I am in the process of building a new MSP from the ground up and am currently exploring tooling. One area I am still exploring is around building processes and workflows. I know Tom is a big process guy and I am would like to know what you recommend to record, track and use processes. Cost is a big factor as this company will be very small initially. I am hoping to choose tools that don’t put unnecessary financial strain on the fledgling business, but cognizant of not being shortsighted on a tool that can not grow with us. I have looked at IT Glue and Liongard. I am very familiar with Confluence, but this is a bit more free form. Confluence may be the right tool, but I have a lot more setup to do here.
What do you guys recommend? Anything tips in choosing a process and workflow tool? Some of the RMM/PSA tools I have been looking at do have this integrated to some level, but not as in-depth as some of the other tools I have looked at. FWIW, I am currently evalutating four different PSA/RMMs, NinjaOne, Atera, Kaseya and N-able. I am currently leaning to NinjaOne, but I am in a testing phase. The business is formed, but I do not expect to start trading until June/July timeframe. Any recommendations are appreciated. Thank you.
Don’t over buy tools until you have business flow. I would just start with NinjaOne, Bitwarden for passwords, Huntress, SentinelOne We are sill using InvoiceNinja for billing because it’s simple and it works. You can make your process workflows using https://www.diagrams.net/ ( we still use this)
As for processing leads here is how we are doing it:
Website Form Leads come in and go to HubSpot → Custom KanBan board
Other leads come in and go to → Custom KanBan board
Leads are assessed, as needed meetings are scheduled via the Google Calendar automated appointment schedule (similar to using Calendy )
Quotes are sent our via InvoiceNinja
If it’s an MSP deal that closes InvoiceNinja does the recurring billing
We also maintain a Google Sheet with all the client MSP details such as plan and number of workstations. We don’t use a PSA, we just use NInajOne and their scripts to maintain software consistency and status of all client systems.
Thanks for the advice. If you don’t mind, I have a couple more questions on process. How granular do you get on your processes? Do you have Playbooks that call out the major steps or do you have Runbooks that call out every step in a process in detail or somewhere in between? Do you have 100s or 1000s of processes? Thank you again.
We don’t get that detailed, it all depends on who you are hiring. If you want to hire someone with really basic knowledge they will need the details, more experienced people don’t. I mostly have experienced people. As for count, probably a handful for the sales/biz side and more for how to complete tech tasks.
Evaluate some of the open source tools that are well supported with a business model. Tom has good suggestions especially Huntress ( a company with roots in Baltimore ). I do most things in SuiteCRM and have found it suitable for my business. I use it for prospecting, billing, scheduling, tracking progress of projects.
Always keep things as simple as possible and don’t try to do all things in house.