“ConnectWise PSA is the brain of our organization, and everything has to integrate.”
“With ConnectWise, we’ve been able to put together 2024 forecasting and have a great idea of what 2023 financials look like for the first time. Now, we can see what we’re ready to invoice for the rest of the year—we’ve never been able to do that before.”
With three distinct lines of business, disjointed solutions made it impossible for Five Star, an education tech company based in southern Indiana, to standardize business processes and achieve complete visibility across its offerings.
From disorganized invoicing to inefficient manual quoting and beyond, Five Star needed education tech solutions that could bring all facets of the business back together—and the ConnectWise Business Management Premium package helped them do just that.
“We basically had three separate companies within one company, and we were very fragmented with everything we were doing,” said DJ Hanen, senior director of sales and service delivery at Five Star. He continued, “It was decided to bring everything under one umbrella, so we looked at a few options, but ConnectWise was the chosen product.”
Hanen has worked at Five Star for 13+ years, and he both manages and heavily relies on the ConnectWise systems within the business. According to him, Five Star has seen massive improvements regarding their transparency both internally and externally with solutions from ConnectWise.
ConnectWise helped centralize Five Star’s business management process
Five Star leverages several solutions from ConnectWise, including ConnectWise PSA™, and according to Hanen, it’s been hugely impactful for the company.
“ConnectWise PSA is the brain of our organization, and everything has to integrate.”
He continued, “Using PSA, Five Star is now able to be more proactive around expirations and renewals…and all members of the organization are now able to visualize how what they do impacts the rest of the org.”
Hanen believes this newfound accountability and visibility is shining through in all areas.
“Now that there’s heightened visibility for both internal stakeholders and customers, it’s driving efficiency and accountability—including locating billable items that would have historically fallen through the cracks,” said Hanen. “Teams who originally thought ‘tickets aren’t my job’ are entering and working tickets so that there is visibility into the work being done throughout the entire organization.”
Of course, the success found by Five Star is not all due to ConnectWise PSA. According to Hanen, other solutions have also been incredibly impactful for business operations at Five Star.
“BrightGauge, [a ConnectWise Solution], has elevated the visibility into our operations—giving everyone the chance to review critical items in a timely manner.” He continued, “[And] Smileback, [a ConnectWise solution], has facilitated easy customer satisfaction tracking, integrated seamlessly with our company website, and allows for social proof or positive reviews to be displayed.”
Five Star was able to streamline financial processes with ConnectWise
While overall business operations were able to be standardized, Hanen maintained that the impact ConnectWise solutions had specifically on financial processes was monumental.
“With everything moving through ConnectWise PSA into QuickBooks, all numbers are reconciling now on both sides,” said Hanen. He continued, “With ConnectWise, we’ve been able to put together 2024 forecasting and have a great idea of what 2023 financials look like for the first time. Now, we can see what we’re ready to invoice for the rest of the year—we’ve never been able to do that before.”
For Five Star, ConnectWise was the clear choice
According to Hanen, when it came to finding the right partner to optimize Five Star’s operations, ConnectWise stood out from the competition.
“After much evaluation, [we realized] other solutions like Autotask seemed convoluted and difficult to use. The ConnectWise demos and sales process were impressive, and demonstrated how Five Star would see value.”
Of course, it wasn’t just the solutions that drew Five Star to ConnectWise.
“I’ll be going to my fourth [ConnectWise] User Group soon…I think there’s a lot of good things there,” noted Hanen. “And I’ve signed up for a number of the ConnectWise webinars.”
He continued, “I [also] really look forward to the IT Nation keynotes. I think there’s a lot that speaks to where the company is headed…there’s some good stuff that really comes through there.”
