all right hello everyone we've got people piling in here all of our attendees I see that number just skyrocketing and bouncing up here I know we had I think the last time I checked it was almost 200 but that was yesterday so we've got a lot of people very interested in this topic today and rightly so because a lot of it is at the the core and the foundation of your business what are you actually going to be offering you know to your potential prospects um to your clients to make money you know at this business and so I'm very excited to talk about this today my name is Allison felber I am uh the VP of big red media uh here at TMT I'm also the editor and chief of MSP success um MSP success you're on this webinar that we're hosting and so our mission you know is to provide the MSP Community uh with um Trends with news what with what's coming in our industry that is hyp specific for msps we're not out there for you know the it directors you know who are in these large corporations it's about us our community and our MSP tribe um and so we do a lot of things like education like this webinar how to build your Tech stack um we've got you know a a print publication that we put out you know a couple times a year so we're glad to have you here you know as a part of our community and we've got a very interesting webinar today I've been wanting to do this or some sort of variation of it for a long time now and just logistically it's been hard to get um you know everybody the people that I want people you see here you know on this webinar and we are very blessed to have uh these three gentlemen with us here today um each of them have you know a reputation in our industry for being very knowledgeable about this and they're going to kind of bring some different opinions some different takes some things to look at but you know what we are covering you know today is you know how to build your Tech stack how do you look at your Tech stack and this is for this is not only for you if you are just starting out and kind of thinking about what should my solution be it's for those who may have been in business for 10 15 20 25 plus years and how do you re-evaluate your stack how do you look at the new technologies that are out there and decide if it should go in your stack if it fits you know if it's something that you should add to it you're at a trade show and you see all the new technology and the shiny new pennies is it something that you do spend time on so no matter where you're at you know in your journey of running your MSP um you're going to get some really really good nuggets out of this so who do I have on here today I'll have each them kind of give like a brief introduction so you can kind of understand you know who they are and where they're at in their business um so you can kind of figure out you know who who do you kind of align with best so I've got um first of all I'll go with with Will Mr blue suit will Nobles CEO of vector Choice um also a client coach at TMT um will can you just give a little kind of brief overview you know how long you've been in business um the sides of your business um if there's any verticals you specialize in things that may affect your decision making when you're evaluating new technologies sure yeah my uh my company is Vector Choice uh Technologies uh we' started in 2008 um and we uh we started out just me as a small company and we've grown it and now we're right right around 18 million um going to closing out this year and um you know our verticals uh you know we we our four top ones is CPA manufacturing legal and finance uh is our top articles okay yeah so in a very short amount of time you know you said 2008 is that when you said you got started yeah 2008 yep yeah so you know very very small just getting started starting from scratch all the way through to where you are now so experience at at you know a lot of different levels of of adding things to your solution deck right absolutely uh that's where all the gray hair comes from um between employees and clients and and picking the right Tech stack um and and going with that so yeah we I mean we we've definitely looked at different TCH techs over the years we've uh changed uh We've modified you know when I when I came into the business um you know I came from Consulting for Enterprise level clients and where you had to have the best inclass products uh um and hence Cloud strike right um you know you had to have that that quadrant of uh you know type things and and it doesn't mean it's the best it just means that it's marketed the best right and then you get Buy in big corporate but I think as msps as a owner of a company you have to be more C cost conscious and and When developing your Tech stack and looking at you know do you really need the best if you have layers of security do you have to have the best of everything and quite frankly medium and small businesses cannot afford the best of everything so why not look at things that you can consolidate um down and one one tool set that you can use uh and really then it comes down to your goal as a manag services provider is to cut down on the how many how much labor you need right so if I can cut down on the clicks between products and everything uh so we actually try to find things that are bundled together um that integrate very well U when we're choosing our text tax and stuff okay right and speaking of all the gray hair you've gotten from that let's go to Tommy thanks you mean to no here I've had a harder start than will so Tommy thoron CEO of automates over in California uh give our our attendees just kind of a high level you know size of business how long you've been in business if there's any verticals things like that yeah perfect uh guys um Tommy thoron automates we operate out of San Diego California we kind of got started when we considered a start in 2019 we're around 200k in Revenue uh and we're chasing 3 million now uh we've had uh tremendous success in the industry uh and our main primary verticals CPAs law firms and that Niche okay great so fast growth just a couple years you know 200,000 to three million so again just like well you've kind of been at you know a lot of different stages that I'm sure attendees on this are um and it may look a little different at each stage on on how you evaluate tech oh absolutely for us you know we started off with uh you know just trying to get the rmm in place so we can you know do MSP services and from there we've we've obviously learned a great deal in a short amount of time and we're trying our best and just like will said we're actually we found better success in bundling our services uh that's a better way to go and like will said is crowd strike is not you know not necessarily the best uh but it's definitely the most expensive and that's you know the shiny objects is what we are attracted to but now you know like will said again it's it's about saving money uh reducing ticket count and seeing what we can manage from a single pain uh paint of glass and that's more beneficial to our service delivery team happy Tex happy company yeah okay great last but certainly not least we've got Mike dama VP of Business Development at CA and we brought him on to bring a different perspective you know we've got two msps here um different sizes you know different verticals as well but you know there's a whole another lens to look at this at too uh which is why we've got Mike on here and also because you deal all day every day with the MSP community and so you're kind of bringing the collective voice and the collective experience from you know the entire industry right yeah thanks uh yeah so I've been well I started out with datto um and it been a total of about 10 years so since sticking with the uh gray hair theme there might be a reason why I have gray hairs it might have started after the uh after the exibition but everything is settled down everything is good so for me you know I've been extremely blessed with some of the mentors I've been able to work with I started out on the sales team and then uh moved over to the business development team under Rob Ray and got to work with Eric Torres who's with scal pad now and Christine gasman and after the acquisition now I my direct boss is Dan tomacheski which I know a lot of folks in the industry know uh and Gary P so I've been able to to learn so much from those mentors but but basically my job for the last 10 years is to be out on the road uh at these events so hopefully I've met a lot of the folks that are on the webinar today and so you know you get to learn a lot from those conversations uh that you have at the bar at dinner more so than at the booth really and uh you know we about three months ago I wound up uh taking over the true methods group so that's Gary Pica's true methods uh true peer uh peer group and it's been great for me I mean a lot of times you're just kind of a fly on the wall listening to Partners and seeing uh how what they're all in seat price where they came up with that all of that types of stuff so these are the fun conversations to have uh and and seeing some of the folks that I on boarded as a sales rep 10 years ago that were in the scenario where they it was just them working out of their kitchen to see them now at 1520 25 employees with their face on a banner when you go to an event it it is or speaking at uh one of your events it's it's really cool to see so uh these are the type of webinars I raise my hand for every time yeah perfect well thank you for representing the collective so first question um and we're GNA get into some questions here if you have questions throughout this please please uh ask them um we've got the Q&A that you can put them into we welcome all sorts of questions we purposefully saved a good amount of time at the end here because we always get a lot of questions when we do this topic to where you can ask you know any one of these guys something specific so um you may have a question coming into this that you wanted to get answered when you registered throw it up there now um if I don't answer right away it's because I'm saving your question till the end um but you know maybe start out putting in there if you've got one question that you went in here trying to get answered you were hoping to get an answer to or advice or feedback put it into that Q&A box um and we'll be sure to spend some time on at the end because I want you to leave here with some answers and some items um so first I Tommy and will um can you tell me you know tell me about your stack um right now and kind of how you put it together um and I guess well we'll start with you just because you know you haven't talked in a while let's give you some air time again ex exactly exact um so you know really when it comes down to it your PSA is your primary tool PSA rmm is your two primary tools as the MSP that you need um and and and those two tools you want to integrate um so when when we're well I think there's three factors in when we're making decisions that Vector Choice One does the tools integrate well together cost is always a factor for anything that you do in business and then three is it the buyin from your team um you know because you don't want to have a tool that your team does not enjoy using on a day-to-day basis because you can kill morale you kill morale you kill ticket times you and C service and it just flows down right um so we're looking at that and then when we're bringing on different tools and we're always looking for tools right um anything that we won can improve the experience for the customer as well as um upsell to the customers as well and as we're building packages and adding packages for each year we're looking for new tools so um that again more they can integrate together and then we when we evaluate a tool we're looking at the tool um okay is it something that we don't we have a hole in our stack that we can fill with that new tool and then we evaluate that tool we stress test the tools so I don't pick a tool um and and not not not picking on to say here but I don't pick a tool because of the name right I pick a tool because of what it costs me I have buying from the C uh from uh from my text and then as well as can it integrate intram line my processes so I can be more profitable yeah okay so integration cost do your text like it you know do you have their Buy in does it fill a hole in your Tech stack or is it something that you can add on to right kind of the four most important things you're looking at yep what about you Tommy for us it was similar but you know since you know Will's looking back to 2008 and I'm looking back just a few years it was about just accomplishing the mission to begin with we didn't start off with uh CA products or anything like that we didn't move into a high quality PSA with autotask or dat rmm until recently but for us it was about uh accomplishing the mission we looked at what the customer needed and then like will said we looked at our service delivery team trying to keep our uh Tech happy and and now it's about filling those vulnerability gaps what's missing from our services uh and filling those gaps as quickly as we can uh as we increase Revenue increase profitability to be able to afford additional tools and certainly better tools um again it's not always the most expensive uh tools but we look at uh integration uh we look at how well uh the tech team adapts to it one important thing is we also look at we look at tools what purchasing possibly one tool and how many tools it can replace uh a big example of that is dat uh looking at all the tools and call savings moving the DAT r M especially with I think we're going to get into probably CA 365 looking at how many tools that CA 365 has replaced and saved us while filling in those gaps so altogether we also evaluate our tool set constantly I try to limit to myself to demoing one vendor a quarter however we're trying to add to our tool set at least uh one additional tool of service a quarter as well to keep uh to keep different lines of business going okay so so if I'm kind kind of repeat back just so I can so when you first started out it wasn't necessarily let's try and do everything it was no we've got a mission let's get our like core set of tools once you got that then you can start looking at okay what else can we do what else can we add on am I am I hearing that right yeah it's really important especially when you're first starting off you don't want to get uh you don't want to get uh over spent on tools you don't want to have too many tools uh you want to kind of build into it and ramp into it as quickly as you can um maybe you're not going to offer the Top ofth Line cyber security services until you really get a footing uh in the industry maybe you know maybe you shouldn't be doing that until you get a real strong footing so we we quickly as we could ramped into a full security stack and that's where we're at now we're still adding pieces we're not perfect we're still adding pieces yeah I think I mean how our industry is you're probably always going to be adding pieces you know the opportunities are endless as this industry continues to grow and whether there's new Solutions new threats I mean I don't think your Tech stack is ever really set would you guys agree yeah I I agree I mean you know when when I started 16 years ago you know PSA rmm AV and backup right that's your four things you must have that you have and then it's sort of a build upon that and and I you know I share because do a lot of coaching I share my tech stack with uh with um TMT members and and everything and and they get overwhelmed like hey don't don't over think it right uh you've got to start somewhere if you don't have a PSA yet then you've got a bigger problem don't worry about cyber security tools let's get a PSA in place and then build upon that but you can't start a as a $18 million company or even with Tommy three to four million in size you can't get where if you're a startup or a million-dollar company it takes years to get up now I will say with what cassa has been doing over the years and consolidating this down and and and and the k365 makes it a lot easier to jump faster um into the more cyber security things okay I want to I want to get in a just a couple minutes and like what what you do recommend kind of at each level um Mike you know what what do you kind of hear you know out in the community as you know how do you how should you really look at your stack and evaluate your stack yeah I think you know to Will's point when you comes to cyber security there's never that final page in the book like you're always going to be adding and and be evolving and that's you know the exciting part um I will say if you're looking at it and it's difficult as an MSP to vet all these vendors and put together your stack take a step back and think about what kind of opportunity that leaves the channel because think about trying to do that in house if you're a small business right like it's next to impossible so that's why the opportunity for the channel has grown so much but you know one of the common themes I've seen over the 10 years I've been here is when folks start to grow is when they they take that Tech cut off to some extent and become a business owner and start vetting it not based on the the bells and whistles and the shiny objects because those are the folks that wind up NE not necessarily growing because they're not understanding how they turn these products into a profitable business model and that's a common theme so and it usually clicks and if you talk to those folks that broke through the seven figures and then started rapidly getting to three million five million it was that moment it was that aha moment that you're saying hey look I'm going to take a step back to Will's to both will and Tommy's Point getting a a product in there that your techs want to use and you can trust that they are going to be the ones using it that means hey maybe you could take a vacation instead of being the guy all the time right those are the type of things that we see um and as vendors those are the problems we're always trying to solve and and I agree I agree with Mike there Allison is I was stuck I I've got two degrees in engineering I came from Enterprise Consulting for Enterprise it was it had to be the best like I I was a Cisco guy and it had to be the Cisco ASA or back there pck and then ASA and it had to be command line but then when morocc since Kamari came out it was a gooey and I was like hell no we're not going to a gooey firewall that's not going to be secure right and but by letting that go I didn't have to be the person to always do the configuration so and I think more that you can get Consolidated tools and get out of your own way I always talk about getting out of your own damn way and having engineer hat on will get you but so far a as a business owner but then you definitely agree with Mike you got to put the business hat on the other thing is too is you can have a tool something like uh you know um a high-end Cisco router but you have to have somebody that's managing that and then having the tools that you can do from a single painted glass that kind of makes it easier now which is benefiting the customer more something that you really can't have a tech on 100% of the time looking or is it going to be something from a single pane of glass that's fully integrated uh that's easy for the Tex to manage I think it's serving our customers better having uh you know a bundle product something that can be read from a single painted glass something a level one can come in and pick right up on you know it gives us the freedom like to Mike's and Allison's Point too to kind of step back and now we can look at tools From a Different Light completely yeah absolutely a completely different lens and frame of mind to be okay I'm not looking at this as a tech I'm looking at this as a business owner and how do I use this to grow my business to serve my clients better and not just which which one has the coolest set of features so so I want to get into you know think back to when you first and we've kind of talked a little bit about this but like when you are kind of just getting started out um it's not the point where you're looking at the most advanced you know cyber Security Solutions like what should a tech stack look like at the beginning I I'll shoot first um yeah for me it was you know just a few years ago it was uh to Will's point we needed a PSA we needed something that we can do on uh but uh I actually went a little bit backwards than that uh we were manually doing our PSA and tickets you know is keeping up with it and tracking it as best we could we went to rmm Route hi and sight 2020 I wish we would have went the other way but it was really rmm uh PSA obviously with some kind of backup and Antivirus and we built we built uh dramatically from there we entered into you know um Advanced for cyber security stack and that's what we developed first but all in all you know through that process too we actually upgraded our PSA upgraded our rmm we got a little bit better there we started realizing that with a better rmm a better PSA H it enters in all these new lines of businesses that we never even realized having uh a weaker product or a lesser tool if you will so that's how we built our stack in the beginning for us it was uh you know what it looked like on day one it was horrible it was horrible looking back but it we made it work uh until we can get better tools and and you know and it wasn't until I got off the keyboard I had to get off the keyboard before it started really clicking will anything you want to add to that kind of at the very beginning what it looks like and kind of the next growth after that yeah I mean I I always say it's really nine tools that you you sort of to be a real MSP is nine tools you got your PSA your rmm some type of endpoint protection backup a documentation tool a quoting tool so you can actually win deals a billing tool so you can actually collect the money on you know the the deals you win a payment tool to be able to accept payments uh and I I wholly believe don't take checks uh I only do credit card and a only in my company at 18 million um and then some kind of CRM that you can actually Market um so that to me that those are denying critical tools that you have and then build upon that with all the other things that are out there okay so I'm I'm sure people are be like was writing that down too fast okay let's let's go over that again kind of kind of okay I'll post I'll post in the chat so PSA rmm endpoint protection backup documentation tool quoting tool billing tool payment tool and a CRM for marketing okay I got all those check Tommy there's your MSP in a box right there okay so um I want to talk next about you know vetting new tools and Tommy you alluded a little bit to you know we upgraded you know our tool um I don't know if you meant upgraded the features or upgraded in terms of you went with a different one um let's talk I want to break this up let's talk first about how do you vet your existing tools is this rmm still working for me is this CRM still working for me like how do let's look at our existing and then after we talk about that we'll talk about looking at you know shiny new pennies and do we want to take that on and add it to our stack um I don't know who's who has initially some first thoughts about that you know how do you look at your existing tools and knowing when it's time to to upgrade or move there's there's three things that we look at number one if I'm looking or chasing a new line of business if I see something that can uh add Revenue to the business then I'm demo demoing out the products I'm actually actively looking for a tool to serve that purpose and I may lean on my service delivery team help me out if it's something that the Texs are looking at then the tex I'll have my text actually demo the product and then find something that they're happy with and then I'll give the yay or nay and then the other one is if we can hear it in the industry or if our customers are asking that is obviously we're going to chase that tool if it's something that's missing or if a customer is asking for it if we see that it's profitable that's where we're going to go with it so you know I run everything now through profit fuel if I have a question question that's my first place to go now the text may go a little bit different they're scouring the internet maybe they found something that they like on Reddit or something and checking out whatever uh but my first place to turn right now is profit Fuel and then but I do limit myself to how many demos I do a year uh you know just just because it can be a time suck sometimes going through it unless you go through the proper way so I hope that helps and how did you know um bounce over the other guys in a minute but one little quick follow-up question how did you know that it was time to upgrade or switch or move out of one of your core or pieces of your stack well how do I know is when a service delivery team starts complaining or if they say hey I wish we had this feature hey this other tool you know you know when you're hiring a service delivery team and you're building this the engineers are coming you know are coming with you with experience maybe from another MSP or maybe from somewhere else in the IT industry and so they're putting these little you know planting these little seeds hey I used to have this hey we used to have something like this and it it just cues you in to start looking at different things um but as as far as me it's uh you know tends to be money yeah and um Mike you know you're dealing with you know working with msps you know all day every day kind of you know looking at you know their stack you know what's what are some of the the key pieces of advice that you give to an MSP when they are vetting new Solutions and and some things that they may not think to look for or consider yeah so actually when I'm talking to my team the folks that are out on the road and they're doing the presentations and work in the booth I tell them based on my experience usually msps are looking for four things when they want to talk to you so don't you don't have to go shiny objects the first one is does it solve a problem does it solve a need for that MSP then the second one is the most obvious one is is work right I mean all of this is fine and good and that goes back to making sure that the techs understand it uh the third one is are you going to be supported by that vendor and I don't you know tech support obviously everybody's got tech support but I also mean to wh point on the sales and marketing side uh developing that relationship like this is an industry where you need to feel like you have a relationship with with somebody there and then the fourth one and for the business owners the most important is can I make money off of this um that is typically what it comes down to and that comes from me having conversations when we used to have our Advisory Board and our team oversaw it having those conversations um it was interesting thing you know we've done studies about how people vet vendors uh and how they find vendors it typically is at an event it was a well over 50% of people said they chose that vendor because they met them at an event so I try to reiterate that get to these events talk to people because it's not just the vendors it's talking to the other msps I think you get more value out of that and I'm saying that as a vendor you're GNA learn more from sitting down and having a coffee with will or Tommy uh than you are from the vendor specifically but those are the four main things that commonly come up and that's what I tell my team is to to focus on those things because that's what really resonates with the MSP space yeah and you bring up a good point too about that you know are you supported um you know I used to work at an MSP and so you're right it's not just you know will they respond if I'm having an issue like do they support my growth and like do they understand what I'm facing and are they there to help help you know provide different solutions and help me grow the business too um so will what about you know you what are how do you how do you vet new Solutions whether it's upgrading an existing solution that you have or adding on something new well I'll tell you I hate upgrading because it costs so much money and time um and and really the money comes in the time of my Engineers actually uh changing right so and we're way too big now just to Willy Dilly change unless it's a cost benefit or whatever to us and um I I used to say um I I and I I had Auto task when I first started um and then I went to uh connectwise and I was with connectwise for years and up until about last year I always used to say I don't care what tool it is I will not change my PSA or I'll sell the company before I change because it's so much headache right um and uh and so me and Mike bizar merged our companies together July last year he was using autotask I was using connectwise we actually evalue we had the engineers that use the product evaluate the tools and they chose autotask they chose uh we we were both in enable um we never thought we were going to leave an enable because both companies were with enable we bought two companies the month after that and one had uh connectwise automate and one had data rmm and we actually evaluated bringing four companies together and my text wanted data rmm so and then there there you go right um it wasn't about CA it wasn't about connectwise it was about cost benefit to my texts and and my and what my Engineers wanted me as the guy that I I I don't even think I have a log again to either what systems anymore um please don't get in here who cares right and and this is what I think the engineer and all of us care about the tool where we shouldn't care about the tool as long as the tool is doing what we need for the company and cost Effectiveness um and and I think there so many engineers minded people or techmed people getting let that get in their way um so but you know going to how we evaluate things is one we will do a demo hey is it s is it it fits a hole is it look like that text like it then we turn over and let the text uh uh stress test it for 30 60 days and try to break it uh if it's a security tool I give it to my security team and we try to break it um for example we with we were with can I say names on here um it doesn't matter okay so we were with we were with blacko which is a great tool um but we were having some issues and we uh we looked at Rocket cyber we stress test both of them together I mean these are my security guys and Rocket cyber CAU more things did better than blackpoint now again blackpoint is a good tool and but cost made a differ so we switched over to Rocket cyber about 18 months ago um so you know yes we will switch if a tool is fundamentally not performing the way it should and the vendor is not helping us overcome those issues right that you know don't switch tools it's too hard to switch tools unless there is a fundamental reason to do that okay I would agree with everything will said yeah yeah so how do you you know there's we we talked about a couple you know bigger platforms out there do you do you recommend going with um kind of peac mealing out your different solutions or would you recommend going with kind of some of these bundles that are out there you know I know you talked about kind of single pane of glass Tommy that was important to you so I might be able to guess your answer but give me give me a little bit of context when you're looking at those two different routes you can take with your Tech stack what are the pros and the cons and what did both of you end up doing um we always you know I got into it wanting to bundle as much as I could but the problem is until recently we haven't been able to uh it's been very little bundles out there as far as what I can see until obviously C 365 I think it's completely changed Market uh you know so we definitely hopped on k365 immediately but uh outside of that is I'm tired of Peace Milling I I simply don't have the time for it um I still will if there's a tool out there that I absolutely need uh that does a key feature for me uh I'll still go after and and I'll use it but I'm looking at integration always anything that I can do to reduce workflow uh to automate the processes to reduce ticket count uh that's what I'm after we keep a very low um average open ticket count here and that's one of the things that we strive for yeah if you if you'd asked me that same question seven years ago as a Enterprise minded person and as a true engineer I wanted it separate because I didn't want all my eggs in one basket um I was scared of that I was uh scared of what that vendor is that vendor stable you know what would they do to me if I don't pay my bill you know how does that affect my business right and and well we won't to get into paying bills so you should pay your bills but um and that's why you should charge enough so you can pay your bills uh that's a whole another session Alison we can te that's next week next week and and so um if you'd asked me a long time ago seven plus years ago I would have said separate because of the eggs in in one basket and and getting Best in Class putting more and more a business hat on I want streamline I want one throat the choke I want the Bell to integrate integrate integrate the more I integrate the less employees I have I love my employees um but I always joke if I didn't have employees and clients I would have a great business um but uh you know the less employees you have to deal with the less headaches um and then just the integration and then total you're more profitable at that point so to me bundles and integration wins today okay and you know Mike what are you what do you which side of the camp do you sit on I can kind of assume knowing but like I mean you hear you hear the objection what are some of the objections you hear and and how do you respond to those I think the number one objection is what will just said a lot of folks uh will say I don't want all my eggs in one basket um but on the same token when we run our state of the channel report year after year vendor sprawl is one of the biggest pain points so it's kind of a catch 22 like you're telling us in a survey that this is a a big pain point for you an average MSP works with 17 different vendors that's 17 different Tech supports account managers bills all these things um so I I trust the survey a little bit more than the the kind of oneoff comments because I think when people think about it and they're business-minded um that is and that's what helps dve of our road map our surveys like that to try again try to solve an issue that the channel is telling us not just in us in a bubble saying hey this would be really cool instead listening to the partners and saying like this is what msps are really caring about and it's much different than the Enterprise space and I think some vendors you got to when you're vetting a vendor you really have to understand do they understand the MSP space I sent a lot of cool councils with a lot of Executives from from large companies and I could tell you not to call them out but they don't understand the MSP space they know they need to break into it but they don't understand it they can't speak that language and it is different so you you have to talk to a vendor that understands the product through the lens of an MSP yeah absolutely absolutely and I think you know going back to kind of what you were saying there Tommy too is just the efficiency that it can create too you know you know and you spoke to it too Mike you know if you've got 17 different tools 17 different portals 17 different reps 17 different ways to get support I mean back when I worked in MSP we had someone like their job was vendor management you know because you have all these different vendor relationships that you're trying to manage and me being on the marketing side I felt a tiny little bit of the pain where it's like I had 17 different marketing portals to log into and 17 different MDF programs and 17 different vendors trying to get me to Market them it just it's messy it's messy anything that can eliminate some of the stress of running the MSP everyone in in this call on this call knows and running at MSP is it's hard it's difficult anything that you can eliminate stress anything that you can make your team happier streamline the processes autom make workflows autom make ticket uh any kind of ticketing um everything helps absolutely um so I've got a couple questions like I said we're we're saving some time you know at the end for questions and so go ahead put your questions either you know into the chat we'll see it there or the Q&A box um I've got a couple queued up here um but you know Mike we've been talking about you know cassa 365 you know the platform versus peac mealing and how do you evaluate you know Tech and build your stack and so um I wanted to give you just a couple minutes to kind of walk the audience through um CU say at 365 obviously newly announced just this year um I'm sure if you're in this industry you've at least heard about it but may not really understand what it is and and what it's doing to our industry um so I'm gonna give you the floor here for just a couple minutes and then we'll get to everybody's questions yeah no I appreciate it um ultimately again thinking about solving a problem that exists I mentioned the vendor sprawl piece and if you've been to events and seen us we've had a whole Rebrand uh where it's it complete which is essentially a platform that will have we have 40 different business units that have either come from acquisition like dat or developed in house with the idea of trying to eliminate some of that vendor sprawl and be able to single paint of glass single portal go in and bage all these products that's something the techs have been asking for and business owners as well so it complete has been a vision for 10 years or so to have this single pan of glass and what CA 365 does is really turns that into a product uh for the first time and and you know we talk a lot about bundles this isn't necessarily a bundle this is a single subscription so I kind of want to get uh off of that a little bit but the idea is can we have a single subscription that could fully manage detect secure and back up that endpoint and what we were able to do again because you know joint engineering teams we were able to say yeah we can do that with a single subscription you can get an rmm and with the case of C 365 you could use vssa or dat rmm that's another question I get all the time like how do you have two backup products how do you have unit Trends and and dat how do you have these things it there's there's no risk of those either one of those going away uh we've actually done cost modeling it would cost us a lot more but it would also cost so much frustration to our partners and so we're running those in parallel paths and and you learn a lot and it's actually pretty fun internally seeing the the GMS for all those products compete with one another to say which one's better um but you that you start with that rmm uh then you're able to say okay I can install an antivirus um it will have ransomware detection an EDR and that rocket cyber that will mention uh the manag sock as well and then you have the endpoint backup all within one subscription and so this is the one tool that you can now go in and and check off these boxes and it it really is is gone off much faster than even we thought internally we released it uh I guess coming on three months now and we've got over 4,000 Partners using CA 365 over 5 million endpoints uh with CA 365 and the key part of this really is not just Integrations it's automations uh we've got 20 plus core automations that are included in this and this is where our Engineers are really really focused because again what are the part what's the partner base asking for this right they're asking for okay I want to eliminate some of this vendor sprawl I want to make sure that there's Integrations but also automations to Will's point right we want to speed things along because you're going to grow only in three ways you're going to try to add new clients you're going to add addition additional products to your existing client base and you're going to become more efficient so that you're actually receiving that profitability so the problem that it's solving and we see it is that on average you know a business is going to have three main Consultants their accountant their attorney and their man and their man service provider now the accounts and the attorneys are getting margins of 30 40 plus percent on average at MSP is getting around 8 to 10% depending on what study you see why is that when you're actually the one that they talk to more than anybody else and they're more dependent on you right so we're trying to elevate that because that the math just doesn't make sense so what this allows you to do is become more profitable if you were to buy all of those products through CA individually it would cost you a little over $13 the pricing on this is $525 now if you have any those products we actually extended our promotional price to $3.99 through the end of the month um and so what we're trying to do is put that money back in your pocket this is not a reduction in cost so that you can now undercut your competitors that's not the mentality here and Tommy and will will tell you that's not the way to grow the way to grow is to say now I'm making $8 extra every single one of my my m points and in some cases if that partner that client of yours doesn't have something like manage sock you're adding additional value to them while still uh you know gaining more profits and if it is a client that you don't need uh you know manage stock for uh we've got an Express model that's basically all of those tools with the exception of that managed sock so you know we talk about the Golden Age of the channel and we've been saying that since before the acquisition it's been part of our SP because we've seen the we've seen the data behind this especially coming out of Co the companies that were able to survive during covid with the ones working with an MSP that's just a fact so kudos to everybody on this call because that's just your truth and now that's why we've seen such a boom in this space in the SMB space the spend on technology for smbs is growing four and a half times the rate of GDP 10 years ago all the big vendors wanted to get into the Enterprise space because that's the people that were spending money because they understood the threats now it's the small business space that's saying hey there are tools available that I could actually afford and I now know I need them because the criminals are attacking me now all of a sudden you'll see all the vendors trying to come down into the S&B space and they know in order to get there they have to go through the channel so we're looking to try to solve a lot of problems within this one subscription the ca 365 but we're also trying to understand the channel even more my job ultimately in channel enablement is to take the feedback and be your Advocate when I go to leadership meetings to say this is what the channel is telling me um and we have a running list within our team what's the what pain points did you hear and a monthly call I'm able to go present that you know alongside Dan and Gary and all those folks and you know one of the things transparently people would always be frustrated with C says three-year contracts threeyear contracts I heard it all the time and actually when I was with dat I used to sell against it so I know all of that stuff now we could have a business conversation of why you probably should have three-year contracts with all your clients but we listened and said yeah we have one-year contracts available to you if that's your business model OKAY Flex spend is critical that means you could move your spend amongst other products it's big in the BCR space which is dear to my heart coming from data but if you've got folks that are now you want to move to the cloud but you've got two years remaining on your contract with this bcdr advice what do I do I need to back up that as well we've got data backup for Microsoft Azure and you could actually just shift that cost to that other product so it's not adding additional services that you're not using anymore now we have that with all of the products uh and I've seen it in action it allows you to move some money around um and then we do have month-to-month contracts for the bcdr devices which is another one that folks have been asking for so this is our partner pledge that um I'm very proud of because it's something that us taking the feedback directly from the channel and incorporating it into what we do so that's a kind of brief synopsis of CA 365 again uh a single subscription allows you to manage those end points secure them back them up and then importantly most importantly automate as many of these processes as possible so that you can be profitable yeah I love it such a game changer you know for the industry I know you know the vision that you know Fred and CA has it's just it's an exciting time to be in this industry and again to see msps be able to get the profitability that they deserve quite frankly um so you know will and Tommy you know why we've talked about you know evaluating your Tech stack um you know what what was it about CA 365 and I both of you on 365 yes Y what what was it about it that made you make the switch or or move in that direction um and then as a follow-up to that what was the experience like making that move and while you guys are answering that I'm going to pop up a poll real quick for anybody if you want to get some more information about you know CA 365 but um will let's start with you yeah to me it was a no-brainer uh we were already using all the products besides uh EDR AV and backup um and we were already using all the other products and it immediately saved me money by cutting the other products out and we obviously it's only been three months and I think I signed up about three weeks after um it was announced um obviously bigger company we got we slower to move um and on things so we signed up so we're still in the process of getting everything cut over um uh but it made sense it immediately saved me money over the time period that's coming up right and I'm going to continue seeing reaping the rewards of savings going forward as well um so our packages that we already had already sort of had you know everything that was in k365 besides sock it was included in our packages so what's now helped us is when we go sell one of our packages we will say hey if you if you sign before the end of the month we'll give you sock for free well hell I'm already my cost is already built in um so it's not going to cost me anything and I'm already going to give it to you anyway behind the scenes but that's a sales tactic right um hey I if you sign up today I'll give you give you our sock for free right and so that that's a way to get people to sign faster and get in front of people by giving something for free that even though it's not really free um you know you're already you got that cost built in so to us overall with the integration and stuff it was no-brainer for us looking at for me it was uh you know primarily about filling some gaps we were already in the midst of shopping at EDR and sock Services uh when CA 365 was announced so we I immediately pivoted uh went right back into profit fuel for my second time and then it just made sense I think the original time I went through profit fuel it saved me you $112,000 a year and now I'm all the way up to $31,000 in savings a year going through profit fuel this is by Adam CA 365 uh on top of that my profitability is up and then not filled in gaps in our services now we have full feature EDR we have sock Services we also have a different backup uh line of business that we could pursue as well and so it's it's you know and for me is I can compete against will Will's at 18 million I'm at 3 million guess what I have the same tool set as him now I can I can compete against will so that's hey easy easy you can't say that I I know but you and then the same thing is a smaller MSP you know that may be chasing their first seven figure can now compete against me and so you know it's a very it it opens up the industry at a whole different light where brand new msps can now have a tool set right out the gate to actually do uh full feature Services they actually can complete their stack a lot quicker than will and I were able to complete our stack when we first got into it hey way up more and more hearing Tommy talk you know Mike this is a bad idea okay we've got a couple questions here um from some attendees and if you you know got them go ahead and throw them into the chat or into the Q&A um you know Sean was asking how do you deal with the overhead of making a change of something like an rmm or another integral part of your service I just went I think you yeah Tom Tommy go ahead it's hard as heck and so um you know it's never easy switch in something like a major tool like rmm and PSA we literally just went through it with autotask and data rmm uh we came over from a tera just simply outgrew it um and then uh so switching over to autotask what we did to uh to battle the um the overhead was we pulled a tech out of our service delivery team and had it be their major Focus we figured if we we can measure the overhead we can measure measure the hours to man hours a lot better if we just pulled a tech out and said hey this is your job you have 60 days to do it uh and then that's what we did we had uh literally all of our qk for that quarter or you know all the all of our focused on rocks or whatever language you want to speak you know it was focused on getting that implementation and migration done as quickly and as smoothly as possible and our goal was to get it you know at 90% we weren't chasing Perfection getting it back to where we can at least uh benefit to customers so they don't see any downtime they don't see any ticket mishaps or anything and through the whole process I think at one time or SLA commitments fell below 90% had 89% for like two weeks and now we're right back up above 98% on the SLA commitments so we did dip down to overhead was uh challenging um but you know because of our profitability we were able to pull somebody off the team yeah I think it's like anything that you do uh set a goal and and Tommy mentioned rocks which is the EOS process of managing you know projects and your timeline uh but just set a goal and and be realistic with it and make sure if you're a smaller company make sure you designate certain amount of time to get moved the needle fordward every single week every single day every single week um even with a bigger company it put it we did four rmms and and four PSAs at the same time that is not advisable but we have a team to be able to handle that but it's stress it was a very stressful time for the whole team um but you can't say I'm going to turn that amount of data around in 60 days I mean it literally took us to get full Integrations of everything it probably took us nine months uh to get everything done um and I think and Mike can talk about this more I think CA has some you know consulting services or or Professional Services or something that can help especially if you're a smaller company just trying to figure it out um Mike I I believe um absolutely and that's another consistent thing that you see is the folks that do spend time with those folks have a not only a much easier transition but a better experience throughout it's that starting point so highly encourage leveraging that team University was helpful to us yeah got a couple questions here for you Mike specifically about you know Cass say at 365 first one from John here uh can dollars from Flex spend be applied to to additional CA 365 licenses at the promo price so I I saw this one pop up and I've been trying to get some teams to answer it little it's a little bit complicated in that typically Flex Ben CA 365 is the one product that's separate from that because it's already at such a discounted price but when I pushed back and said what because basically Flex SP is any uh you know net new ARR that's coming in so you're you're offering it to you know a new client base uh well the last thing I got was like you'd have to talk to your manager there could be some approvals you You' have to go through some hoops so I don't want to I hate not answering it concretely uh but the the simple answer is it applies to net new ARR for one of the products typically CA 365 is the one that is not included but I'll put my email in the chat you could email dur directly I'll get you I'll get you that answer I'll put that in the chat right now okay I've got one more question about K 365 so I'll let you put that in the chat um while you do that um a question earlier and I just want to go back to it was over in the chat Faraz had asked and I I think I kind of was able to weave it you know into what we talked about um but he was you know they were asking about a good set of stacks for small to midsize companies and so you know we kind of talk through you know will put into you know the chat his uh you know nine things and you know Tommy I think you answer that so if you had more questions about that you know Faraz go ahead and put them into the chat or um the Q&A but just want to make sure you got what you needed for that um so Mike back over to you with some CA 365 questions you know Billy was asking does CA 365 include a remote control tool yeah that's part of the rmm so it's kind of called Web remote control um so the short answer is yes um if you have any questions about it again uh you either guys want to chime in or no I confirm with that and we we actually have customers that use it obviously my team uses it for remote but my my customers even use it um to get into the machines at times so yeah cool um Jeff was asking do you handle the 5 terabyte per MSP limit for the included backup so I can give you our standard answer but I honestly think it's because this is a question that comes up a lot it's probably better to hear from you guys to be honest because you guys are the ones uh you know dealing with the product itself I mean I don't know if you've come into any problems with it yet or if you're anticipating any uh I'll I'll go first that's our October um um we're integrating that in October uh so right now we're on spanning and acent and we're moving over those backups gradually to it we'll cross that road it's not limited to 5 terabytes from my understanding there is an upcharge you know for additional uh space needed uh but right now I think it's uh it's very affordable and it's nice having it in a single place yeah I I don't do the tech anymore so I have no clue um but I I have been you know I've talked to several and yes there is a but pennies up charge um over the tide the five terabyte is my understanding yeah it's 0.014 uh per gig after that so yeah that's so it's exactly right about a penny and a half okay um I have another one different Jeff spelled different um but going back to I think he's asking going back to putting all your eggs in one basket um what if CA gets hacked you know can I answer that that's the question I get answer all all the time um so everything is going to get hacked at one point or the other unfortunately it's software it's public it's out there um what I recommend is one um knowing CA and the inw workings there are different databases one so you're not every tool out there is not going to get hacked right um but I think you as the MSP and just like myself and and Tommy we have to make sure we take the measures to lock down uh MFA everything or single sign on everything lock down the environment so people can't get into our world of CA or CA I think it's CA 1 um you know and just like any tool right lock that down um I think CA you know yes learned as a lesson several years ago clout strike a couple weeks ago they didn't get hacked but not even a hack look when C got hacked didn't cost as much as what uh CL right call Delta Microsoft and others right um so is technology excuse me shit's going to happen um and and I think they've T taken the proper measures um you know I I know Fred is talking about getting the whole environment fed ramp moderate compliant which is a great win for for everybody um and and that's going to be a lot further than other tools out there as well so uh it's it's you can live your life and and I'll shut up here and let Tommy but you can live your life about the wh ifs and or you can live your life about making a profit that's that's all I was going to add to it is you can live your life with the what ifs or you can make a profit the other thing I I I just wanted to add that is it doesn't matter just like will said it doesn't matter every everybody could get hacked you know it could happen to any of the vendors out there uh and so that's my thing you could focus on that or you can focus on running your business and doing the best job you can do to protect your clients and protect your to protect your tools make sure the MFA is on there make sure your technicians are well trained I mean I mean that's it I mean it it keeps me it doesn't keep me awake at night it keeps me awake is worried about ransomware for my clients but it is something to think about yeah it's something I think but I'm not gonna yeah it's a Val concern right right I I get it I it's a valid concern but again different databases so it's not like everything is getting hacked everything's in a different database different systems and stuff uh even though it pulls together with c one um you know Mike you can talk more about it than than we can yeah well I'll give a a quick plug and it's not a sales plug but every quarter I do a webinar with Jason Manar R ciso um and we pick a topic and I learn something every single time he came straight from the FBI he still goes and does trainings to the FBI um and so he's really tuned in um you can go to our website and get to that link but that's a great time to ask those questions uh I mean God bless Jason Manar I wouldn't want that job but he's he's he's very confident and I even our previous CEO you know Ryan weeks would talk about you know if you're putting the right systems in place uh he sleeps well at night knowing that we're doing everything we can so it's a huge focus on security on our end for sure yeah okay we are just about at time here so I'm going to end with with each of you kind of giving you know your your kind of one piece of advice or one takeaway or something if someone would leave it's just I want you leaving with this when it comes to building and evaluating your Tech stack so if anybody's got their takeaway right now go for it first but if you're the one who's scrambling to think through it just kind of keep your mouth shut for minute let if you if you don't mind let me go first because I got another webinar to jump on in two minutes um and so I can leave you guys at all my final thoughts is stop overthinking things take your engineer head off put your business head on um and make a business decision and not a technical decision when you're uh looking at that and I don't care you know I know I know love C and but I don't care what it is right you know uh make a business decision when you're doing things um and and integrate everything you can to make your life easier your text life easier um and look at the bottom line costs guys that's that's my final thoughts okay we'll let you bounce early real quick before we get to Mike and Tommy's invaluable one key takeaway thank you will for your time you go Tommy what what's what's what's yours um my one piece of advice is don't be over tooled it's h don't get over tooled don't catch yourself in a trap or anything like that uh we plan out our strategies for the year uh on an annual basis we may pivot you know if we need a tool if we see that we it's a different line of business but um we go about it um through I guess through planning um again like will said we don't overthink it we look at lines of business we look at opportunities we look at cost and we look at profit and then I hand it over to my service delivery team to take care of as far as a lot of the vetting but I would say that's my one piece of advice is look at strategy look at the business strategy behind it when you go to vet tools especially when you're packaging them together that's um that's something I wish I would have known a lot sooner oh okay Mike yeah and going third is hard because will stole my business hat one but I'll say I'll go back to the Four Points when you're going around this is beyond I don't you know beyond Cas a 365 uh when you're talking to a vendor and you're betting that vendor whether it'll fit into your stack uh does it solve a problem right uh it does it actually work can it do what it says it's going to do are you going to be supported by that vendor and then ultimately and probably most importantly am I going to make true margin off of it uh you know real not not just on the top level but true net revenue that you're going to generate that those are the four components I would be thinking about every vendor I talk to yeah absolutely well you guys thank you so much for being on here today again a question that we get all the time you know when we're asking people what they want to learn more about you know I I feel like you know we got some amazing things that we covered in just this very short hour appreciate you guys being on here thank you for everybody for taking some time out of your day to learn uh to learn how to be a a better business owner of an MSP thank you guys so much and we'll see on our next webinar bye guys much thanks everybody bye