Case Studies

Problem:

As this MSP grew they needed to more from using Zendesk to a more capable PSA for all their internal systems. They chose HaloPSA. However they needed to work out how to configure it to suit their needs and business.

Solution:

This MSP was growing quickly and there were two big problems that needed solving.

1. The need to more clearly define the business as it hired more staff and grew; and

2. The building out the systems that didn’t exist previously with a simple ticketing system.

With HaloPSA’s greater functionality, came the temptation to ‘do everything all at once’, to turn everything ‘on’. We resisted that urge and developed a phased project plan to slowly introduce new modules with HaloPSA to both the staff and their clients.

After the generic branding, creating of departments, AAD and calendar integration etc, we started with turning on the Service Desk part of HaloPSA. This involved defining ticket types, building out its email templates, and creating meaningful workflows that helped the engineers do their job quicker and with greater ease. With this new system came the new feature of time entries and the establishing of ‘norms’ for all staff in how time was entered and managed. The great aspect of HaloPSA was the aspect of ‘teams’. Now work could be separated and streamed into different ‘buckets’ to filter out the ‘noise’ of one big bucket of tickets. This was a learning curve for this small MSP, as it was used to everyone watching every ticket. Part of this project was to manage expectations and train the staff that they don’t need to be across every ticket, just the ones that are either in their area or that they have been assigned to.

The second phase of this implementation was the developing of Co-managed clients. HaloPSA has the ability to give restricted access to clients to use as their own internal I.T. ticketing board. The great advantage of this is that tickets can be easily passed back and forwards as escalations from their internal I.T. to the MSP.

The third phase of the implementation involved the pulling together of the whole service deliver mechanism from Sales through service delivery to invoicing. The MSP had previously been using Datto Gluh as their quoting and purchasing platform. However this product does not integrate into Halo and so we started scoping out other Sales and quoting tools. We eventually chose ITQuoter which integrated well. This coincided with the need to develop a systematic Sales process and elevate the sales disciplines. The other aspect of the third phase was integrating Xero into Halo so that all the billign could now happen through HaloPSA. This was fairly easy to do technically, but required a level of change management to help redefine job roles and processes that were entrenched. Along with moving to HaloPSA as the invoicing engine, we also had to ensure that all teh customer agreements were carefulyl setup and would bill properly.

There were also a miriad of other little bits and pieces, but this was the crux of the solution.