August eTech Uses Syncro to Spur Growth

Balancing white-glove service with technical efficiency

“From the beginning, I’ve wanted every client to feel like they’re the only client of ours,” said Janice Mahlmann, CEO of August eTech (AeT). “At the same time, there’s a balancing act because we don’t want to seem too small for the client. When they have 100 to 150 end users with lots of assets, we don’t want them to look at us and wonder, ‘Can this MSP handle us?’” 

As an MSP that prides itself on providing its clients the capabilities of a large MSP with a boutique experience, August eTech works to strike a balance between personalized customer service and automated technical efficiency. Syncro, an integrated IT platform for MSPs, serves as the technical engine that helps AeT to walk that tightrope with poise. 

Over the past year, AeT has used Syncro’s tightly coupled remote monitoring and management (RMM) and professional services automation (PSA) to optimize its operations and more proactively maintain client IT environments.

Syncro makes it easier for AeT to retain full visibility and control over a flourishing roster of client environments without sacrificing customer experience or its operating margins. Here’s how.

AeT uses Syncro to automate routine work and deliver optimal service level agreements (SLAs). The workload management and efficiency data Syncro provides ensures that AeT can consistently do this work profitably across its entire customer base. More importantly, Syncro’s reporting empowers client-facing staff to clearly explain and demonstrate the value of AeT’s services to its customers. 

This technology and data gives AeT the confidence and insights needed to scale up its client roster to over 300 customers with minimal added technical resources. AeT continues to grow its business while increasing its customer satisfaction to 100% by leveraging Syncro to proactively identify and address potential technical issues before they become full-blown problems. 

“Syncro has helped us move forward, automate, and increase our proactive services, preventing problems from happening in the first place,” Mahlmann says. “This has been a game changer for us, as anyone in this business knows that prevention [of problems] is the key to a profitable operation.”

Supporting a sustainable business model

An established business with a legacy of two decades in the MSP world, AeT operates with a business model that depends on work primarily done on a fixed retainer basis or through pre-defined consulting projects with a set block of hours. The business services core long-term MSP customers and then a rotating set of project-based customers, which are often extended into longer-term relationships as AeT proves its value to those accounts through proactive and preventative (versus break-fix) work.

The core MSP customers are what drives AeT profitability, and the contracts are set up so that clients pay for all-encompassing services based on the number of assets serviced. These are decently sized midmarket customers with up to 300 end users in place.

“Our core customers are almost all contract, so they just pay a monthly fee based on the number of devices,” says Michael Paranich, director of operations. “That way, they know what to expect. There are no surprises.”

This means the more proactive AeT can be in addressing issues before they escalate — and the more efficiently AeT can service tickets — the more profitable these relationships will be. 

Leveraging Syncro to unlock growth through proactivity 

Paranich and his team use Syncro every day to relentlessly drive efficiency. For starters, Paranich says remote work is the name of the game for AeT. While his team does do onsite work when necessary, technicians do as much as possible remotely. Syncro facilitates this operational mandate.

Even more crucially, the platform helps Paranich’s team manage ticket workflows, scheduling, and work prioritization.

Reporting and logging within tickets helps everyone stay on the same page as they hand off work to different team members to resolve issues. As the team works through each step required to process a ticket, all relevant details and screenshots are logged for operational continuity and compliance purposes. 

“I like the option to add myself as a subscriber on tickets,” Paranich says. “It’s very convenient when I’m trying to keep track of something. When a ticket gets updated, I get notified. It’s a nice touch.”

Additionally, Syncro’s automation capabilities help AeT proactively address routine services, preventative maintenance, and updates so that they don’t have to pull technicians off of work that needs hands-on attention.

Paranich says his team services about 20 human-generated tickets per day, five days a week. Syncro’s automation capabilities help them do orders of magnitude more work per month, though, as they process thousands more automated tickets each month.

“We’re churning out almost 7,000 tickets a month of alerts, notifications, customer tickets, recurring tickets, and so on,” Paranich says. “Syncro helps us clear out this queue quickly with a combination of smart ticketing intelligence, automated remediation, and powerful scripting so that they can solve problems in one or two clicks instead of a lot of manual troubleshooting.”

Through Syncro, automated tickets are reviewed by the Network Operations Center (NOC) analyst and interns, who work to close them out either as a benign alert or something that was automatically addressed, or to escalate with a ticket. 

They also leverage the platform to help trigger discussions about proactive maintenance with customers. Analysts will go through Syncro alerting and look for blue screen problems, crashes, full hard drives, etc. to dig for root causes that could be creating issues – and which will surely cause issues in the future.

For example, if this work identifies that a customer’s RAM usage is over 90%, that gives the team an opportunity to explain to the customer why they might have experienced slowdowns and then offer a solution to upgrade memory or suggest a computer replacement. 

“This is where we provide value through proactivity – Syncro’s alerting, and triggers coupled with scripting and reporting enable us to operate proactively to prevent problems rather than spending hours on solving them,” Paranich says.

Maximizing internal efficiency

Additionally, Syncro’s reporting capabilities aid Paranich and Mahlmann in meticulously tracking the resources needed to deliver these proactive services. Syncro shows them exactly how much time is spent on each account and what those hours are used to accomplish, along with detailed asset inventory lists.

“Syncro is how I track all of my technicians’ time,” Paranich says, explaining that Syncro is crucial for workload management and reporting. 

“We can see what techs are doing. We can see the number of tickets processed. Syncro helps us figure out where a technician’s time is going and how to maximize our value and our resources. If we can see those jumps in hours with customers, that’s when we want to start looking for the patterns and connecting the dots of where the problems are and how to fix them.” 

At that point, management can dig into the issues and determine whether there is an efficiency play necessary to get to resolutions quicker.

“I need to know why clients are calling,” Mahlmann says. “And I need to  find out what it is we need to nip in the bud and what we can do to be proactive.”

In some cases, it could just be an issue of proactively educating the client. Paranich gave one example of supporting a  SharePoint migration and the customer started racking up a lot of help desk calls and hours. By identifying that through reporting, the team created a one-page technical ‘cheat sheet’ for the customer.

“Since then, we haven’t had a single phone call from them asking for help on the issue.”

The detailed visibility drives efficiency and ultimately supports the profitable servicing of strong SLAs. Crucially, Syncro also helps AeT maintain that white-gloved service. Syncro’s analytics enables Mahlmann to gain a high-level overview of each account so that she can provide succinct monthly and ad hoc reporting enabling her to communicate the business value AeT is delivering to its clients.

In the MSP business, explaining what you’ve done is just as important as doing the work itself. Not only does it prove value, but this kind of visibility makes it easier to offer up technical recommendations for upgrades or further add-on projects that could proactively head off future issues or drive value for the customer.

Ultimately, AeT’s shift to Syncro has helped the business innovate with tools purpose-built for a proactive MSP. Whether it’s Syncro’s Smart Search to cut down on wasted time sifting through ticket notes to client tags, appointment functionality to schedule client interactions, or worksheets that link client process lists to tickets, AeT reaps daily operational benefits from using Syncro’s technology. And Paranich says the future benefits are only going to accelerate.

“The new ticket page is fantastic,” he says. “We have our statuses assigned to colors, which makes the quick review by any manager easier. And the Threshold function places tickets front-and-center on the screen. It’s been an amazing tool to assist in our SLA times.”

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