Autotask: Using IT Service Management Software to Improve 8 Key Business Processes

WHITE PAPER

STREAMLINING SERVICE
PROVIDER OPERATIONS
Using IT Service Management Software to Improve
8 Key Business Processes

© Copyright 2012 Autotask Corporation
1

WHITE PAPER

STREAMLINING SERVICE PROVIDER OPERATIONS
Using IT Service Management Software to Improve 8 Key Business Processes

Introduction: ..............................................................................................................................3
When to Deploy an IT Services Management Software Solution........................................................4
Managing Customer Information....................................................................................................5
Capturing and Converting Managed Services...................................................................................5
Implementing Automated Workflow, Escalation and Service Level Agreements...................................6
Processing Customer Service Requests..........................................................................................7
Implementing IT Consulting Engagements......................................................................................7
Monitoring and Billing Field Service Time......................................................................................8
Going Mobile to Optimize Service Tech Utilization..........................................................................9
Billing & Invoicing Cycles, Where the Rubber Meets the Road.........................................................9
Pulling it All Together Over the Web............................................................................................10
What Software Should You Consider............................................................................................11
IT Business Process Reality Check..............................................................................................12

2

WHITE PAPER

INTRODUCTION

»Understand your entire sales pipeline and track your performance
»
against goals
»Determine what’s due, what’s done, what’s overdue and what’s at risk
»
»View all work being done for a given customer, including design,
»
development, implementation, support and professional services
»See a ‘big picture’ roll-up of your complete portfolio of projects and
»
development work
»Drill down to any level of detail, to analyze which customers, services or
»
projects are profitable – and which are not
»View staff and tech availability, resource utilization and billable hour reports
»
»Analyze how individual team members are performing
»

In this age of high tech solutions, increasing automation and pervasive
access to the Internet, it is extremely surprising to see how many IT
Solution Providers (SPs) – including MSPs, VARS, retail technology
providers, system integrators, IT consultants, VoIP solution providers
and ISVs – continue to rely on spreadsheets, whiteboards and manual or
homegrown solutions to run their businesses.
The pressure on SPs – to do more, know more and work more efficiently
with fewer mistakes – continues to rise as new hardware and software
technologies are introduced at an accelerating pace. In the absence of
efficient, purpose-built systems to manage your internal processes, you
simply can’t maximize your productivity and profitability. You spend too
much time solving non-billable problems and playing catch-up to meet
deadlines and due dates.

THIS WHITE PAPER DESCRIBES HOW TODAY’S END-TO-END IT SERVICE
MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE CAN HELP YOU TAKE CONTROL OF THE KEY
BUSINESS FUNCTIONS CRITICAL TO MOST SPs, INCLUDING:
1. racking customer information from prospect, through new customer
T
setup to service delivery and billing
2. eeping every task, project and new installation on track and within
K
budget when implementing IT and software consulting engagements
3. rocessing customer service requests with streamlined workflow and
P
automated notification, and enabling direct client access
4. apturing and converting managed service alerts into service tickets that
C
are tracked from diagnosis through escalation to resolution
5. racking and real-time monitoring of billable time that field service
T
technicians spend on support, break-fix calls and scheduled maintenance
6. pproving and invoicing all project and service work, including expenses,
A
with the flexibility to handle monthly service, block hours, time-andmaterials, or fixed-price contracts
7. ptimizing service tech utilization with an eye toward better profits and
O
higher customer satisfaction
8. apidly producing business reports and metrics that provide the granular
R
information needed to make real efficiency improvements.

Several years ago, a new breed of application emerged known as
Professional Services Automation (PSA) or IT Service Management
Software, and it has evolved dramatically since then. Today, nextgeneration IT Service Management solutions are fully-hosted and delivered
on-demand. And, because they are accessed directly through the Internet
‘cloud’, they’re device independent and available from the office, in the
field or on the road.
These specialized applications integrate several important business
modules – including customer relationship management (CRM), project
management, service desk, time tracking, inventory, billing and reporting –
that all run off the same database, giving you a ‘360-degree’ view of your
customers and your business, all in one place.
Leading packages will be highly flexible and allow you to configure them to
support your unique business processes and requirements. For example,
individual modules can be turned on and off, and individual users can
be given different levels of access to, and views of, your data, depending
on their function. Most will also be able to integrate directly with other
general business applications such as Microsoft® Outlook, Excel and
Word, accounting packages like QuickBooks®, and managed services
applications, such as Kaseya, GFI MAX, Level Platforms and N-able.

WHEN TO DEPLOY AN INTEGRATED BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
SOFTWARE SOLUTION
The days are gone when an SP could hope to run their business well
because ‘everyone knows what everyone else is doing.’ Today, expanded
service offerings and more complex client demands make it difficult for
even the smallest provider to get by with the status quo. As the number
of services offered and the number of service-related employees increase
so does the complexity of your business, and the volume of items that
need to be tracked simply exceed the ability of any owner or director to
effectively manage them all.

Of the many significant benefits of implementing an IT Services
Management Software solution, the one that stands out above the others
is the automation and integration of all your business processes – giving
you a full view of critical metrics in real time, so that you can run your
business better and:

3

WHITE PAPER

THERE ARE MANY WARNING SIGNS THAT APPEAR WHEN
THE SERVICE SIDE OF AN SP IS IN NEED OF AN IT SERVICES
MANAGEMENT SOLUTION. AMONG THE ISSUES THAT ARE LIKELY TO
SURFACE ARE:

BUSINESS PROCESS #1

MANAGING CUSTOMER INFORMATION
One of the most serious challenges facing SPs is the need for a
powerful, integrated system to manage customer information. Many
SPs still have their customer data scattered across multiple computers
in multiple databases. Prospecting and sales information is stored
in contact managers, like ACT!®, Goldmine® or Salesforce.com®.
Billing information is locked up in dedicated accounting packages,
like QuickBooks. Project information, if stored at all, is often in project
management software packages, such as Microsoft Project. Service history
is often found in saved e-mails from customers, or stored in some standalone service desk software.

»Inefficient business processes are holding back growth
»
»Profitability is lacking and you and don’t know where to look for
»
improvements
»There’s no easy way to quickly understand what’s due, what’s done,
»
what’s overdue, who has time or what’s at risk
»Important implementation deadlines are missed
»
»Billable hours on projects and service tickets are not properly
»
accounted for
»Expenses fall through the cracks and never get billed to the customer
»
»You find it impossible to accurately track and bill customers because you
»
use so many different billing methods, rates and rules
»Your customers are unhappy about your responsiveness, communication
»
and level of service
»Your monitoring software is producing alerts, but follow-through,
»
escalation and resolution do not consistently meet service level
agreements (SLAs)

Most IT Services Management Software programs include a robust
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) module that goes far beyond
the capabilities of stand-alone applications. In addition to basic contact
management functions, here’s what you can expect from the CRM features
of IT Services Management software:
»»Better Management of Customer Information.
A good IT Services Management package provides a single integrated
view of your sales prospects and customer information. Anyone in
your organization with permission should be able to see notes, history,
contacts, opportunities, check on project status, view installed products
and monitor service tickets and ongoing communication. Productivity
features should include user-defined fields (to let you track the
information that is uniquely important to your business), automated
notification and workflow rules. With all your customer information
entered single application, you can track and report on just about
anything with a few clicks.

THE AGGREGATE LOSS IN REVENUE AND ASSOCIATED INCREASE IN
COSTS ADD UP TO SIGNIFICANT DOLLARS. FOR EXAMPLE:
»A 20-person IT consulting firm lost almost $15,000 on one contract
»
because they simply could not capture and bill the customer for indirect
costs related to the project.
»A managed services firm with over 45 employees wasted more than three
»
days of staff time each pay period manually processing paper time cards.
»An outsourced IT services firm found it was not accounting for about
»
15% of its billable time.
»One fast growing Solution Provider began losing customers each month
»
because they couldn’t manage their growth and provide the same
outstanding customer service that they could when they were small.

Today’s IT Services Management Software is web-based, and provides
bi-directional synchronization of all customer and prospect data, service
calls, appointments, notes and more. This gives you the ability to
update a customer’s status and other critical information at anytime from
anywhere using a standard web browser and mobile device.

The ability to capture and process critical business information quickly
saves both dollars and time. If you are wondering if you are a candidate for
IT Services Management Software, take the short quiz at the end of this
white paper.

»»Improved Sales Opportunities Reporting.
Make sure you can accurately track sales in progress. Using a sales
dashboard enables up-to-the-minute lead tracking, sales metrics, sales
quota performance, territory management, pipeline reports and reports
that are easy export to Microsoft Excel for more analysis. It is also important
to have configurable sales reporting for multiple locations and security
for outside sales representatives. Look for a system that complements IT
services procurement tools like ChannelOnline or QuoteWerks.

The balance of this paper examines the eight most critical business
issues affecting SPs, and how IT Services Management software can be
deployed to streamline business operations and boost both productivity
and profitability.

4

WHITE PAPER

»»Streamlined Business Workflow.
One overlooked area is using IT Services Management Software to
improve internal business processes. For example, you can use service
ticketing queues to track RFQ’s, project proposals and RMA’s. Another is
to use the project management tools to speed up and track new customer
setup. This will help eliminate the likelihood of missing important
data or steps by generating check-off lists for the detailed tasks to be
accomplished, and assigning the people to do them.

»»Integration with monitoring services.
Leading IT Services Management programs integrate directly with
popular remote monitoring and managed services applications including
N-able, GFI MAX, Level Platforms, Kaseya and many others. These
integrations, and the ability to automatically convert alerts into working
service tickets, can significantly increase your response time, lower
overall cost and increase client satisfaction.
»»Integration with Microsoft Outlook.
Sometimes you will need to quickly create service tickets from e-mail
notifications. Make sure that your IT Services Management System
allows you to create service tickets from within your Outlook email using
the subject and ticket body to pre-populate ticket information.

»»Microsoft Outlook Integration.
Be sure your IT Services Management solution offers real-time
integration from within Microsoft Outlook for contacts, calendar items
and e-mail. This will eliminate the need to create and maintain separate
contact databases. To accurately track and respond to customer e-mail
requests, Outlook integration that can convert e-mails to tickets is a big
time-saver for help desk and support technicians.

»»Dispatching field service technicians.
The system should allow the dispatch manager to review a list of tickets,
make an assignment and automatically notify the appropriate support
person through any web or e-mail enabled device, at their desk or on
the road. Integration with automated workflow rules and escalation can
further increase productivity.

»»Tracking Installed Products and Subscriptions.
Beyond core customer information, you should use your IT Services
Management Software to track customer products and assets,
subscriptions, installation dates, serial numbers and other product and
site-related configuration data. In addition to the obvious time and
organizational benefits, managing and tracking customer inventory data
efficiently, like warranty expirations, can create significant new sales and
service opportunities.

»»Monitoring alert status from initiation through resolution.
Whether this function includes completing the ticket or just adding notes
to the customer’s account, the software should keep a complete audit
trail for the issue.

BUSINESS PROCESS #2

CAPTURING AND CONVERTING MANAGED SERVICES

USING YOUR MONITORING SOFTWARE AND IT SERVICES
MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE TOGETHER CREATES TREMENDOUS
BENEFITS, INCLUDING:

SPs derive revenue by providing 24x7 managed services for monitoring
networks, virus and security alerts. These IT monitoring systems create
alerts and warnings at several levels. When severe alerts come in, they
often require immediate attention and speedy resolution.

»»Eliminating unnecessary time and labor
by automatically converting monitoring alerts into service tickets.

To streamline the process, alerts should automatically convert to into
meaningful service tickets so they can be tracked through the process in
your IT Services Management software, saving time to triage and create
a ticket.

»»Productively managing and dispatching
assignments to fix problems identified by the monitoring software and
tracking trends to identify areas where you can reduce maintenance costs.

Critical problems that fall through the cracks are a primary cause for
client dissatisfaction and attrition. To make sure that no critical alert goes
unanswered, be sure your IT Services Management Software offers these
key parameters:

»»Analyzing profitability
of your managed services contracts, tracking margins by customer and
identifying customers who are actually costing you money each month.

5

WHITE PAPER

»»Comply with required functionality from vendors.
For example, if you are a Cisco Partner, you want to make sure that your
system allows you to define priority levels that comply with the Cisco
Prioritization and Escalation Guidelines.

BUSINESS PROCESS #3

IMPLEMENTING AUTOMATED WORKFLOW, ESCALATION AND
SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS
To maintain the highest level of customer satisfaction, you need to exceed
customer expectations for service and support. That’s difficult to achieve
if you don’t have the internal systems in place to make it happen.

HERE ARE THREE REAL-WORLD EXAMPLES OF AUTOMATED
WORKFLOW AND ESCALATION RULES:

You need to make sure your IT Services Management system has an
advanced set of automated escalation and workflow tools to help you
establish, track and manage service and support standards.

Example Escalation Rule 1:
‘Automatically route all new service requests from Acme Corporation that
are entered through our client access portal to Joe Technician, and move
them to the Dispatch queue so Joe can be assigned an on-site visit to fix

Whether based on contractual obligations, service level agreements
(SLAs) or internal best practices, you’ll need a way to measure key
performance indicators and manage the service and support that you
commit to provide.

the problem.’
Example Escalation Rule 2:
‘When an alert comes in from the Monitoring system that indicates that a
web server has gone down, automatically create a ticket, assign it to the
lead tech on the account with a critical priority and send a notification to
both his mobile device and email account. If the alert is still open and idle
after 10 minutes, automatically notify the customer service manager that
the critical priority ticket requires immediate action.’

But, if you are like most SPs, all customers — and all incidents —
are NOT created equal. It’s important to establish systems that will
automatically take the correct action based on a specific incident’s
issue type and priority to make sure you maintain compliance with
your commitments.
TO MAXIMIZE EFFICIENCY, RESPONSIVENESS AND COMPLIANCE, YOU
SHOULD IMPLEMENT A SYSTEM THAT HAS THE ABILITY TO:
»»Create workflow and escalation rules for service tickets
that are easily defined and customized. These workflow rules should
also indicate when and how a service ticket is to be escalated and what
actions should be performed. Make sure that you can copy existing
workflow rules to use as guides when building new ones.
»»Define automatic actions,
such as notifications, escalation in priority, change in status and
reassignments to be initiated when service standards and time-based
commitments are at risk.

Escalation Rule 3:
‘Send all overdue tickets from Jeopardy or Premier accounts to a queue
called “Immediate Attention”, change ticket status to critical and
automatically send a special notification to the service manager.’

»»Provide an audit trail on the ticket
that displays the events, conditions, notes and actions taken.
»»Use notification templates,
including system variables, to create unique messages for each
workflow rule. To simplify workflow, make sure that your IT Services
Management system can open a ticket detail window in the ticketing
system right from a link in the notification email. If your techs need
to get these notifications in the field, make sure that your system can
send notifications to applications like Outlook and to mobile devices and
e-mail enabled phones.

ONCE INSTALLED, THESE AUTOMATED WORKFLOW AND ESCALATION
RULES WILL:
»»Ensure reliable communication,
improve response times and drive best practices.
»»Increase utilization
by reducing the time to constantly monitor queues, or triage and review
service ticket lists.

6

WHITE PAPER

»»Give you the ability to meet and exceed SLAs,
by heading off problems before they create service issues or financial
penalties.
»»Keep everything on track
so customers receive the service level that matches their agreement and
your internal best practices.
»»Improve your selling process
by demonstrating your commitment to delivering the highest level of
service and support.

»»Deploy Your Own Branded Client Access Portal.
Better IT Services Management packages will allow your customers to
create, submit and check on the status of their own service tickets through
a web-based, client access portal. When submitted, these tickets can
trigger a series of customized follow-on questions based on issue and subissue type. This feature provides automated, level-1 ticket triage and can
significantly reduce response and resolution times.
»»Network Your Partners, Vendors and Subcontractors.
Next-generation systems will also include universal ticket sharing
capabilities that handle the complete spectrum of outsourcing activities
from the front end of the process – establishing fees, tracking charges
and managing workflow – through client billing and subcontractor payment.

BUSINESS PROCESS #4

PROCESSING CUSTOMER SERVICE REQUESTS
As its name suggests, IT Services Management Software helps you deliver
better service, improve response times and provide a complete audit trail
no matter how requests arrive – via phone, fax, e-mail or a web portal.
And, it allows you to track time and task information against specific
contract terms, and keep things from falling through the cracks. Most
importantly, it provides important customer metrics to help you analyze
both efficiency and profitability.

»»Monitor Everything With Service Dashboards Reporting.
Another important feature to look for are built-in dashboards that allow
you to monitor key metrics such as ticket submissions, tickets due
and completed at a glance, and provide comprehensive reporting and
performance charts.
THE RIGHT IT SERVICES MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE WILL
DELIVER MEASURABLE RESULTS WHEN HANDLING SERVICE
REQUESTS, INCLUDING:

IT SERVICES MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE GIVES YOU THE TOOLS TO:
»»Manage Outsourced IT Services
You can rely on IT Services Management software to handle support,
troubleshooting, help desk, warranty work and scheduled maintenance.
And, you can dispatch technicians for field service break-fix, installation
configuration and upgrades, all from a single dashboard. Look for the
ability to create and manage multiple service queues, customize issues
and sub-issues, priority, status, routing, ticket history, integrated time
tracking and automated notification. If you’re doing project work, you
should also be able to turn a service ticket into a project task, as needed.

»Reducing call backs and increasing first-call resolution
»
»Providing better accountability and response time
»
»Preventing customer issues from falling through the cracks
»
»Expanding business intelligence by tracking trends and key
»
performance metrics
»Increasing revenue from billable tickets
»
»Improving efficiency by resolving more issues with fewer resources
»

BUSINESS PROCESS #5

IMPLEMENTING IT CONSULTING ENGAGEMENTS

»»Track Billable Service Work.
The strength of IT Services Management software is its ability to track
and bill services by a variety of activity codes that tie back to the
contract terms. This will allow your technicians to focus on the task at
hand while the system tracks the billing information in the background.
This is also useful when you are using contractors and want to keep your
billing information private.

When it comes to the often-difficult task of managing complex consulting
engagements, IT Services Management Software can handle multi-faceted
projects smoothly and efficiently.
HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF THE KINDS OF ACTIVITIES YOU CAN
EXPECT TO STREAMLINE:
»Installation and configuration for software, hardware, POS systems and
»
integration projects
»IT project management such as migrations and office moves
»
»Training projects for various IT technology, software and tools
»
»Custom software application or web design and development
»
»Proactive maintenance plans - including a list of actions that must be
»
performed on supported devices on a regular basis such as reviewing
event logs, applying patches and software updates

»»Capture Service Alerts Automatically.
The IT Services Management software should automatically capture and
convert alerts from your IT monitoring packages into service tickets. This
feature will keep you on top of 24x7 managed services and help deliver
speedy resolution for monitoring, virus, security and other system alerts.

7

WHITE PAPER

The best IT Services Management Software will have project functionality
that lets you set up templates that can be duplicated for recurring
projects or processes. If you are using Microsoft Project or Excel for
project planning, then make sure that your IT Services Management
software can import project information from these applications. As with
stand-alone project management software, be sure you can break projects
or processes down into phases and individual tasks, assign team members
and contractors to do them, and enter estimated time and deadlines for
each. A project dashboard and work records should be updated in realtime as work is done. Automated notification should keep everyone in the
loop so that, no matter where they are, they know what to do and when it has
to be done. At any time you like, you should be able to rapidly check realtime status to see how your “actuals” compare with estimates.

»Digital sign-offs along the way, and a thorough approval process when
»
work is completed should be available to make sure everything is
billed correctly.
WITH THIS KIND OF POWER AT YOUR FINGERTIPS, YOU SHOULD
EXPECT TO:
»Deliver more projects on-time and on-budget
»
»Quickly see what’s due, done and overdue
»
»Reduce or eliminate cost overruns against budget
»
»Create better time estimates and proposals
»
»Get instant status reports while eliminating whiteboards and spreadsheets
»
»Achieve better accountability and response time
»
»Increase resource utilization and billable hours
»
»Quickly identify the right person for a job and fit them into the schedule
»
»See in seconds what it once took hours to do by hand
»

THE KEY IMPROVEMENTS YOU CAN EXPECT BY IMPLEMENTING AN
INTEGRATED PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOL ARE:
»»Better Managed Project Portfolio.
IT Services Management software will connect your business teams to
your project teams and result in better visibility, control and analysis
across your entire project portfolio. A project manager dashboard will
provide one-click access to key reports, project financials and schedules.
Cross-project reporting and project portfolio management tools will
roll-up summary information and provide comprehensive planning and
performance analytics.

BUSINESS PROCESS #6

MONITORING AND BILLING FIELD SERVICE TIME
Keeping track of everything going on in a busy IT services business is
a major challenge. You need a system that has the ability to track and
capture all billable services on projects, field service work and outsourced
help-desk engagements. An IT Services Management Software solution
will help you realize more efficient management of these resources
with individual and department-level task assignments that show up on
personal dashboards.

»»Better Organized Projects.
With one integrated database, your projects will be seamlessly connected
to your accounts. Once you close a sale, there should be an easy way
to kick off a new project engagement. As the project is built, important
details will be tracked every step of the way including the project team,
schedule, notes, task assignments, billing information, material and
equipment costs, file attachments, project issues and your custom, userdefined information.

At the beginning of the day, everyone on the team should be able to
review their service and project work along with estimates, due dates and
priorities. Technicians should be able to easily capture and record time,
status and work detail – when and where the work is completed.
TO MAKE THE MANAGEMENT AND UTILIZATION OF YOUR
TECHNICIANS MORE EFFICIENT, MAKE SURE YOUR IT SERVICES
MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE INCLUDES:

Advanced features will provide Gantt charts, real-time status reports and
a controlled client access portal that allows the customer to interactively
participate. Automated notification and workflow rules will keep project
team members informed when they need to be. When a project is
complete, equipment will be attached to an account with installation
dates, serial numbers, warranty expiration and other configuration data
so you always know what your customers have and how it was set up.

»»Built-in Dashboards and Timesheets.
Time entry and assignments should be completely integrated. Task
assignments should show up on a personal dashboard and allow easy
entry of time, status and work details. You should implement an internal
set of best practices to standardize the capture of work details to improve
consistency and accuracy.

»»Faster, more accurate billing and reporting
Your IT Services Management Software should be specifically designed
to track and bill all project and service related costs to allow faster and
more accurate invoicing. The ability to apply any billing format to any
customer has been shown to reduce billing related administration costs
by more than 50% and will produce more accurate invoices. Labor costs
will be tracked in the background so you can easily monitor project
profitability on fixed-price projects.

»»Single Point of Entry with Automated Notification.
Time entry on a task or ticket should automatically update your timesheet.
And because most IT Services Management software consolidates data
capture and provides a single point of entry, it should also update time on
the project task or ticket, all related reports, billing detail and workload
reports simultaneously. Based on your internal workflow policy, automated
e-mail notification will improve communication and keep key individuals
and customers in the loop.

8

WHITE PAPER

WITH MOBILE WEB-BASED ACCESS:
»Service techs can log-in, access their schedule for the day before they
»
leave the house, and go directly to their first service call. The saves time
spent driving first to the office and then to the call.
»Techs can log-in from the service site, record details of the work that
»
was done, enter their time and close the ticket. Better systems will even
allow them to view other open service tickets for that client or at nearby
accounts that could be handled during the same field call, maximizing
their utilization and reducing resolution times.
»Contacts, calendar and to-do items can be synched to a tech’s PDA
»
through a Microsoft Outlook integration.
»Escalated service alerts can be automatically sent to cell phones, pagers,
»
PDAs and other mobile devices.
»»Integrated Expense Reports.
Billable expenses and employee expense reports are one of the most
difficult and overlooked areas when it comes to improving the bottom
line. Often, billable expenses are never charged to the client because
there’s no easy way to manage the process. With an integrated expense
reporting system, billable items can be entered in real-time – even from
the field – right on the expense report, and automatically tracked with
the client and project through the final approval, reporting and billing
process. The expense reporting system should be powerful enough to
create detailed reports, track receipts and capture company-paid items.
Because all items are tracked along with their corresponding expense
policies and approvals, you will no longer double-pay expense items or
suffer from inaccurate or incomplete expense reports.

»Everyone in the company has access to the critical information they need
»
wherever they are, so long as they have web access
To illustrate; imagine the president of your largest client arriving at work
early one morning to find your service tech already waiting at the front door,
ready to solve a problem your client didn’t even know she had yet. What
happened? Your IT Services Management Software automatically created a
ticket from an alert it received from your remote monitoring tool at 5:26 this
morning, and notified your technician of a critical service issue that needed
to be addressed. How’s that for exceptional customer service?
THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT THE MOBILITY, DEVICE AND BROWSER
INDEPENDENCE AFFORDED BY WEB-BASED IT SERVICES
MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE WILL HELP YOUR COMPANY:

»»Time Off Requests.
IT Services Management Software should also allow you to track
personal and vacation time-off requests within the system itself,
including automated routing and approval or rejection. Workload reports
should be automatically updated to better manage resource availability,
eliminate coverage gaps and simplify dispatching.

»Respond faster
»
»Save travel time and expense
»
»Increase customer satisfaction
»
»Make more money
»

BUSINESS PROCESS #8

BUSINESS PROCESS #7

BILLING INVOICING CYCLES, WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS
THE ROAD

GOING MOBILE TO OPTIMIZE TECH TIME
If your business is like most SPs, the most important thing you have to
sell – and the thing you sell the most of – is the time and expertise of
your service techs. Their time is golden. It generates income, it keeps
customers happy and it fulfills contractual obligations. Anything that
interferes with that is bad; anything that helps boost your service tech
utilization rate is good. The key is flexibility and mobility of access.

At the end of the day, your business depends on your cash flow and how
quickly and accurately you can invoice your clients for the services you
provide. Typical SPs provide and bill for services in a variety of different
ways. You may bill projects on a time-and-materials basis, monitoring on a
fixed monthly fee, and other managed services under a fixed price contract.
Your IT Services Management Software should be able to automatically
check your time sheets, work entries and expenses, apply the appropriate
contract terms and billing methods for each, and generate a single, detailed
invoice that accurately reflects the services you provided over that billing
cycle. This feature alone can save countless hours each month formerly
spent reconciling accounts and generating invoices manually.

That’s why the IT Services Management Software solution you select
needs to be web-based, so that anyone within your company – but most
especially your service techs – can access and update vital information
from wherever they are, using virtually any mobile device that connects to
the Internet.

9

WHITE PAPER

PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER OVER THE WEB

TO ACCOMPLISH THIS, YOUR IT SERVICES MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE
SOLUTION NEEDS TO HAVE A FULL SPECTRUM OF FUNCTIONS TO
MAKE THE TASK OF BILLING EASY, FAST AND ACCURATE, INCLUDING:
:
»»Flexible Contract Billing Automation.
You probably have myriad billing methods, rules and rates that vary
across your customer base. Make sure that your IT Services Management
Software can be configured to reflect the way you currently bill your
customers for both project and service work. It should also be able to
handle time-and-materials billing based on multiple roles and rates per
customer contract.

Because Solution Providers typically have internal resources or contractors
in the field, either at the client site or in remote offices, the most flexible
service management software is offered as a hosted solution, accessible
via the web, on-demand. These solutions are sold on a subscription basis
and users are charged a monthly fee. Typically, you pay only for what you
use, plus a modest one-time installation and training fee.
Web-based solutions can be easily configured to match your unique
workflow and business rules of your company without costly software
modifications. As a result you can usually be can be up and running in a
matter of days.

»»Fixed Price Work With Milestones.
It is also important to track the costs associated with the time worked
and automatically calculate profitability.

Two important advantages of web-based solutions are accessibility and
scalability. Web-based hosted solutions offer you tremendous flexibility
as the product can be accessed at anytime from any location through a
standard web browser. Secondly, there are no user minimums, allowing
the solution to be phased in, one department at a time, until fully
implemented. As your company grows, new users can be added as needed
providing a very scalable solution.

»»Retainer and Prepaid Block Work.
Be sure it can automatically deduct time worked from the block and
provide rules for expiration, and generate notifications when the block is
low and override rates when the block runs out.
»»Approval Posting Workflow.
It is important to put into place a best practice for approving customer
work. In smaller companies the software should be able to automatically
approve work when the timesheet is signed-off as final. For more control,
especially in larger companies, it should support a checks–and-balances
system where a project manager, account manager or service manager
can review work entries using pre-bill reports, verify the work performed
and easily make adjustments to labor, costs, milestones and expenses.

THEREFORE, THE BENEFITS OF AN ON-DEMAND, WEB-BASED
SOLUTION ARE:
»»Accessibility.
Your techs have access to account and contact information, service
tickets, notes, to-dos, calendar items, projects and time entry from any
computer or mobile device with Internet access, wherever and whenever
they need it.

»»Project Service Ticket Billing.
IT Services Management Software is not a replacement for a solid
accounting system, but it should be able to provide comprehensive
billing details and draft invoices. If you plan to create invoices from
within the system, be sure it has the ability to select and roll-up the
items you want to display on the invoice including work details, costs,
expenses and taxes. Remember, only some invoice items are taxable and
the rules often vary by geography so your system should have the power
to be configured for these items.

»»Scalability.
Like other software solutions delivered in the cloud, web-based IT
Services Management Software typically follows a utility pricing model,
so you can add users easily as your business grows.
»»Increased Productivity.
Across your entire organization, not just for your technicians. The
best IT Services Management Software will streamline workflow and
eliminate redundant work for virtually everyone in your organization
right out of the gate.

»»Accounting Integration.
To provide seamless transfer of customer billing data to your accounting
team or bookkeeper your IT Services Management Software should
provide direct integration with popular accounting packages like
QuickBooks. Such integrations remove the need for manual updating
and eliminate potential errors in the transfer process. Top systems will
allow you to easily match your accounts, product names, allocation
codes, expense categories and other data to their equivalent fields
in your accounting system, greatly simplifying your billing and
reconciliation processes each month.

»»Low Upfront Cost
Without the need to purchase hardware, a pay-as-you-go pricing model
and the elimination of expensive customizations means ROI starts
immediately.
»»No Software to Purchase
With a web-based service there is no software to buy or install and you
are always assured of using the most current version of the software
because updates are deployed and available automatically to all users as
they are released.

10

WHITE PAPER

»»Fast Implementation
The time required to set-up and train staff on the product is measured
in days, not months, with minimal disruption to ongoing operations, and
business and workflow rules can be configured easily, without the need
for costly customization.
»»WHAT SOFTWARE SHOULD YOU CONSIDER
IT Services Management software is a “mission-critical” application that
will touch and improve virtually every aspect of your business. For that
reason you should consider only a top-rated and mature software product
that has withstood the test of time, and:
»Has the full range of features you need today
»
»Will evolve to meet your needs in the future
»
»Is easily configured to match your business processes
»
»Integrates with your existing development tools and business applications
»
»Is fully accessible by technicians and employees in the office and in the
»
field
»Allows you to add employees incrementally
»
»Networks you to your clients, partners, vendors and subcontractors
»
Autotask Corporation is the leading SaaS provider of hosted IT service
management tools providing a single, integrated application to manage
your entire business, organize people and processes, automate your
workflow and integrate your partners and services.
Autotask software has all of the capabilities noted in this white paper and
is among the most economical and cost-effective solutions available on
the market today. User licenses are approximately $1 per day, per user.
More than 50,000 technology solutions professionals around the world
rely on Autotask to streamline their operations, grow their business and
maximize their profits.
For more information about Autotask software, please visit
www.autotask.com or call +1 518 720 3500 Ext. 1

Corporate Headquarters
East Greenbush, USA
T + 1 518 720 3500
www.autotask.com
©2012 Autotask Corporation

International Headquarters
London, England
T +44 20 3006 3147
WP IT LTR 070212

Germany
Frankfurt am Main,
Germany
T +49 162 2703 601

Asia
Beijing, China
T +86 010 8278 4881

All trademarks used are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
11

Australia
Sydney, Australia
T +61 2 8103 4001

WHITE PAPER
IT BUSINESS PROCESS REALITY CHECK

Are you a candidate for IT Services Management Software?

1. DATA:quick waya single information sourceCheck” your that follows.
Here’s a Is there to find out: Take the “Reality to run Quiz business?

YES

NO

Have you eliminated duplicate entry and re-key of information between systems?

[]

[]

Is all of your customer information in a central location so you do not have duplicate customer
information sitting in multiple databases?

[]

[]

2. BUSINESS PROCESS: Do you have the processes in place to efficiently
manage your managed services?

YES

[]

Do you have the infrastructure to track control standard project work,
service tickets and field service calls?

[]

[]

[]

[]

[]

[]

Do you have a system to automatically escalate unattended tickets and notify the right
resources at the right time to meet your SLA for each customer?
Can you capture the documentation necessary to justify the value you provide – every
time a bill goes out?

3. BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: Do you have the right information at your
fingertips to run your business?

[]

[]

Are your SP applications integrated with your internal workflow and service desk,
project, time-tracking and billing systems?
Can you optimize your dispatching and scheduling assignments to prevent
wasted travel time, and maximize utilization of your techs?

NO

[]

YES

NO

Can you quickly produce a summary of all the outsourced IT services, consulting services, and
managed services you have provided to any customer or group of customers in the last week,
month, or quarter?
Can you get an update or status on projects going on “today”, in real time?

[]
[]

[]

Do you have the tools you need to analyze the performance of your business so
that you make adjustments to improve efficiency?
Can you easily monitor deadlines and are you certain that no critical customer
items are falling through the cracks?

[]

[]

[]

[]

4. RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: Do your team members and techs
know their assignments and priority?

Are you maximizing your resource and tech utilization and maximizing their billable time?

YES

[]

[]

NO

[]

[]

Do you know what’s due, what’s done, what’s overdue, what’s at risk and who’s available?

[
]

5. BILLING AND INVOICING: Do you have your arms around all
aspects of your company’s billing data?

YES

NO

Can you accurately track and analyze profitability on fixed price,
managed services contracts with minimal effort?

[]

[]

Do you have a complete audit trail if a customer asks for detail or questions a bill?

[]

[]

Can you rapidly generate integrated service bills with complete billing

[]

[]

[]

[]

details for each customer?
Are you sure you are billing everything, including service time,
project time, and customer expenses?

Answering “no” to any of the questions above will point out areas where you are leaving company profitability
on the table. And if you answered “no” to three or more questions, your company is a candidate for a
business process overhaul that will have a dramatic impact on your bottom line… maybe even the difference
between overall success and failure of your company.
And a big part of that overhaul is a simple matter of using an affordable IT Services Management software
platform to run your services business better, and to position yourself to thrive in the changing outsourced IT
services market.

12

Autotask: Using IT Service Management Software to Improve 8 Key Business Processes

More Related Content

What's hot (19)

Similar to Autotask: Using IT Service Management Software to Improve 8 Key Business Processes (20)

More from Integrated Computer Systems, Inc. (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

Autotask: Using IT Service Management Software to Improve 8 Key Business Processes