Cost-Effective Automation for MSPs with Colin Knox from Gradient MSP

[00:00:00] The Stack, a podcast for IT and MSP professionals with your host David Pap.

[00:00:17] Welcome to the MSP Stack Podcast.

[00:00:20] I'm your host David Pap.

[00:00:22] We're joined today by Colin Knox with Gradient MSP based out of Calgary.

[00:00:27] Colin has an amazing integration and automation tools that basically help MSPs run better

[00:00:35] and run more cost effectively.

[00:00:37] Colin, Colin.

[00:00:38] Hey, nice to be here.

[00:00:40] Awesome.

[00:00:41] Tell us about your main offering.

[00:00:43] Would that actually be the thing that I read on your website called Synthesize?

[00:00:46] Yeah, it's our synthesized platform.

[00:00:49] So we're building an integration platform for MSPs, consider it kind of like a middle

[00:00:54] where it's all about bridging that gap that exists between an MSP's PSA that they

[00:01:00] run their business on and all the other tools that they use and resell.

[00:01:05] So using it through use cases like billing when you're going to reconcile all of the services

[00:01:11] that an MSP is reselling down to their end customers and clients, making sure that they're

[00:01:17] billing the right quantities of every item for every client, and then into alerting

[00:01:22] now as well.

[00:01:23] So MSPs are running however many different security tools, monitoring consoles, a whole

[00:01:30] bunch of different solutions that are keeping watch essentially on different things.

[00:01:35] And as alerts get generated by those, it's generally filling up some, you know, what I'd

[00:01:39] call a dumpster fire of a shared mailbox somewhere or maybe posting in the Slack.

[00:01:45] Maybe people are doing some email parsers and creating tickets off of them, but very

[00:01:50] few of them integrate natively with the PSA and the ticketing queues.

[00:01:55] So we essentially aggregate all of those alerts and then deposit them as service

[00:01:58] tickets in the PSA of choice for the MSP.

[00:02:03] Interesting.

[00:02:03] And so do you also leverage on any kind of machine learning AI component to help filter

[00:02:09] out, we'll call it the white noise?

[00:02:11] Yeah.

[00:02:12] So we're building in some, some rural logic right now where MSPs can set and create

[00:02:20] rules surrounding things like thresholds of number of times that this has been

[00:02:26] triggered or alerted in X period of time.

[00:02:28] Don't create a ticket unless it's happened as much.

[00:02:32] You know, threading of tickets and closed loop ticketing.

[00:02:36] So if something is auto remediated by an automation tool or a script or just

[00:02:40] happens to self-remediate itself, being able to go back and close those tickets

[00:02:45] so that a tech isn't wasting time jumping in, going in to find it's already solved

[00:02:49] and then taking up more time to close out the ticket.

[00:02:53] And then yeah, the threading.

[00:02:55] So it's, you know, multiple workstations or devices or solutions for a single

[00:03:02] client is all triggering to thread all of that into a single ticket or in some

[00:03:07] cases maybe multiple clients to thread it into a single ticket or connect them

[00:03:11] all so that you don't have that duplication of effort where numerous

[00:03:15] technicians are picking up numerous tickets that are all related to the

[00:03:18] same thing.

[00:03:19] So yeah.

[00:03:20] That's almost touching into the realm of the whole EDR, XDR, isn't it?

[00:03:26] We're noticing things that way and creating the tickets.

[00:03:29] You know, we still we're getting integrations in with those solutions

[00:03:33] so that, you know, things still flow to the right ticketing system for

[00:03:39] there for the experts to be dealing with that the MSPs have it all captured

[00:03:43] in their ticketing so that when they're doing their, you know, quarterly

[00:03:46] review or even monthly reports that it's showing effort and tickets and stuff

[00:03:50] that was being done, all of those things in there.

[00:03:54] So mostly just aggregating the alerts and making sure that things are,

[00:04:00] you know, not dropped.

[00:04:01] Balls aren't dropped.

[00:04:02] Important and critical things aren't missed.

[00:04:05] And yeah, to eradicate some of that white noise that happens that

[00:04:09] generally causes people to not have their solutions creating tickets.

[00:04:14] Awesome.

[00:04:15] So how I'm trying to understand how easy it is for somebody to install

[00:04:20] something like that.

[00:04:21] Like, does it just is there a setup that goes in or do you actually have

[00:04:25] to manually create all the connectors through APIs and scripts?

[00:04:28] And or do you have a professional service side that helps with

[00:04:31] the onboarding of your software?

[00:04:33] And you need to do all these custom connectors, like kind of

[00:04:36] describe how easy or difficult this is for somebody to go and implement

[00:04:40] this in their environment.

[00:04:41] Yeah. So we have, you know, two modules that MSPs interface with on the platform.

[00:04:46] So the first one is our billing module.

[00:04:49] Super easy to get set up and started.

[00:04:51] You attach, you know, create an API user in your PSA of choice.

[00:04:57] Attach that, you know, kind of plug gradient into the PSA.

[00:05:01] We collect the information we need so that we know kind of which clients

[00:05:06] there are, what contracts they have, what the service items are,

[00:05:09] line items and all the contracts.

[00:05:11] When it comes to managing the consumption info from the various vendors

[00:05:16] and suppliers of the MSP, you know, we've got some 14 or 13 direct

[00:05:23] integrations that have been built.

[00:05:25] So a lot of channel vendors built and our building integrations

[00:05:29] with our platform rather than in many cases, direct integrations

[00:05:33] with the PSAs because they can reach into the nine PSAs we

[00:05:36] support through a single integration.

[00:05:39] So super easy for MSPs to generate an API token, plug it into their vendor portal

[00:05:45] and just have that consumption information flowing through automatically

[00:05:49] for them to do the quick review and reconciliation process each month.

[00:05:54] For anything that's not directly integrated,

[00:05:58] pretty much all but not quite all vendors and suppliers in the space

[00:06:03] provide their resellers and partners with some form of generally in CSV format,

[00:06:10] a usage export.

[00:06:12] From that they can just drag and drop that into our platform,

[00:06:16] do the mapping up, create an import profile so they don't have to do

[00:06:19] the mapping in the future.

[00:06:20] They just have to bring it into the system.

[00:06:23] We do all that same comparison, identify, you know, the net increases

[00:06:28] or changes, you know, reductions of quantities for certain clients

[00:06:32] and certain services.

[00:06:34] And in a lot of cases we're identifying places where the MSP has never

[00:06:39] been billing their client for entire services for long periods of time.

[00:06:44] So complete new found revenue for them.

[00:06:47] So that module super easy to get set up and going generally takes,

[00:06:50] you know, maybe a couple hours of effort to get it going

[00:06:54] and should save them 10 plus hours every single month.

[00:06:57] And we're generally finding the average MSP just about $15,000

[00:07:02] in annual revenue in the first cycle that they do with us

[00:07:05] that they weren't actually billing for.

[00:07:08] Yeah, so it's some big impact for them.

[00:07:16] You're listening to The Stack.

[00:07:18] Special thanks to PacSaid for their support of the stack.

[00:07:23] PacSaid empowers the modern MSP to buy, sell and manage cloud

[00:07:27] products with automated provisioning, simplified billing

[00:07:31] and free PSA integrations to more than 50 verified embedded

[00:07:35] cloud service providers.

[00:07:37] PacSaid is ready to help you simplify your cloud business.

[00:07:43] What's in your stack?

[00:07:45] What's in your stack?

[00:07:52] And then on the alert side, very similar.

[00:07:55] It's kind of a set it and forget it type of thing

[00:07:58] and no SaaS company ever wants to say that, but we do

[00:08:02] because you know, you want people

[00:08:03] lugging into your product all the time for stickiness.

[00:08:07] But with us again, you connect at the same way with your PSA.

[00:08:12] You know, this one is a direct integration is only at current.

[00:08:15] So you go into our integration partners, plug in the API key.

[00:08:19] And the alerts just flow as the rule logic comes in over the,

[00:08:23] you know, the next six months here.

[00:08:27] Yeah, they can come in to set and refine their rule sets

[00:08:30] and their logic and whatnot that way.

[00:08:32] But again, then they just leave it.

[00:08:34] And if they if there's an alert that doesn't create a ticket

[00:08:38] and they miss something, they can come back into our system

[00:08:40] and find out why that happened and adjust that rule.

[00:08:42] Or if things are flowing through that, they don't want

[00:08:45] to create tickets and they can come back in and create some rules

[00:08:48] to mitigate that as well.

[00:08:51] That's fantastic.

[00:08:52] So are you finding in general that I hear you saying that,

[00:08:56] you know, things run more efficiently?

[00:08:59] There's some

[00:09:01] some additional selling opportunities,

[00:09:03] recognizing some additional revenue streams and whatnot

[00:09:06] for things that we missed.

[00:09:07] But are you seeing any savings on the labor side

[00:09:11] in terms of time savings across staff

[00:09:14] because they're better organized and better

[00:09:17] or are you or is it the flip side that there's more things

[00:09:20] that are getting better being noticed that weren't before?

[00:09:22] So it's the same amount of work, but at a different level.

[00:09:25] Yeah. So I think the outcomes

[00:09:28] outcomes are are different on each side,

[00:09:31] you know, with each module here.

[00:09:33] So on one hand, you know, with billing,

[00:09:37] we'll say the average MSP

[00:09:39] really varies depending on their size, both not just in how many people

[00:09:44] they have, but number of clients,

[00:09:45] number of services they're reselling.

[00:09:48] But, you know, what we find is most MSPs,

[00:09:51] they say that their billing is automated and, you know,

[00:09:54] maybe the generation of the invoices and sending of that is automated.

[00:09:57] But the actual reconciliation and management

[00:10:00] or updating of their agreements and contracts isn't.

[00:10:04] And they're typically spending, you know, on the small end,

[00:10:07] six hours a month doing that on the large end.

[00:10:09] We've we have partners that are saving 50 plus

[00:10:12] 85 hours a month in just doing that reconciliation

[00:10:16] because it's such a manual process.

[00:10:19] You know, so that's there's some significant savings.

[00:10:21] You know, when you're looking at smaller MSPs, who's doing that?

[00:10:24] That's the owner, the president, CEO, top dog, whatever they call themselves.

[00:10:29] And they're probably doing that after hours.

[00:10:31] So it's impeding time that they could be recharging, relaxing,

[00:10:35] spending with their spouse, their family, friends, doing whatever.

[00:10:38] But instead, they're sitting on a computer

[00:10:41] doing one of the most infuriating tasks and brutal, brutal,

[00:10:46] cross-eyed, you know, complex systems like tasks every single month.

[00:10:52] On the alerting side, you know, probably the biggest outcome

[00:10:55] is that you're not missing any alerts, right?

[00:10:58] You don't have to worry about the human error factor.

[00:11:01] We've all missed an alert before we've all gotten that phone call from the client.

[00:11:04] How did you not know about this?

[00:11:06] What's been done about this?

[00:11:07] Everything else in your behind the Ape all.

[00:11:10] But at the same time, since a lot of those tools don't integrate through

[00:11:13] and create tickets natively, and there's some that do.

[00:11:17] But for the ones that don't, there's a huge time sink in that.

[00:11:22] You're now paying technical staff that should be outbilling

[00:11:25] one hundred and twenty, one hundred and fifty dollar an hour equivalent,

[00:11:28] maybe more depending on their seniority, although we all know

[00:11:31] everybody's doing the managed services.

[00:11:33] So but still their head is on a swivel.

[00:11:37] They're looking at trying to log into every monitoring console.

[00:11:40] Keep an eye on the wallboards if they're in an office, right?

[00:11:44] Trying to keep track and not miss something in the sea or review these emails

[00:11:48] where there's five million different backup alerts or whatever else is happening.

[00:11:52] But you're fighting versus being proactive, right?

[00:11:54] Like it's so time consuming for them to be watching and finding those things that no,

[00:12:00] all you have to do is look, watch the ticket queue.

[00:12:02] When there's a ticket in there, pick it up, work it, close it onto the next, right?

[00:12:07] And be able to leverage that stuff.

[00:12:09] So fantastic.

[00:12:12] I always love to wrap up our podcasts with a quick tip,

[00:12:16] like if you had a single piece of advice that you wanted to give somebody

[00:12:19] something that they should do, if they completely ignored everything you said

[00:12:22] or didn't understand what you were saying, what's that one thing

[00:12:25] that you want them to walk away with?

[00:12:27] You know what I think timely right now is we look at what's happening

[00:12:31] in the public markets and the global economic conditions

[00:12:34] and macroeconomic states, you know, there's there's a lot of indicator

[00:12:39] saying that a recession is coming.

[00:12:41] And so as an MSP, our mantra has always been to be as automated,

[00:12:46] effective, efficient as possible.

[00:12:48] Nothing about that has mattered more than now, right?

[00:12:52] You need to be as automated and effective as possible,

[00:12:56] minimize any time, waste, time sinks in your business.

[00:12:59] And on the billing side, if we're finding three to 10 percent revenue

[00:13:03] for MSPs on average, make sure you're getting paid for what you're delivering

[00:13:07] because when those clients come calling to negotiate down or ask for change,

[00:13:11] you need to make sure that you're still getting getting fair value

[00:13:14] and getting captured everything that you should be getting paid for.

[00:13:17] So I'd say that's the major thing for me.

[00:13:21] Fantastic. Thank you very much once again for

[00:13:24] for all of this, I think it's definitely something that everybody needs

[00:13:28] to be exploring more as you pointed out, automation, machine learning,

[00:13:31] everything, all of that. I think that's the future.

[00:13:34] Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

[00:13:37] You bet. Thanks.

[00:13:39] We hope you enjoyed this episode of the MSP Stack podcast.

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