Service provider Accord first made contact with ProMet Engineers towards the end of 2006 when the mining consultants were looking for PC support and advice on their phone system.
The biggest IT challenge for Perth-based ProMet was keeping track of support cases for its then-50 staff.
The problem was to identify how many resources were required for IT support and system administration. "We had no idea of call volumes or trend analysis," says Brad Campbell, ProMet's IT manager.
Because support calls weren't tracked, the too-hard cases tended to disappear. "People would say two weeks later, 'what's going on?' and I would say, 'I don't know, I've got no track of it'," says Campbell.
The absence of performance indicators also meant the engineering firm had no way of evaluating the service provided by Accord or even knowing whether service level agreements were being met.
Accord was then relying on a combination of spreadsheets, a ticketing system and a database to keep track of customer support issues.
Campbell says the level of service provided by Accord before it switched to Kaseya "was probably suitable for the size of company it was then".
A merger with another service provider gave Accord the reason and motivation to try automation. A single tool to manage the customers of both companies would ease the transition, and also provide more detailed reporting for customers.
Accord trialled several automation platforms but few were able to scale from a two-PC business to an enterprise.
Tim Brewer, Accord's director of corporate services, says he was impressed by some enterprise tools but they didn't have the scalability the service provider needed to cope with 300 sites, each with its own VPN and sitting on different directory trees.
"We found other tools that could have done a 1200-seat site but all of a sudden you're using four or five platforms, you have to train staff on each one and you are making decisions to silo again."
Last year ProMet signed a contract with Accord as part of the move to a managed service.
"We brought on Kaseya as part of the business plan. That was moving from, 'We have a problem, we need support,' to being more proactive," says Brewer.
"It's easy to talk about how many tickets were provided, but when we moved to a fixed-fee contract or a managed-services contract, the focus went away from how many hours to what was the quality of the service being provided."
The contract marked a shift from the previous arrangement where Accord filled a contract role to provide a person on-site for support.
In practical terms Accord agreed to provide services backed by response times rather than a single tech's name.
"I don't think you need to be a large company to have a services contract. It has advantages at all levels and in a lot of ways it can be more cost effective because you're not having to rely on one IT person to resolve all your problems," says Campbell.
Campbell says the move has been "quite successful". "The most difficult issue has been educating the staff [that] they could get support by sending an email to a central email address or a specific number rather than phoning or emailing an individual."
When Accord took away the avenues for contacting the technician directly, some staff worried that service levels would drop.
Campbell describes it as a "small business mentality - [if] I've got a problem, I'll get out of my chair and find that person [or] pick up the telephone and they will come and see me. That was just an education program we went through and it was minimal impact."
To some extent the concerns were academic - Accord's decision to keep a tech at ProMet who would service other nearby customers in the Perth CBD meant the tech was around most days, and the level of service remained the same.
However, more of the daily support issues were managed remotely by Kaseya.
Using the automation platform has also avoided increasing the number of technicians to service a PC count which has gone from 80 to 130 in three years, says Brewer.
ProMet has sites on both sides of the Indian Ocean - two in Perth and one in South Africa. Previously Accord kept a list of all the Remote Desktop Protocol locations, but now the service provider can monitor a person's laptop and provide remote support on either continent.
User information is recorded in the platform and no longer tied to the tech on-site, which helps reduce the impact of staff turnover at the service provider.
The reporting function has improved customer relations by putting on record maintenance work which was otherwise invisible to the engineering firm.
"We were doing a lot of stuff that we weren't reporting back to the client. Patching systems, server uptime, disk cleanups, automating remediation, OS changes," says Brewer.
These tasks are ideally done by an automation tool and demonstrate its ability to save time.
A central system can use scripts or group policy changes to roll out changes across a customer's desktops, whether they are in one office or 10.
This translates to a huge saving on manpower that would otherwise be involved in manual roll-outs.
"For example, if a client wants a particular icon placed on a desktop we can build and store and run that script at any one of our sites. What we are developing as far as a script base and online remediation can run anywhere."
A list of automated actions for one site can be used for other sites and even other customers. Kaseya has become a library for all Accord's sites and broken down the silos of information attached to each client, says Brewer.
One of the greatest benefits to removing the need for manual updating and fixing PCs means techs can focus on business development. They can look at how to improve the customer's IT systems and not how to maintain them.
Accord has just started training its sales staff on using Kaseya, says Brewer. "It wasn't until a client asked us to run and annual audit that we went out and had a look on-ite at all their sites.
"Now they can go and suggest to a client to upgrade and say, 'Your PC must be running really slow', and the customer says, 'Yeah, my PC's shocking, but how did you know?'"
Accord recently went through a similar scenario with another customer. The client was happy to upgrade the RAM in his PCs, and Kaseya told Accord how many RAM slots each machine had, how the memory was configured and whether any slots were empty.
"We knew exactly the type of memory to get," says Brewer.
An automated platform can connect to similar platforms on external systems. Thanks to a close relationship with a hardware supplier, Accord has set up a one-click link within each PC's profile that brings up the warranty information for that machine.
Technicians can check the warranty on a faulty box with one click, log a support call directly to the supplier and have the machine replaced.
"Little stuff like that creates huge efficiencies," says Brewer. "It used to be quite manual."
Kaseya also also connects to Accord's main business tool, the CRM package Connectwise. Brewer says that because of the integration between the two software packages it appears as if it is just the one application.
Brewer's two most important reports each week are client reworks (where a resolved job has to be redone) and positive feedback. After six months rolling out the automation platform and another six months finetuning it, client reworks dropped by 50 percent, says Brewer.
He estimates that since installation Accord has seen a 50 percent improvement in customer satisfaction. "That's customers coming back and saying, 'Wow, you guys are just awesome, that was fantastic, I am over the moon'. Not just a good response, an exceptional response."
Accord spends a lot of effort evaluating its staff in the field. Clients receive a survey after every job and a telemarketer calls around all the jobs on the previous day and asks how the technician performed, how he communicated with the customer, whether he dressed appropriately and arrived on time.
"The management team finds out pretty much within 24 hours whether we've dropped the ball somewhere," says Brewer.
The tight evaluation cycle includes weekly feedback and assessments. Accord is keen to replicate the benefits of a small company - speed and closeness to clients - despite a staff of 50 and plans to grow further.
"Whatever niche market you fit into you have to be nimble and you have to be close to your clients," says Brewer.
"Kaseya for us is a key tool for achieving customer satisfaction. My eye's on that, because I know if I'm looking after customer satisfaction, I'm looking after the endpoint," says Brewer.
Accord pitches its services under the one umbrella of "technology as a service" - something that many resellers claim to be doing but few make it work effectively, says Brewer. However, this approach is critical to meeting the demands of the market.
"If you asked me where I wanted to be in three years time, I want to transform the business to be totally on top of our clients' needs. And you cannot do that today without the right tools. You cannot."
Campbell, who manages IT and workflow systems in the business, comes from an enterprise IT background with oil and gas company Technique, where he deployed service management systems based on the ITIL methodology.
He says he is keen to assist in the process of helping Accord develop its use of Kaseya.
"A lot of small businesses in my experience downplay IT and you tend to find that the type of support you get is very reactive rather than proactive," says Campbell.
"These systems tend to provide you with more of a proactive type of approach which means your system will be better managed and you will have a clearer picture of what's really going on with your network."
Campbell says Kaseya shows a lot of potential. "I think there is a lot of development work to be done on Accord's side to get full utilisation of it.
"As you're probably aware, with a lot of these systems, it's not flick the switch and they start working. There's a lot of development work that's needed. I'm very keen to play a part in the evolution of Kaseya within Accord."
The recent burst of growth has taken ProMet to a crossroads. The number of servers and disk space needs to be increased, but Campbell is not committing to buying more equipment just yet. The next project for ProMet is virtualising its servers, which currently run at 30 percent utilisation.
Disaster recovery and business continuity is also quite weak as they rely on manual processes. Campbell says they need a lot of work and recovery times are not covered by service level agreements.
A third-party company has analysed the company's infrastructure and created a roadmap, Campbell says. Accord, which represents competing vendors, was invited to bid for the projects as well.
Meanwhile Accord is pushing hard to get all its clients onto Kaseya and fixed-price contracts. Accord has increased its Kaseya licences by 20 percent since January. The provider has taken on a couple of large clients and other sites have come on fixed-price contracts.
Brewer says he was sitting with one who had been on a managed-services contract for two years and was considering moving to a fixed-price contract.
"I said, 'If you are just on a break/fix contract there's no motivation, apart from just our values, to get you to the most efficient, smooth-running system, but there is a lot of motivation when we are on a fixed-price'," says Brewer.
"'Fixed-price is giving us responsibility for your network, and allowing you guys to focus on your business. And what better time than right now to let you focus on your business?'"
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