unbreakable rules that will guide your business going forward.

Only $399/student

You will learn:

General Rules

• Prioritize Everything
• Do not be interrupt-driven
• Slow down, get more done
• Know what you know
• The competition is irrelevant
• We only work with people we like

Rules for Client Management

• Define your ideal client – and go get them
• Don’t have both sides of the conversation
• You’re not responsible for every lost dog that shows up on your doorstep
• We can’t care more about the client’s business than they do
• Every client is on a service agreement
• Evaluate your pricing once a year

Rules for Managing Employees

• Hire an administrative assistant!
• Have a formal, detailed hiring process
• Hire Slow; Fire Fast
• Culture is built from the top down
• You can’t control people, but you can control your processes

Rules for Billing and Finance

• Control billing and cash flow
• Get prepaid for everything you can
• All after-hours labor is billable
• It is not our responsibility to save the client’s money
• You don’t need to pick up every nickel you find
• If a client has a past-due balance, their service is cut off

Rules for Service Tickets

• Track ALL time inside your business
• All work is done on a service ticket
• Every ticket is massaged every time it’s touched
• Every job has a scope
• Document absolute everything

. . . and MORE!

Only $399/student

Units:

Unit 1 - Why these rules?

Unit 2 - Client Rules

Unit 3 - Employee Rules

Unit 4 - Finance Rules

Unit 5 - Service Delivery Rules

Your Instructor: Karl W. Palachuk

Series Organizer & Principal Instructor

Karl W. Palachuk has built and sold two managed service businesses in Sacramento, CA. He is the founder and president of the Sacramento SMB IT Professionals Group, and author of many books, including The Network Documentation Workbook and Managed Services in a Month.

:-)

NSITSP Elections - Filing Closes August 31st

NOW is the time to step up!

Each year, the National Society of IT Service Providers elects about half of our officers. By design, this gives us three things:

• A member-driven organization
• Continuity year to year
• Opportunities for new blood to join our leadership

This means that ALL offices are open for election. You want to run for the Board of Directors? Do it. You want to service on a committee? Do it.

In all, we have about 30 openings. As a member-driven organization, we are run by YOU the members. Anyone who is a paid professional member of NSITSP can run and serve on our board of directors or any of our committees. 

All the details are at https://nsitsp.org/elections.

You can go there to see the offices that are open and the people who are currently running to serve. 

Our process is very simple, and a bit cool. We have an entire election module that makes it easy. Once you sign up to run, you will have an candidate profile with all the basic profiles fields (name, company, photo, etc.) plus a statement for why you want to serve.

The deadline for filing is August 31st (Sunday). But please do not delay. Join us today!

:-)

The Evolution of Flat Fee Maintenance

The Evolution of Flat Fee Maintenance

- Lessons Learned, Episode 40

In the last installment, I talked about how we came to prefer flat fee projects. About the same time (early 2000's), I had standardized what we do for regular monthly maintenance of servers, workstations, and networks. We had checklists for everything. And checklists were customized per client.

With thousands of endpoints and dozens of clients, it was very clear how long it took our team, with our checklists, to perform these tasks. That's when I broke out the Excel and started trying to standardize the pricing month-to-month as well as client-to-clients.

I explained this almost twenty years ago in a blog post where I first defined "Break out the Excel." And the process because a book chapter in Managed Services in a Month. So I won't repeat all that hear. (See https://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/2007/09/managed-services-in-month-part-two.html.)

The important part, without all the details is this: Once you have sufficient data about your service delivery, you can analyze that data. And you don't need a degree. You just need to learn some of the basics of Excel. 

So, what constitutes enough data? That comes down to the two most important things that flow through your company: Money and time.

Money

You should have a very clear picture of the money piece of the equation. It might not be at your fingertips, but it should be easy to acquire. 

• How much did a client pay you in the last month (or year)? 
• How much did they pay in hardware/software? 
• How much for hourly labor? 
• How much for flat fee projects?

Note: These numbers will vary over time. That's why we separate projects and HW/SW. For the most part, the hourly labor should reflect the income from maintenance. And, in most cases, that number will vary a lot less.

If your goal is to create a flat-fee service, there will be months when your price will be above the average and there will be months when your price will be below the average. The current exercise (in Excel) is to find that average. It's there. And it's not difficult to find. You just have to do it.

Once you have the average for each client, you can do two easy calculations. Zoom in and find the average revenue per user per year. Then divide by twelve to get the average revenue per user per month for that client.

Next, zoom out look at averages across all clients. What is the average revenue for all clients across all users. As with everything else, there should a normal distribution around a central number.

These are all pretty easy. Money. Users. You know these numbers, or have them at hand.

Time

The other thing that flows through your company is time. You buy time from your employees. With some, you buy it by the hour. For some, you buy it by the month. In either case, there is a reasonable number of hours they are expected to work (normally 20 or 40 hours per week.)

Some of the time you buy is used for checking email, driving around town, doing training, and sitting in meetings. Most of it should be sold to clients.

If you're selling time by the hour, you need to track this time so you can bill for it. If you decide that some work was re-work or just took too long, you can charge the client for less time. But you have know how much time was used by the employee because it comes from a limited pool of resources - in most cases 40 hours per week.

You have to track this time.

If you use employee time to deliver flat fee projects, you still need to track this time so you can determine whether the project was profitable. Assuming it was profitable, you should know HOW profitable. That's determined, for the most part, by how much labor was used to deliver the project.

You have to track this time.

The most important piece, when you're trying to develop a "managed service" business is the time and money related to regular, predictable, maintenance labor. This does not vary dramatically from month-to-month within a client. And when you zoom out, you find that it is very predictable on a per-user basis for tiny clients, medium size clients, and large clients. 

We went through these calculations around 2005 and settled on our first flat-fee maintenance agreements. 

Note, please, these are NOT all-you-can-eat contracts. There is really no such thing as AYCE. Every contract has to have limits. Please don't use the term All You Can Eat. Clients will think you mean all you can eat. And then you spend time arguing about how much is all they can eat. (Answer: If you let them, they can eat all the profit inside your business.)

 To make flat fee contracts profitable, you need to have very clear lines about what's included and what's not. I've written a hundred times about adds-moves-changes, so I won't repeat that here. Maintenance contracts (managed service contracts) should cover maintenance. Adds are extra. Moves are extra. Changes are extra.

In order to keep this profitable, you need to continue to monitor time and money. And, to be safe, you should evaluate how you're doing every three months. Be ready to make changes if you've included too much labor. You have to manage time and money in order to stay profitable.

No one ever argues that you should track money. But lots of people say you don't need to track time. My experience is that everyone who tracks time well makes more money than anyone who doesn't track time on flat fee contracts.

Time is the most expensive thing you buy and the most expensive thing you sell. Track it well.

All comments welcome.

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Episode 40

This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. 

Leave comments and questions below. And join me next week, right here.

Subscribe to the blog so you don't miss a thing.

:-)

Learning Why Flat Fee Projects Rule

Learning Why Flat Fee Projects Rule - - Lessons Learned, Episode 39

We all do projects. And for many IT companies, projects are the most profitable thing they do outside of recurring revenue. Like everything else, it takes time to develop a project process that's guaranteed successful and guaranteed profitable.

When I first moved into the SMB IT market, I had the same experience over and over with new clients:

• Someone had sold them "a system" (Windows or Novell server)
• It had minimal or no documentation or instructions for the client
• It had never been maintained
• Fifty percent of the time, the backup was not working. See Episode 8.

In other words . . . the norm in the SMB market was to sell a bunch of hardware and software, make a lot of money on the setup, and then walk away and look for the next big job. It was easy for me to offer ongoing monthly maintenance (paid by the hour). Then I had those clients for fifteen or twenty years.

When I was asked to quote a project, I drew on my experience being the buyer of these servers in my former life. I knew the client wanted certainty. So I quoted a job with detailed specs and I guaranteed the cost if they signed by the end of the month. That worked well.

Over time, I realized that I could give the client all the details on the job specs without breaking down all the details on the labor. Labor was labor. No one wanted the desktops set up but not connected to the network. No one paid for a server to be set up but not configured for their needs.

So, I started quoting a "lump sum" for the labor component. To be honest, if you want me detailed process on quoting projects, see the book, Project Management in Small Business - https://projectmanagementsmb.com/. 

One day, I was in my peer group meeting and someone threw out the question, "What do you charge for a network migration?" One guy immediately said, $2,500.

But what if it's complicated ... His response: $2,500.

Ten users? $2,500.

Thirty users? $2,500.

Two servers? $2,500.

He point was: The core piece of the migration would always be a predictable price. Of course that's higher today. But the core elements of the migration are the same. Maybe even easier and more profitable today. 

He then had to give a separate flat-fee quote for additional labor based on the specifics of the job. But he, his sales person, and his service manager all knew exactly what's included in the core piece of the migration.

I didn't adopt that exactly. But it sold me on never doing a "time and materials" project again. Every quote would have two simple numbers: One for hardware and software, with minimal detail. And one for labor. I break this down inside my system, but the client never sees it. 

Getting It Right

If you get the calculations wrong, you will lose money or break even. Neither of those things should ever happen. But how do you get it right? Short answer: Experience.

Critical to all of this is that you need to break the project down (internally) into stages or steps and track your time for each stage. Over time, you will have hard numbers of how long it takes to set up a new desktop and laptop, how long it takes to configure a firewall, how long it takes to migrate mailboxes, and so forth.

Think about getting a quote from the car dealership for any work. They have a big book full of bar codes. Remove and Replace bumper - beep. Paint bumper - beep. And when they're done scanning all the pieces, there's a price.

Of course, you can round that up a bit for project management, or down a bit to a nice number like $9,999. But you'll be in the ballpark. Then two things have to happen, both of which I've alluded to.

First, you need to track all of your time, and your technicians' time by stage. The easiest way to do this is by creating one ticket per stage and really pushing everyone to make sure they put their time in the right place.

Second, over time, you will automate processes you can and you'll get better at all of the work you repeat over time. So, you will naturally make move money over time from your projects. Most importantly, this does not change the price the client pays!

If the client buys a project with a flat fee of $5,000 for labor, then they agree that that's the value they expect from the project. If you are able to reduce your cost of delivery over time, the client is still getting $5,000 worth of value from your services. Do not change the price. Be happy to make more money.

As with all things, go slow, implement one step at a time, document everything, and calculate your profit after every project. With every project you will have more information that will help you make future projects more profitable.

Focus on the value, not the price.

All comments welcome.

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Episode 39

This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. https://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/p/lessons-learned-blog-series.html

Leave comments and questions below. And join me next week, right here.

Subscribe to the blog so you don't miss a thing.

:-)

Please Run to Serve on a Board or Committee at NSITSP!

It's election season! 

NSITSP is committed to improving the professionalism of our industry. What does that mean? You decide! After all, this is your industry and your association. We are completely member-run from the top down. That means YOU can run for office and influence what the NSITSP does.

We have about 30 openings - in ALL offices. As a member-driven organization, we are run by YOU the members. 

Anyone who is a paid professional member of NSITSP can run and serve on our board of directors or any of our committees. About half of the positions are open for election each year as people serve for two-year terms. We have a few more this year because of the new Membership Committee.

All the details are at https://nsitsp.org/elections.

Our process is very simple, and a bit cool. We have an entire election module that makes it easy. Once you sign up to run, you will have an candidate profile with all the basic profiles fields (name, company, photo, etc.) plus a statement for why you want to serve.

It's easy to browse all the candidates as a whole or committee by committee. Check it out today - and please consider running for office. This organization is what YOU make it.

Right now - you can view the offices that are open and see the candidates who have already filed to run. Join us. Literally.

:-)

We Only Sell the Perfect Combo

We Only Sell the Perfect Combo - Lessons Learned, Episode 38

When I first started working with small businesses, I fell into the trap most of us fall into: I bought and sold whatever worked to get the job done, even though I had very high standards. In other words, I knew that many brands names were superior to copies, but I often sold alternatives to save money for myself and my client.

There's an old saying, "The most expensive equipment is the cheapest to buy." I quickly learned what not to buy. Cheap fans made noise and needed to be replaced - which gobbled up all the profit from selling the fan in the first place. The same is true with cheap hard drives, cheap network switches, and everything else.

Then one day a client (who would become one of my favorite clients for the next fifteen years) said some magical words to me:

"It's not your job to save my money."

He told me to quote him the right thing. Not the most expensive. Not the most over-rated. Not the most profitable for me. The right thing. He explained that if the price exceeded what he thought it should be, or what he was willing to pay, he would ask for alternatives. And if he bought what I recommended, he would know that he bought the right thing for his business.

This is such an important concept. What's right for setting up a network with 150 users is not the same as a network for five employees. "The right" switch will be very different for these clients. And the right server, and the right printers, etc.

Lesson Learned: I always asked myself, "How would I justify that this is the right thing to sell?" The answer is always a combination of price, quality, reliability, warranty, and ease of maintenance (including cost of maintenance).

Having a justification to myself made it very easy for me to go to market with the right quotes, knowing that I was acting in the client's best interest. Luckily, in IT, there tends to be decent margin in the right thing.

When speaking, I sometimes ask people to imaging the perfect network: 

• All the hardware is business class equipment
• All the software is the latest version, fully patched
• Everything has either under a warranty or a maintenance contract
• Everything is maintained on a regular basis, so all the patches, fixes, and updates have been applied. Of course that includes security updates.

Now think about what that means. Nothing is more than three years old. Everything is completely patched and up to date. And nothing breaks. Nothing breaks.

Nothing breaks.

This is truly the promised land of managed IT services. It requires that clients invest in their own networks, and their company's well-being. It requires that we do our job and keep everything patched and up to date. And, in that perfect world, we have a contract for regular maintenance. Note that it also requires that the IT consultant believes in this beautiful vision.

By 2002, that's what I had built with my first IT company, KPEnterprises. All the pieces were in place to figure out how to create that maintenance with a flat monthly fee. But we weren't there yet.

We pushed this perfect model very heavily. We found that it had additional benefits. First, we attracted clients who truly valued their investment in technology. And that means we had fewer and fewer clients who constantly wanted to save money.

Second, we became more profitable. When we're being paid to provide maintenance, we're plenty busy keeping everything up to date. So it's okay that we're not always called out to fix stuff that broke because it was either cheap or unpatched.

Third, there was very little stress inside our company, even as we grew the business. Few or no emergencies means that people are not stressed out, they're not yelling at their employees or mine, and our company runs as smoothly as our clients' networks.

I firmly believe any IT company can do this, whether break/fix or managed services. You have to be committed to principle that there is a "right" thing for each job, each client, each project. You also have to be extremely committed to executing the patch management (and testing backups).

One additional supporting element makes all of this possible: Regular meetings with your clients so you understand when they want and what their company is going through, and they understand your philosophy about system maintenance. And, of course, this means you get to know each other as human beings, and that goes a long ways. 

I call these "client roadmap" meetings and we'll return to them in a future installment.

All comments welcome.

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Episode 38

This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. 

Leave comments and questions below. And join me next week, right here.

Subscribe to the blog so you don't miss a thing.

:-)

Gozynta Consulting Becomes the First Accredited Consulting Firm for HaloPSA

Got this missive from my friends at Gozynta . . .

Press release

Gozynta Consulting Becomes the First Accredited Consulting Firm for HaloPSA

Setting a new standard for white-glove implementation and strategy for MSPs

July, 2025 - Gozynta Consulting, a leading firm in strategic consulting for MSPs, has become the first officially accredited consulting firm for HaloPSA.

This accreditation, awarded directly by HaloPSA, recognizes Gozynta’s deep platform expertise, consistent client success, and hands-on, outcome-focused approach to PSA implementation and optimization.

“Being the first Halo Certified consulting team is more than a badge for Gozynta. It reflects our commitment to helping MSPs implement systems the right way, the first time,” said Heather Johnson, CEO at Gozynta. “Our team lives and breathes excellence, and Halo’s certification shows that we’re leading the way in setting a higher standard for service delivery.”

The consultants at Gozynta tailor each project to the client’s operational and strategic needs. From design to deployment, clients can expect clear communication, efficient process development, and no unnecessary fluff.

“We’re proud of our reputation for delivering high-quality, white-glove onboardings, and we know that reputation must be earned every day,” said Brendan Bastine, President of Consulting. “Every client we work with receives tailored guidance backed by clear, practical reasoning. We don’t just show you how; we explain why. This accreditation doesn’t mean we’ve arrived. It means the bar has been set even higher.”

“The Gozynta team has been fantastic to work with,” said Megan Hayden, Head of Partnerships at HaloPSA. “They flew through the accreditation process, which really highlights not just their familiarity with the product, but also how effortlessly they know how to use it in real-world scenarios. Gozynta genuinely understand the tool inside and out. This, paired with their knowledge of the MSP space, makes them an incredibly valuable partner. Having a team that can connect the dots between the product and the needs of the industry is a huge asset, and Gozynta nails it on both fronts.”

Gozynta extends thanks to Megan Hayden and the wider HaloPSA team, whose support was instrumental in achieving this recognition.

About Gozynta Consulting

Gozynta Consulting offers strategic and operational consulting for MSPs, focusing on implementation, process design, and growth enablement. Known for straightforward communication and deep expertise in PSA tools like HaloPSA and ConnectWise, Gozynta helps MSPs build systems that actually work so operating an MSP sucks less.

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More information at https://www.gozynta.com/halopsa-accreditation.

:-)

My First PSA - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

(and I mean UUUUUggggg-ly!)

- Lessons Learned, Episode 37

As I mentioned earlier in this series, I had used the Remedy Helpdesk ticketing system when I was running internal tech support at HP's Roseville, CA plant. We used it for both my PC Software Support team and the Unix Helpdesk team.

And, of course, all of use have been on the "end user" side of the helpdesk when it comes to vendor hardware, software, and services. You know how good and how bad (and how ugly) it can be.

Around the Century, we has built a rudimentary ticketing system in-house, as did many IT consultants at the time. It was certainly not high-end and did not even rely on a database. It was most a series of forms and automations I had built on our secure web site. We also had a place for technicians to download forms and checklists while they were at client offices, and a place for them to enter client notes and time. 

What I did not have was a PSA - Professional Services Automation - system. This is basically a CRM or "line of business" application dedicated to running an IT shop. A PSA combines the ticketing system with modules to track employee time, track contracts, invoice clients, and all the primary business functions in one big program.

Then I was introduced to ConnectWise. I first met Arnie Bellini at SMB Nation in 2004. He had a humble table with a sign and a computer. It was obvious, from working on many development projects, that this was not a "demo" or half built system. It was a mature program that was obviously deployed and real. There was no "Ignore that man behind the curtain" going on.

To be honest, the interface was ten years out of date in 2004. And, to be honest, it hasn't changed much since then. Despite being ugly, the program was extremely good with the most important things we needed to do in our business: Invoice clients, track time, and manage service delivery.

By the time the show was over, we had agreed to purchase ConnectWise and they had agreed to provide us with a plethora of support services and onboarding. 

First lesson learned: If it's not in writing, it doesn't exist. We deployed the system, but it turned out that any assistance beyond the most basic was billable. It was a disappointing onboarding process.

In addition to being an expensive piece of software, ConnectWise required a dedicated physical server (not virtual) and a support SQL server with requisite licensing. All in all, it was an expensive investment. 

But worth it.

The fundamental promises of a PSA were true with CW. Even today, I believe it is the best tool for tracking employee time and for providing client invoices in a format that details all the work and virtually eliminates client concerns about their billing.

We had to make a lot of configuration changes to customize the PSA for our processes and procedures. And, in some cases, we made minor changes to our processes in order to take full advantage of the software.

We did have a few instances where the program simply didn't work as it should. CW fought us on these until we proved to them that what we experienced was real. Getting things fixed and corrected, or getting billing straightened out, was always a hassle.

Within a year, we had fully implemented the system and relied on it to help our business grow. I'm not sure I'd ever say we loved CW, but it fundamentally allowed our business to operate at a higher level. We used it to make our technicians more accurate and efficient - and to get time cards turned in on time with no errors. We used it to make invoicing of managed services, time-and-materials contracts, and projects very smooth. And we used the ticketing system to improve service delivery while raising client expectations. 

In all of my IT businesses, since 1995, I have been a firm believer that hardware needs to be replaced after three years. Even the best, highest-end server becomes one of the slowest machines in the office after three years. I understand why clients want to stretch that out to four or five years, but three is really ideal.

Well, when that CW server was three years old, we'd only been using it efficiently for about 30 months. So we kept it around past the three year mark, but we knew we had to replace it eventually. 

Timing is important. When we bought into ConnectWise, no other product was close to them in functionality. There were essentially no competitors. Four years later, when we were looking at buying a new server, re-committing to CW for three or four more years, and having all the expenses of licensing, we decided it was time to look around and see what the competitors were up to.

By the end of 2008, there were real alternatives, the best of which was Autotask. So we started looking at that.

In all, we had ConnectWise for a full four years. It was a great investment and a great tool. And even today they continually add features and improve. But we found them difficult to work with. And that made the decision to look elsewhere a lot easier.

Lesson Learned: A great toolset can allow your business to mature to the right level. You need to invest at the right time, of course. When we had three people, I think CW would have been wasted on us. 

Lesson Learned: If you invest in a major system for running your business, dig in and learn it! Someone needs to be the master of the software. Rely on it for key functions. Don't be worried about what will happen if it becomes unavailable. Everyone has downtime sometime. Everybody has a bad day. That's the exception to the rule. Don't base major business decisions on the exceptions to the rule.

Lesson Learned: No decision is irreversible. We did move to Autotask after four years. And, no, it was not very painful at all. Just because you invested in something - and it was the right decision - doesn't mean that something else will never be the right decision in the future. Your business comes first. Old decisions should not keep you in the past.

All comments welcome.

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Episode 37

This Episode is part of the ongoing Lessons Learned series. For all the information, and an index of Lessons Learned episodes, go to the Lessons Learned Page. https://blog.smallbizthoughts.com/p/lessons-learned-blog-series.html

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