Standardisation Through Automation Improves MSP's Entire Customer Lifecycle
20th of September, 2020
MSP calls Liongard “an RMM for the bits that RMM can’t touch.”
ABOUT THE PARTNER
ESTABLISHED MSP LOOKING TO SCALE
Since 1992, Complete I.T. has been delivering IT solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises in the United Kingdom. At its core, the MSP strives to be an extension of its clients’ businesses, building long-term partnerships through seamless IT experiences that maximize each client’s return on investment. With seven offices throughout the UK and a recent streak of acquisitions, Complete I.T.’s ability to scale is something Dan Scott, Innovation and Systems Director for the MSP, has been keeping a close eye on.
“Liongard gives us the ability to capture client technical documentation in an automatic and consistent way. We know exactly where to look for information and that it will be up to date, as Liongard does all this automatically. The better information we have, the better service we can provide to our clients—it’s that simple.”
Dan Scott, Innovation and Systems Director, Complete I.T.
QUICK LOOK
→ SIZE: 200 Employees
→ LOCATION: 7 offices throughout the UK
→ FOUNDED: 1992
→ MANAGED CUSTOMERS: 700+
→ ENDPOINTS: 25,000
→ END USERS: 25,000
THE PROBLEM
→ Managing systems manually across several offices without a standardized process became time-consuming and inconsistent.
THE SOLUTION
→ Liongard’s automation brought the MSP standardization for faster resolution times.
THE OUTCOME
→ Automation provides the unified visibility needed to effectively serve its clients and continue its rapid growth.
BEFORE LIONGARD
FLOODED WITH TIME-CONSUMING MANUAL TASKS
After recent growth and acquisitions, Complete I.T.’s Dan Scott knew that the MSP could no longer rely on manually managing systems documentation across its 700+ clients. Attempting to do so frustrated the team, as the lack of standardization made locating the information needed to help a client more difficult and time consuming.
These issues signaled a need for a better way of operating—a more standardized approach. Scott began to wonder, instead of team members searching system by system, field by field, for information that might not even be correct, wouldn’t it be much easier if everyone just knew where to find what they needed, and could rely on it being accurate and up to date?
Scott recalled hearing about Liongard—an automation platform that promised to do just that—and suggested that the MSP take a look.
LIONGARD SOLUTION
AUTOMATION BRINGS CONSISTENCY, VISIBILITY AND EFFICIENCY
Complete I.T. soon found itself on the automation fast track, implementing Liongard inspectors for its clients to institute a standardized process that eliminates manual tasks and creates consistency by design.
As Liongard discovers, documents and continuously audits their systems, all through automation, the MSP has achieved the unified visibility necessary to work efficiently and scale its operations. And issues that used to require manually digging for answers, taking hours to resolve? With Liongard keeping data fresh and providing a historical timeline of changes and other events, answers are mere moments away.
“I describe Liongard as an RMM for the bits that RMM can’t touch,” Scott said. As Liongard automatically discovers, documents and audits 44 systems (and counting) across the cloud, apps and services, endpoints and network systems, Complete I.T. now has visibility across their IT stack that an RMM alone couldn’t deliver. Liongard inspectors provide newfound value to the MSP by monitoring systems—like Azure Active Directory, Microsoft 365 and Firewall Appliances—that are critical to service delivery but traditionally difficult to track and monitor.
“With Liongard, we get all the information coming over automatically from the inspectors, without having to audit every single thing a person entered—which isn’t possible or practical, especially at the scale we operate at.”
Dan Scott, Innovation and Systems Director, Complete I.T.
IMPACT
STANDARDIZATION CREATES OPPORTUNITIES TO SCALE
With Liongard’s automation, Complete I.T. enjoys a number of benefits as it continues to scale, including:
→ A more systematic onboarding process
→ More accurate and up-to-date client technical documentation, in a standardized format
→ Less frustration, more workplace happiness and increased job satisfaction reported
→ The ability to easily pinpoint on a timeline the events and critical changes that took place, eliminating the panic of not knowing what happened yesterday
→ A reduction in service delivery issues
→ The policy monitoring capabilities needed to manage services in the cloud
→ A better overall client lifecycle experience, marked by quicker service from Complete I.T. team members
Financial savings are also the natural byproduct of the time and resource savings brought about through Liongard—an unexpected but welcome bonus for Complete I.T.
“Every help desk ticket that’s logged … if the team can get straight to the information they need to help the client, that’s saving time and increasing client perception of our service,” Scott said.
As Complete I.T. continues to explore and utilize Liongard’s other features, like Actionable Alerts and the reporting capabilities, the MSP expects to find even more ways to work smarter and increase the value they deliver to clients.
“Liongard is an integral component of our service delivery strategy. It ensures that our teams have technical documentation that is kept up to date automatically and provides levels of details that we would never be able to achieve manually. The timeline feature allows us to see what’s changed on a system—invaluable for troubleshooting issues where something ‘worked yesterday, but doesn’t now’— where without Liongard, we would be completely in the dark. The integrations Liongard has to ConnectWise Manage and IT Glue allow our team to operate from fewer systems, access higher quality information quickly in a system they are already familiar with and be more efficient—that’s a win-win for us as an MSP and our clients.”
James Harris, National Helpdesk Manager, Complete I.T.