How ConnectWise Products Helped a Kiwi MSP Continue Its Legacy of Innovation

Kinetics Group

Founded by Andrew Hunt in 1996, the New Zealand-based Kinetics Group provides managed IT services to companies with a simple yet meaningful mission: Helping its clients use their IT smarter. While delivering innovation to its customers, its own legacy systems were built on an outdated platform and needing significant reinvestment to maintain and develop further.

Challenge

Kinetics Group, a New Zealand-based MSP, knew that after 15 years of using their legacy applications it was time to migrate to a platform that would provide them with the scalability and flexibility their business would need to develop a modern business and eliminate the costs of maintaining their own applications.

Solution

With Kinetics Group experiencing continued growth, it was decided to move away from its legacy system in which it had been using for 15 years and onto one which would then allow them to further scale their business and provide a competitive advantage.

Results

In the first month of switching to ConnectWise, Kinetics Group’s revenue went up by 4% while experiencing increases in efficiencies and streamlining a number of its business processes leading to an increase in profitability.

'I’m buying a software package, but I get people [from IT Nation Evolve] who are interested in helping me succeed in my business.'

Andrew Hunt, CEO and Managing Director, Kinetics Group

‘In 2013, we made a business decision as to whether or not we wanted to continue to maintain our own software or move on to something where we didn’t have to pay for the support and be able to scale our business alongside,’ said Hunt.

With 45 employees in two locations, Kinetics Group was also mindful that an appropriate change management plan was needed to minimise any possible impact the new implementation had on its employees and mitigate any possible risks. Kinetics Group maintained many of its existing processes to help employees ease into the new way of doing things.

‘From a change management point of view, we changed the least, and lo and behold, ConnectWise has been well received,’ Hunt said. To assist with the migration, Kinetics Group leveraged the vast number of resources available via ConnectWise University to help ensure that they had the opportunity to optimise its utilisation and drive business efficiencies.

Delivering an Ongoing Return on Investment

Kinetics Group immediately began to reap the benefits of adopting ConnectWise and leveraging modern business practices. ‘Our profitability suddenly went up,’ Hunt said. ‘We had a much better net margin than we’d had before. We were suddenly more successful with ConnectWise.’

In fact, Kinetics Group saw a 4% increase in revenue with a 50% increase in profit within the first month of using ConnectWise. ‘Before, I was pretty confident we were capturing all our time—but with ConnectWise, suddenly we were billing more,’ said Hunt.

Kinetics Group has leveraged data-driven insights to proactively identify trends and potential issues in advance and deliver more insight and strategic advice and value to its clients. Kinetics Group was able to focus its resources and energy into developing new business services rather than maintaining old business tools.

‘We have developed a methodology to understand our customers’ IT practices and how they apply to their business and their business goals,’ Hunt said. ‘Leveraging the information sourced, we’ve developed an IT Manager-as-a-Service program to allow us to manage their IT as if we were literally the CIO or their IT Manager.’

Much More Than Just Software

While the ConnectWise platform does help Kinetics Group better understand their customers and help drive solution innovation, the largest benefit of implementing ConnectWise wasn’t the software itself; it was the ConnectWise community.

Today, Kinetics Group is a member of IT Nation Evolve, peer groups by ConnectWise, a network that brings together MSPs from all over the world. ‘ConnectWise provides you with an environment where there are people who have lived a similar professional life,’ said Hunt. ‘We’re innovating, and we’re talking to the community to understand trends. We hear key industry thought leaders, we share ideas and experiences with our peers, and we leverage the community to take away learnings that will ultimately help drive our business forward. We bought software; we got a community and this value can’t be overstated,’ Hunt said.

ConnectWise is constantly innovating and striving to deliver a modern business the tools it needs to deliver operational efficiencies and streamlined business processes. This is complemented and supported by a rich community that is helping implement best practices to help strengthen the MSP ecosystem. This is an approach that resonates with Hunt.

‘I think the vision that ConnectWise shows is one that we can subscribe to, which is not true of other vendors,’ he said. ‘ConnectWise describes a vision and future that makes sense to us.’

Kinetics Group’s purpose is to help the companies it supports become more successful. In this way, it has also found a kindred spirit in ConnectWise. ‘ConnectWise has done a good job of identifying that its future is built around healthy, successful partners, and I think that ConnectWise helps partners to be more successful.’ Hunt said. ‘We had no idea that ConnectWise had their tremendous community side that, to my mind, is its secret sauce and very famous secret.’