Connectwise Decoupling

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Overview

What is the problem?

ConnectWise is not serving our businesses and functions the way it use to; as a result, we have purchased new tools to close gaps for different functions (Asana, HubSpot etc). Our tools costs are increasing and the value for many team members & functions to be in ConnectWise are quickly diminishing.

With the doors open to introduce function-based, modern third party tools, the need for integration has increased & the role of our master records (i.e. ConnectWise) today (and going forward) has been upended.

Additionally, the rumors around ConnectWise’s future has deterred all usage which has increased CCR application development resources and we have missed opportunities to maximize ConnectWise usage.

Why is that a problem?

Much of our systems and business processes relay on ConnectWise in some way or another. It holds (or has held) many of the core business entity master records. To truly decouple ConnectWise we have to take apart each aspect of our business and build it back again.

Team Members (Members)

Companies

Contacts

Opportunities

[Client] Agreements

Projects

Service Tickets

Time Entries/Sheets

Process Templates (Service Ticket Templates & Project Boilerplates)

Product Catalog

Invoices

Workflow Rules (within ConnectWise only)

The good news, we are much farther down this road with the work that has been done over the last 3-5 years with the on-boarding of new in-house & third party tools and systems.

Implementation of Bamboo

Implementation & maturity of our CCR Data & Applications

Data: Business Structure, Product Instances, Requests, RequestPlans, Product/Process Templates

Applications: Client Portals (Manage360) & Admin Portals

Implementation of Asana

Migration of Outlook as our scheduling system

Implementation & Integration of HubSpot

Implementation of Business Central

The challenge continues to be the reliance on ConnectWise and it is no longer in your face - many people in the organization can do their jobs with minimal or no direct ConnectWise contact. However, its dependence lurks beneath the surface.

We’ve been with ConnectWise for 14 years - help me understand what has happened.

The beginning of ConnectWise

ConnectWise was introduced into the organization at a time where it’s value was tremendous. ConnectWise held the master records for many the key entities (Team Members, Companies, Contacts, Opportunities, [Client] Agreements, Projects, Service Tickets, Time Entries/Sheets, Process Templates, Product Catalog, Workflow Rules, & Invoices) as well as the processes that run our business.

ConnectWise went live in the organization on 7/1/2009.

Before this time, we are three primary tools to manage the business.

QuickBooks — financial tracking (including inventory management) — about to be replaced by Office Accounting

CCR custom application, the original Intranet, that was built to track the equivalent of tickets and time and the first version of agreement management

The Dude to monitor our nodes in the field.

The needs to expand Intranet were growing as the business grew. Resources were limited so the natural question How can we do this differently? came.

After some research, ConnectWise offered an extensive platform that had solutions to cover many of the current and anticipated business gaps at that time.

ConnectWise provided all the foundational components of managing a MSP business & offered enough flexibility we could adapt the tool to fit the evolution of our organization.

After it was implemented, more team members were able to contribute to business processes faster. Development resources shifted to create and support integrations and also allowed for more devoted time to work on applications unique to CCR.

The evolution of Connectwise

2013: We introduced two major changes to our ecosystem. SolarWinds and Intranet5 (more specifically Site Management and Vendor Agreements).

Site Management & Vendor Agreements was the replacement for what was left in the original Intranet and a reconciliation of all the changes ConnectWise & CCR Media (at the time called Colocation Services) brought to the organization.

During this time & for several years after our main data philosophy was extension. If ConnectWise didn’t have a field we wanted, we would create a CCR table that extended the use of the master record.

2014-2018: There were a flood of challenges & changes that came to a head that lead to a shift in our data philosophy & created owning our own master data (which brought us the CCR Data Layer we have today).

Business Structure changes & Financial System woes

Service Leadership - Paul Dipple, introduced through ConnectWise - brought insights into MSP best practices which included financial benchmarking

Financials had to be dissected & re-categorized to participate in benchmarking

This created a secondary CCR system that brought high-level financial reporting of the business; detailed transaction drill-downs were not in the design. The long term goal was to implement this into our Chart of Accounts (and therefore our processes from the top-down).

System migrations

In the last 15 years, we have moved from Quickbooks to Office Accoutning to Great Plains to Business Central. Each migration or business structure change came with a loss in data and/or visibility.

The secondary CCR system allowed high-level history of the organizational financials.

In a quest to get to Business Unit profitability tools & structures were a challenge. The migration to Microsoft Great Plains brought a new Chart of Accounts to, hopefully, adapt expansion of Businesses & Products within the organization.

Business Intelligence division was off the ground - although there as progress and insights, overall organization frustrations where high. It wasn’t bringing to lights that insights that were expected.

Data was entirely unavailable (which initiated development work) OR

Data that was available was disparate that required a large amount of buried logic to gain insights; reports produced inconsistent results and overall trust was lost.

A large CCR Media contract was won & implemented, Sorenson. Nearing the end of the implementation, hundreds of collective hours were spent trying to identify if everything that was sold was implemented and billed.

The first version of the ConstructEdge Client Portal (Manage360) required a new level of Request/Order tracking (from Quoting through Decommission).

Addressing Misconceptions.

The discussions and rumors for the last 3-4 years was that ConnectWise is going to be fully decommissioned. This is NOT the mission at this time.

ConnectWise is still our Ticketing System

ConnectWise brings a framework of critical components & checks and balances to operate a business. Total removal would require new tools (and/or expansion of other Third Party Tools) and more internal systems to maintain our current philosophy on the usage & integration with Third Party Tools.

Instead, we want to remove the redundancy & overhead we know exists right now. In this effort we will put ConnectWise on the same playing field as every other third party tool.

Known Next Steps.

Removing the ConnectWise dependency on
`The CCR Team Member`⁠
⁠

Converting from CW Opportunity to HubSpot Deal as the master deal record.
`Implementing HubSpot Deals`⁠
⁠

Make HubSpot Deals the Master for Deal processing

Keep ConnectWise Opportunities to maintain downstream processes

Originally, we talked about dropping the usage altogether; however, those who do not have access to HubSpot will be blind to the detail Drop usage of Opportunities in Connectwise

This has increased our need to develop a CCR Integration Data Layer to better understand and managed how Objects connect to each other (Clients, for example, exist in HubSpot, CCR, and ConnectWise)

Questions? Clarifications?

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