How many cloud-based apps do you use in your company? Five? Ten? Fifty? You are probably using more apps than you realize.
The most important apps in your stack likely include:
- A tool for customer relationship management (CRM)
- A professional service automation tool (PSA)
- An accounting package
As an IT or managed service provider (MSP) company, you need to track potential customers (marketing), convert them into customers (sales), provide services to these customers (service delivery) and invoice them (accounting).
For this process to work efficiently, every app needs accurate data, and that data needs to be consistent across your tech stack. That’s easier said than done.
Many IT companies spend an inordinate amount of time manually moving data from one app to another – often introducing typos and errors that come with manual entry. This leads to inefficiency at best and costly mistakes at worst.
So how can you successfully link your cloud-based applications to make them work optimally? Read on to find out.
Why you should sync data between apps
If you want to avoid manually uploading data, you need to make sure that these apps are communicating with each other. This means that data is synchronized between them.
This is sometimes done via a manual process or exporting data from one app and importing it into another. However, it is best to look for automated processes: systems where changes in one app are automatically synced to another.
Think about the relationship between your Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tool and your PSA tool.
If you had to manually add every new workstation and printer to your PSA configuration, you could spend a long time keeping the data up to date between your RMM and PSA.
But that’s where many IT companies spend their time.
The most advanced MSP companies don’t silo their app data. They understand the value of auto sharing between apps.
Synchronized data makes you more efficient
Synchronizing data between apps makes your employees more efficient because everything is always up to date.
When your MSP company has linked its RMM and PSA tools and a client adds a new workstation, your RMM tool will recognize it and automatically add this configuration to your PSA tool.
The PSA tool then makes this data available to Service Delivery and avoids the embarrassing scenario of a customer calling your help desk only to find out: “Oh, we didn’t know about this PC …”
Once your PSA tool knows about a workstation, it can instruct your accounting package to settle the work.
It’s incredibly important. IT companies can use a enormously The amount of revenue lost when MSPs simply don’t bill for the workstations they support for their customers. This is one of the main reasons IT companies need to sync data between their cloud apps in order to increase their billable revenue.
Keep all departments in sync
By setting up automatic synchronization between different apps, every department in your company is informed of the latest data.
For example, you can use a CRM to track opportunities and leads, and use iPaaS to automatically sync your CRM with Google Contacts in two ways – so that any contacts you enter into Google Contacts are also synced with your CRM.
Once a prospect has been converted into a customer, there is no need to re-enter data – this information is automatically updated in both apps.
When you’re ready to invoice this new customer, your accounting package will automatically have all the information you need thanks to data synchronization.
No missed reckoning. No incorrectly entered data. Just a series of applications that work together. It’s so simple and yet so effective.
Build a stronger tech stack
Take five minutes to do a quick audit of your IT business. List the cloud-based apps you use to manage your business on a daily basis.
How many of these apps sync their valuable data with the other apps you use? If you don’t sync data and instead rely on manual methods, expect to lose time and miss out on sales opportunities.
Instead, it is important to realize that this data is the lifeblood of your business and needs to be freed from the silo in which it is currently trapped. Sync your data and watch your company’s efficiency grow along with your profits.
