By Lisa Guerriero
ConnectWise offers business tools for the technology community, by the technology community.
The company leverages the cloud to provide automated tools for sales, marketing, billing and invoicing, customer service and help desks, business analytics, and more. Based in FL, it serves over 90,000 users.
The private company has over 450 employees. Ranked at No. 344 in last year’s Software 500, ConnectWise generated over $46 million in revenue in fiscal 2014, a majority of sales are software based.
It began targeting IT firms when it was established more than 20 years ago. Its core market is small- and medium-sized businesses.
Business Management
ConnectWise offers a comprehensive business management platform. It strives to transcend professional service automation by providing tools that target the tech industry’s needs and integrate with firms’ other software tools.
The platform offers a centralized system for handling operational tasks to increase productivity and efficiency. Customers receive training and gain access to user groups for global collaboration and relationship building.
An updated product, version 2015.3, launched in late March and according to the company, more than 4,000 companies installed it within the span of about a month.
“ConnectWise 2015.3 is a complete solution that can essentially run an entire business. From ticketing and dispatching, to project management, marketing and invoicing—ConnectWise does it all,” explains Mark Sokol, director of marketing, ConnectWise.
The company worked on the upgrade for about six weeks prior to release. Changes are based on feedback from its partner network, product labs, and other forums. It focused on efficiency and ease of use with this release.
“Our goal is to make ConnectWise ‘brain friendly.’ This means that we are working to make ConnectWise work the way our partners’ minds work,” says Sokol.
Reducing clicks is one of the ease-of-use issues the company tackled. With the Projects module, users felt it took too many clicks to get the information they needed to update a project. Version 2015.3 streamlines the process. The module now completes updates and mass actions directly from the project work plan, such as adding a team to a project. The Projects feature is now accessible from the browser version of the ConnectWise user interface (UI).
Browser accessibility was also added for the “My Calendar” and “Dispatch Portal” features. New context menus, contact information fly-outs, and color schemes are also available.
Additionally, survey options are expanded. Users can make questions required, enable free-form text response, and include up to ten choices for a response.
Mobile barcode scanning is another area of improvement. Users can search and update configurations based on scanned serial numbers, instead of manually typing out lengthy numbers—making it easier, faster, and leaving less room for error.
The company began developing additional updates soon after releasing 2015.3. At press time, it planned to release version 2015.4 in the third quarter. “With each release we strive to improve the functionality, UI, and overall user experience,” notes Sokol.
The Email Connector converts emails into service tickets. ConnectWise is working to enhance this tool in version 2015.4, allowing users to update information like status, priority, and time.
ConnectWise expects the new UI to enable adding custom fields to the companies screen and to facilitate filtering data in list views.
Tailored For Tech
Tech firms have unique needs. ConnectWise designs its business management platform specifically for them, automating key operations and processes like help desk service, sales, and project management. The latest version adds new functions and enhances existing ones, to ensure a better user experience. SW
