Complete I.T. Blog

How we work with our partners to ensure you receive the best possible service.

by | Oct 18, 2016 | Archived Articles

Autotask Community Live conference

Unlike a lot of the blogs you’ll read here at Complete I.T. this blog isn’t about a new technology that may directly enhance your business, or about how we do what we do, but what it is about, underpins both of those critical topics.  This blog is all about our recent visit to the Autotask Community Live conference in Miami that was held on the 26th and 27th September 2016.  Please stay with me – although you might be thinking it’s not something you’d be interested in as a client of Complete I.T. read on as all will become clear!

What is Autotask?

Autotask is the software that we use to store all of our client details and contracts, run our Helpdesks, log our hardware and software sales quotes and we use it to provide management stats and  information.  As you can imagine, how we use Autotask and the features it provides us directly impacts on the service we provide to you.  I’m sure you know from your own business, a system of any kind will never replace the culture and drive of a business – just because you have Sage it doesn’t mean your year-end finishes itself, however the degree to which you know, understand and use your systems has a bearing on how productive and efficient you and your business are.

3 Objectives

My colleague Jay Boot and I set off from Heathrow with 3 objectives:

1.       To meet with the Autotask management team and share our experiences of where we think their product could improve.

2.       To learn and influence the product roadmap for Autotask in 2017.

3.       To network with our peers in the IT, industry and share best practises for technology and service delivery.

We had one day of boot-camp style training in their new product features, two very busy days of conference sessions, all alongside a number of 1-1 meetings with members of the Autotask product management and senior management team members.  The result of all that is that we have come back with lots of exciting news and ideas that will add up to one deliverable – to evolve the service we provide to you, our clients.

Summary

If I could summarise 3 takeaways to share they would be:

1.       Data security is the new hot topic, ransomwear and cryptolocker style viruses are a risk to all our businesses and there is no silver bullet to stop them.  Jay and I met with a number of companies offering products that aim to protect your business from these attacks and will update you in later blogs as these conversations progress.

2.       The cloud is no longer a talking point, it’s now just the norm and the vast majority of new products and solutions on the market are cloud based.  That said, from the conversations we had with vendors and other attendees, it is apparent that not many of our industry peers have progressed their cloud journeys to the degree that we have at CIT, both in knowing how to best implement cloud solutions for their clients, or knowing which situations cloud solutions are, or more importantly aren’t, suitable for.

3.       We have a number of major enhancements to Autotask coming over the next 6-12 months that will enable our teams to work more efficiently and in turn provide a higher level of service to our clients.  Examples of this include a total overhaul of the helpdesk elements of the software, giving our teams more relevant information on the screen as soon as they log your support call.  Although this sounds like a small change, the reality of what Autotask are planning to deliver is far greater than we expected.  Changes such as troubleshooting check-lists that we can centrally create for specific issue types, will allow us to ensure best practise is followed when our teams resolve your IT issues, as well as providing an audit trail of what was done and when.  There’s lots more coming, however these examples I hope show that the changes being made will help our teams to ensure your IT is a business enabler, rather than distraction.

At Complete I.T. we place a lot of importance in managing our vendor partnerships, simply because they aren’t just our partners, they are also partners to all our clients through the services we provide.  I hope this blog has given you a little glimpse into how we ensure that the needs of our clients are represented with our partners. If you need more help then contact one of our offices to speak to one of our helpful staff!

By Dan Scott