ConnectWise Manage

Opmerkingen: With ConnectWise Manage behind us, we've spent the last 6+ years blazing a trail in our local market. Taking on client for year over year growth. And not enough thanks can be given to the tools that helped us get there. With a friendly (now giant) team behind it, ConnectWise Manage integrates with, and has truly become a standard in the industry. You've been with the rest, now get with the best.

Pluspunten: ConnectWise Manage has enough features to essentially run your entire business out of! When it comes to tracking issues, maintaining inventory and documented details across many partners/clients/sites - this is THEE tool. Abundant resources to learn the tool exist including certification learning courses. (You're going to want to take them).

Minpunten: Interface has been ignored for a long time - its universally uglier than ALL of its competitors. This has been massively improved over the last year and continues to get better as it is finally a focus for them after the many recent developmental hurdles they need to address from the various M&A from the last 4 years. Some more advanced features really require some 'higher' learning to understand and best implement. Thankfully they have many MANY resources for this.

Opmerkingen: I would highly recommend IT firms looking to improve their internal efficiency and client support look at CW for a PSA tool. The software is stable, support is great, and updates arrive quickly. Access to your data can be gained through any web browser, iphone / droid apps, or through the native .net application. Many vendors are writing to the CW API allowing for real-time data integration from products such as backup solutions, spam and virus filtering, firewall statistics and even sales opportunities. CW integrates with MANY RMM solutions providing even greater management capabilities. The biggest benefit is by far the great and active ConnectWise community. We are very involved with the ConnectWise users group on a quarterly basis and we attend the partner summit (ITNation) annually. If you are only looking for PSA software, ConnectWise can fulfill that need. If you're looking for a great community of business peers, ConnectWise will bring an even greater ROI.

Pluspunten: We've used ConnectWise since 2007, and over the years, the product has seen a multitude of feature improvements and enhancements. For an IT consulting firm looking to track client agreement invoicing, service level agreements, employee productivity, sales opportunities, marketing campaignment management, or inventory and purchasing, ConnectWise can do it with flying colors. From a client perspective, ConnectWise makes it easy for end users to submit service requests as well as get the status of said requests. An integrated web portal for clients allows the review of hardware and software assets, service request approvals, and invoice reviews. Additionally, for our larger clients, we've been able to extend service capabilities to in-house IT providers while hosting them through our installation. Due to the great support, active community, and rapid development, I can't imagine running my business without ConnectWise. While the software is great, the community is even better.

Minpunten: I ranked Ease of Implementation as 3 stars. Keep in mind that we implemented CW in 2007, so much of the onboarding may be different today. Given the capabilities of the software, some pain should be anticipated and expected as you learn how to utilize the software. Additionally, setting up the integration between ConnectWise and other 3rd party apps can take some time. With most applications, you setup 1 or 2 API accounts, grant access, and test the integration. Some integration takes more time. One example is the integration for QuickBooks. To really get the accounting side setup, expect to spend some time and money working with a qualified accountant (if you don't have one on staff) to ensure all data is passing through and classified correctly. Even with the cons of setup, the ConnectWise University is very well done. Video tutorials are available on almost any aspect of management, and step-by-step checklists are available for just about any multi-step process.

Opmerkingen: I did 3 years of research before deciding on a PSA. I had a very small company at the time (1 person, me) My colleagues thought I was crazy for buying such a robust system for being such a small company. I bought it because of the built in automation and the ability to create complex agreements. I still have it and I have seen it improve immensely over the years. It's has a .net client and a web interface. Supports widget based pods. Meaning you can add the things you want, remove the things you don't want, and customize the interface per user. QuoteWerks, ConnectWise, Kaseya, Quickbooks - and they ALL integrate. Connectwise will try to sell you, quosal, connectwise, labtech. Personally, and this is just my opinion, Labtech is too complicated. I hate the interface tech's have to use, with a passion. I did some subcontracting for a company that uses LabTech and I had a hard time trying to find the tools I'm looking for. Kasey's interface it so much more user friendly, it's web based. took me a week to become familiar with Kaseya interface, used LabTech for 3 months and was fumbling around trying to find my tools. I checked out LabTech recently, June 2016 and it still sucks. I could go on and on.. So I'll just end here. Just buy ConnectWise, you'll be glad you did.

Pluspunten: Mobile iPhone app is A W E S O M E !!!
Your clients can use the customer portal
Constant Updates
Feature request bidding system.
24 hour support
online training videos
Application blueprints, telling you which modules interact with other modules.
Handles complicated and compounded agreements. If you can sell it, ConnectWise can do it.
QuickBooks integration is seamless. if you create a product in ConnectWise it will automatically create the product in QuickBooks when it syncs.
Mark invoices as paid in QuickBooks and sync to ConnectWise.
They are the biggest, so they integrate with everybody.
Go to a big IT conference and ask how many people use ConnectWise. The majority can't be wrong.

Minpunten: It can be overwhelming for small companies
The north american cloud can be slow sometimes, they know about it, they are rewriting the program so it operates faster but it's a big project. so they release bits and pieces at a time (weekly)
If it isn't in ConnectWise it didn't happen, yeah it adds a bunch of work to your day. Junk in junk out.
Each user needs their own account.
don't buy the on-premise edition, you won't be able to keep up with the updates.
They update so frequently I have to update my QuoteWerks frequently,

Opmerkingen: CW walks the line between small businesses (5-10) and mid-size (100-500) very closely. It's difficult to accommodate both markets - keeping the product simple enough that a small shop can setup and administer it without hiring full time staff or consultants while still allowing the complexity and robustness required from the larger clients. So far they're doing this quite well. In addition, as a company they are operationally mature and their development processes and platform reflect this.

Pluspunten: The functionality is robust out of the box and setup is rather logical and self-explanatory (unlike, say, Salesforce). The company is great to deal with and truly cares about their client base and optimizing their product based on feedback. Pricing is reasonable - more than a basic CRM but less than competing platforms like SF or MS. Application has sufficient customization options and API has reached maturity. Database is very logically designed allowing you to build custom reports and manage by exception, create a data driven culture, etc.

Minpunten: There are certain limitations that appear to be a result of legacy code - eg, the security cannot be as granular as competing platforms and workflows aren't as complex in nature (even when overlapping with "tracks") as some of the competition's offerings.

Opmerkingen: I work for a managed service provider and this software is essential to what we do. I've used other much more expensive management platforms in the past, and they cost a lot more and had less features. Connectwise does a ton, and I would highly recommend it for any IT service provider.

Pluspunten: Connectwise has a lot of cool features that can help your team stay organized. It can keep all of your client data in one place, and contacts within those organizations are easy to search. We use workflow rules which is a great feature of the software that helps us keep on top of incoming tickets and service requests. We also use it for sales and marketing, procurement, time and expense tracking for our technicians, billing, project management and more. Web based or fat client give you options on how to use it. There is a mobile version as well.

Minpunten: The backend of the software can get a little confusing when you have to go into setup tables to make changes that you need. The mobile version isn't great from what I've seen. We've had updates that have caused issues and have remained unresolved by the software manufacturer for some time. Custom reports is a little confusing.