Your PSA is not a service desk. Here’s why.

Using your PSA as a service desk is equivalent to using an iPhone as a paperweight. You get a job done but, it is obviously not the “best” use of an iPhone!

Your PSA is much more than a service desk, say MSP experts Mark Crall and Chris Timm in the latest webinar we exclusively conducted to throw light on PSA software and how to use it right.

A PSA is a business management platform that manages your entire business and not just the service delivery side of it. PSA can be best described as a “cradle-to-grave-software”; you’re able to manage clients effectively when they become a prospect, all the way through to when they are no longer a client. From generating the first opportunity, managing contracts, billing the customer, managing projects, and of course all of the service delivery, PSA does it all. 

There are a bunch of service delivery tools out there that allow you to create tickets for your clients. But it ends there. When it comes to, say, managing contracts, billing clients, tracking projects, and so on, you see yourself scouting for different tools. 

Is that why you need PSA, to manage the entire life cycle of the customer with a single, truly one-stop-shop software?

PSA is all that and more.

Lifecycle management 

PSA is loaded with the bits and pieces of contract management, project management, opportunity management, and even CRM. For example, when a customer comes in, you will need to create a quote for them. You just get a quoting tool… seems easy right? 

Soon, you will need an invoicing tool for sending invoices, a ticketing tool for tracking tickets, a project management tool for shipping projects, and so on and so forth. This is the point where efficiency goes down. You are leaving your business-critical processes at the disposal of a dysfunctional ecosystem. Managing complex data sets across different systems isn’t something tools stitched together can do; you need a single tool that allows you to streamline your process and achieve your business outcomes more flexibly and quickly. 

Contextual experience

Things like knowing the contract is about to expire or there’s a particular feature that’s hard to use will help you deliver a focused and contextual experience to your clients. With a single glass pane view, a PSA tool allows your technicians to have this information at their fingertips.

Fact-based decisions can be made much easier, even when your enterprise data sits atop a complex suite of networks, servers, and endpoints. 

Improving profitability

With a PSA tool, you’re able to accurately document what services you’ve offered and run reports that drill right down to how much time you spent on each service. But how important is it?

Mark Crall says, “When I started an MSP 20 years ago I didn't add a PSA until about a year after. I had a customer call me and fire me saying ‘I told you I had a printer that needs fixing, you never got to it’. That’s when it struck me that I’d written everything down on a yellow pad - what the problem is, who called, and how many hours it would take to fix it. Needless to say, I never landed on that page again and ultimately lost the customer.”

Mistakes as small as this can cost you your customers. Imagine you do remember to fix whatever you need to fix but forget to document it and send out your bill. 

Chris Timm has had similar experiences where he’d note down the time he’s spent onsite on a notepad. On days when he forgot to take it with him, he’d return and make up whatever number that pops in his head - 3 hours, 5 hours whatever. It didn’t take him long to know he has not been billing the client the correct amount and that he has been charging him much lesser. It’s not surprising that: 

Profit margins in companies that use a PSA tool and those that don’t are 34% and 27.4% respectively.

With PSA, projects take less time to ship. Billable hours are accurately tracked. Nothing flies under the radar with a PSA tool in place.

PSA is not (just) a service desk

“80% of MSPs use only 20% of their PSA.”
- Mark Crall

The non-service desk part of PSA, often overlooked and dismissed, can be a game-changer for you if you implement it right. People buy it for the wrong reasons and end up using it for the wrong reasons, too. A PSA has what it takes to grow the efficiency and scalability of your process built into it right from the start. Try SuperOps.ai, we're not built on legacy platforms. Our feature-rich, flexible PSA tool is your key to working less and achieving more. 

The webinar covers more use cases and more ways to put your PSA to use efficiently. Uncover the complete version.