Rob Scott of Monjur

[00:00:00] Welcome to the SMB Community Podcast with hosts, Amy Babencheck, James Kernan and Karl Palachuk. Produced by Kernan Consulting and for the International MSB Community. We are dedicated to making every IT professional, a successful IT professional. Hey everybody, welcome back to the SMB Community Podcast.

[00:00:28] This is James Kernan with Kernan Consulting and good to be with you. Today I've got a very special guest, the co-founder of Major, Mr. Rob Scott. Rob, welcome to the program. Thanks, James. Could to be with you. Yeah, yeah. So thanks for being on today.

[00:00:44] I was excited to get back in touch with you again and talk with you and share what you guys are doing over there at Major. Truth be told, you guys have a really cool solution and I hadn't heard of you until the very tail end of last year.

[00:00:58] And I think I was at a conference and somebody had one of my customers actually was doing a presentation and they brought up your solution. And it was like, wow, I got to reach out to these guys.

[00:01:09] So it's been a long time coming but I'm excited to reconnect with you again. So thank you again for being here. So we're going to talk about your company, Major, and it's really contracts as a service.

[00:01:21] You've got AI powered. I mean, there's some cool features. We'll dig into in a minute. But if you could, let's go back a little bit in time. I'd like the audience to get to know you as a person a little bit more. How did you get into this?

[00:01:35] Maybe talk a little bit about your early career and then we'll talk about where you're at now. So I started my career in 1990, and I got my law license and started practicing by the early 2000s.

[00:01:51] I was very heavily engaged as the managing partner of Scott and Scott LLP, which is a law firm that focuses exclusively on ITMAC. So software IT services we cover privacy security and compliance and artificial intelligence. Yeah, we only deal with computer law issues.

[00:02:14] And so that's how I started my career as a managing partner of a law firm. By 2020, I had a mass literally hundreds of clients in the managed services space. All of whom I had written contracts for but had no ability to keep their contracts updated.

[00:02:34] And so I was in a position where the only clients that were really getting our best stuff were the next clients. And our former clients agreements were getting older and staleer with no real mechanism to keep them updated for changes in the law.

[00:02:51] I mean, 20, I started building a project which we called internally, Majer. And we launched that in March of 2022, so we just finished our 27th month. And it's been a whirl in ever since. Yeah, that's awesome. So help the audience understand what your service looks like.

[00:03:12] I call it contracts as a service. I did a demo and really liked what I saw but could you let's go a little deeper into what the service looks like?

[00:03:23] So at its core, it's a legal service. We write the master services agreements, the service attachments, the regulatory required data processing agreements and all the contracts that comprise a modern stat or IT services firms.

[00:03:41] We start with what we consider our industry leading templates curated over 20 years and 500 plus engagements. And then we customize them for each MSP and then we host them, and we keep them updated through the cloud.

[00:03:55] But the magic of the Mondra platform is that it integrates directly into our clients sales processes and quoting tools such that when they send out a quote or proposal and their clients accept the quote or proposal.

[00:04:09] Our legal service just tags along and so we're able to collapse the sales and marketing the sales and contracting steps into one online process centered around our clients existing tools. Yeah, that's the part that is the magic. That's the part I thought that was so amazing.

[00:04:27] And I was ironically on another podcast this morning and I was talking about you and about we were actually talking about how the industry has changed so much. And for the MSP, there's so much risk now on our shoulders and you need protection.

[00:04:44] And we were talking about attorneys and contract language and insurance and training. There's all sorts of things that you need on your side. And then we were talking about your service. And then so here's a question I had for you. It kind of came up today.

[00:05:02] How often because they're all of the MSPs need so many different types of legal agreements and you know there's so many different industries and so many other requirements. How often does the contract language get updated?

[00:05:16] We update our templates every week on our essentials plan, which is our first tier plan. The agreements are updated for our clients every month. And our standard plan, it's quarterly. And so we have different update intervals for different agreements.

[00:05:35] For example, our data processing agreements are updated every time the new law comes out. You think about all these state laws that are passing data privacy laws.

[00:05:45] Every time there's a data privacy law that comes out in the US state, we evaluate it determine whether or not to what extent it affects our customers. And if it does, we push those updates to them when those laws come out.

[00:05:57] So last year we had Virginia Colorado and Connecticut all past data privacy laws. Our clients agreements have long since been updated to reflect those laws. Okay. And then how does it work like if I send out a contract or a proposal today with a contract on it?

[00:06:15] Someone signs it executes it. And then obviously there's updates and revisions to that same agreement later. How does that work if, you know, if a legal issue pops up? But we've got to go back in time to the date they signed it and approved it.

[00:06:32] What is that look like? How does that work? Well, you may not be in a situation where you have to go back and look at it because what we do is something called browser route

[00:06:43] is something that we took from the large enterprise. But it basically says that when the customer signs up to an agreement for the first time on the mantra platform,

[00:06:52] it includes in the quote language that says that the provider has the right to update the terms and conditions and give the customer notice. Got it. So those updates and those notice is that are part of the service that we offer or so.

[00:07:06] They know when our agreements are updated, our clients don't have to go to their clients and obtain a new signature because Colorado passed the data privacy well. Good. Or because we make a tweak to some language. What I tell my clients is rely on the browser route.

[00:07:25] If it's not something that would have changed the customers opinion to do business with you in the first place. If it's something that would have affected their decision, then you presented to them.

[00:07:36] And just like you would if it's a significant pricing, pre-sort of structural change or significant change and services, all that still needs to be solved. What we're trying to do is make it easier for the MSP to put all their customers on a single contract form.

[00:07:53] And to give them a way that easily keep all of their customers updated. What we find is that MSPs enter into agreements with customers. They generally let them auto renew and some customers have contracts, some don't.

[00:08:07] Others are on different forms of contracts that don't have all the latest protections. And with Monser, we move all of your customers to a single contract form that is updated over tunnel.

[00:08:19] Okay, and I'm going to nerd out a little bit because I want to go a little bit deeper in the in the weeds so people can understand how cool this is.

[00:08:27] So say I'm using a quoting platform online quoting platform and I'm emailing my quote out and then they approve it.

[00:08:34] And then I send my agreement along with an invoice for example what what I would just a process look nothing else to do so so you are you are great you are great until you said I send in the agreement.

[00:08:47] Those quotes and proposals have on them an exhibit A which comes from us. Okay, which contains the smart hyperlinks from the Monser platform that contain the online terms and conditions.

[00:09:01] So if you send a quote out in the customer accepts the quote all of the legal terms and conditions on our exhibit A that we provide are entered into at that time there's nothing else to send.

[00:09:13] Perfect perfect love it love it and then so so then then they go ahead and move forward I mean. Is there anything else to it is there anything else that. That the MSP would need to do is that simple.

[00:09:31] From the from the once they're set up, it's that simple sundial your quotes from your quoted tool and included an exhibit A from Monser on all your quotes and every time someone buys a laptop.

[00:09:42] A new computer buys a project adds a service every time they are upgraded to the new paper. Here is so this is how we migrate all of our MSP's customers to the Monser platform usually within a few months.

[00:09:58] Once all the platform then their agreements just get updated in the normal rhythm through the browser wrap apparatus that we created.

[00:10:08] And the quote templates always reflect the live terms and conditions because the hyper links that we provide are smart in the sense that once embedded into the quoting tools they always point to the then live terms and conditions.

[00:10:24] Okay, and now how long if if I'm an MSP I sign up for the program and I'm using a Cossaya platform I'm using their quoting tool.

[00:10:35] I know you've got lots of integrations but how long does it take to get integrated to get you were you were to get everything connected. So the integration is performed by us.

[00:10:46] It's a under 30 minute project for the Cossaya commerce products they've got one branded for data and one for auto task all based on the formerly data commerce product. That's an under 30 minute project and that's a service we provide as part of our setup.

[00:11:06] Wow, that's amazing that's amazing and then on the onboarding is already kind of training or is there do we even need any kind of training on this. What do you have we do some training the the most important thing with onboarding is reviewing the documents.

[00:11:20] There's two documents that are unique to each MSP one is our schedule of third party services this is the risk mitigation solution that we created in response to the Cossaya ransomware attacks.

[00:11:35] And it comes pre populated to each of our clients with over 200 vendors in the space and it acts as a waiver of the end users right to sue the MSP for any actor omission of a third party service so consider for example the Cossaya ransomware attacks or the Acronus case that's pending in California now.

[00:11:55] There's an allegation against an MSP as a result of something that a vendor did or didn't do at our scheduled third party services is designed to protect MSPs from that.

[00:12:06] But we need to know who the vendors are and so as part of our setup we provide a list of 200 vendors that we're aware of and each one of our customers goes through that let's us though any they want to take off.

[00:12:19] And if there's any they're using that we don't have on there yet we add them and that's a part of our onboarding the other part of our and that's everything that you need to do for our what we call essentials tier.

[00:12:31] Yeah, which you know it's to 1.5 million in revenue for our larger MSPs that are in our standard tier they also have a schedule of services think of this is a catalog of all of the services that they offer.

[00:12:45] And we send one out as a template that has just core you know managed services managed security managed voice back up in disaster recovery sort of the core.

[00:12:57] And so MSP services and then our clients can either replace that with theirs or use ours as a basis to develop their own.

[00:13:06] And that's those two documents in the case of standard and the one document in the case of essentials is the work that our clients need to do with us to get that done our essentials clients are onboarding an average of 14 days and our standard clients are onboarding in an average of 45 days.

[00:13:26] That's great. That's great. I've got to tell you I've been in sales and marketing for over 30 years and in specifically in the IT space and there's nothing that kills a deal faster than a bad contract or strict contract language it can just very you know we used to call them sales hurdles there's always sales hurdles and I love one that you protect the MSP to you make it easy for the customer to understand and review that that's amazing.

[00:13:55] And then face it everybody where technology companies it's our responsibility to use the latest and greatest technology right to make it seamless to do transactions for customers. I think this is amazing and have you had any MSP in user customers reach out and want to use the platform or receive there was something like that.

[00:14:18] I mean, I would imagine that has to have happened. Well, we haven't had that just because that's not something that we would entertain if that was something that was presented that it would never reach me because it's not part of our model but we have had a lot of MSPs ask us about our platform particularly our customer experience portal.

[00:14:42] Yeah, and we've had many of our MSP clients implement a version of our customer experience portal because they liked it so much they wanted to use it with their customers.

[00:14:54] But we wouldn't you know our our solution is very niche if an MSPs customer wanted to use our contracts they wouldn't fit. Yeah, our contracts are very purpose bill for managed services and so we wouldn't want to represent their end users and our agreements wouldn't fit their business.

[00:15:14] Good good just protect us MSPs that that's what everybody's on. I've got I've got to go to protect 4,000 MSPs with this mantra platform.

[00:15:26] We recently announced a deal with tech rug in Lloyds of London which will have us onboarding a thousand MSPs from there insurance pool and next 12 months. And so we've got our hands filled just 10 care of MSPs. We don't have any interest in representing their call.

[00:15:45] Yeah, that's amazing that's amazing so I know you've got a special promotion going on can you talk about that. Absolutely you know one of the things that we've heard from our clients is they perceive some degree of risk in signing up for a long term agreement.

[00:16:02] They can part because certain players in our space have abused the market when it comes to long-term agreements and really turn people off to it.

[00:16:14] So what we've done for the summer is you now you can sign up for Mondra on either one of our tiers you pay a one time set up fee either 299 or 498 depending on your tier.

[00:16:26] You know play anything until after labor to this gives you time to get onboarded to start closing deals with the Mondra platform before you have to pay any monthly fees.

[00:16:37] That coupled with our 90 day no questions asked satisfaction guarantee really allows people to sign up and try the Mondra platform for a very little risk.

[00:16:49] That's great that's great. I love it. I love it. So how could people get in touch with you? Who do we reach out to and pal? Well, you can reach me directly. My email is Rob S at Mondra MLNJUR.com.

[00:17:05] Our office phone number is 214 9990080 for those of you who still use phones and you can just on the web at www.Monger.monger.com

[00:17:18] And there's a request to demo button at the top of the page if you want to check out the Mondra platform and action we'd love to show it to you. You can go to the site click on the request to demo and we'll show it to you.

[00:17:31] Yeah, check it out everybody. You got to check it out. I have seen the demo. It's amazing. So monger.com. I click on the demo button or reach out to Rob in his team.

[00:17:42] Alright. Well hey, thanks for being on the program today. I love talking to you guys and learning more about the platform. And thank you for doing what you do. What I would have needed service.

[00:17:53] Thank you very much. You know, I was 20 years in representing MSPs as a traditional liar and many of them told me hey,

[00:18:03] man, you need to turn this into a service. This should be a monthly recurring revenue service. And for all of those MSPs and others out there and you know that you are

[00:18:12] that encouraged me to do this. I just want to say thank you. It was an easy to do, but without your encouragement, I would have never done it. So thank you guys for that.

[00:18:21] Alright, you bet. Thanks again. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks Rob. Thanks James. Take care.