Leap IT provide IT Support, Communications and Cloud Services for small to medium-sized businesses in the UK. Formed in 1998, they have grown to a team of 15 highly skilled technicians delivering the cutting-edge IT solutions to their clients. Managing Director, Stuart Watson, believes technology should make your business better, not hold it back.
"Just because you’re not a FTSE 100 company yet, doesn’t mean you have to settle for less.
As far as we’re concerned, brilliant IT starts with brilliant support. It’s what drives us to be more responsive, more innovative and more switched-on than your typical IT partner."
Accelo's client work management platform has been a major influence in Stuarts continued success over the past 3 years, and is a critical part of their internal processes. Accelo manages every part of their services - from sales and support requests down to projects, billing, and purchases - so that Stuart and his team can focus on doing the work they love.
Here are some of Leap IT's best practices for using client work management to grow your business from strength to strength with ease:
Accelo on its own is a fantastic tool for managing any business, however, the way it integrates into so many other leading software titles truly makes it the centerpiece for orchestrating your business.
Leap IT have positioned Accelo at the heart of everything we do. As well as integrating it into Xero (our accounting system) we have also connected it to Kaseya (our monitoring software) which is installed on all of our client's devices.
This means any issues that Kaseya reports on our client's devices are automatically raised as Tickets in Accelo. Whether it's a missed backup, error message, or even a windows update that failed to install, it's all caught in Kaseya and a ticket raised in Accelo - meaning nothing ever gets missed. The ease in which Accelo links into Xero and Kaseya is a credit to the way Accelo has been developed.
Some key areas Accelo has helped us gain better control includes IT Support, Sales and Project Management. Pre-Accelo we were literally giving away large amounts of consultant’s time assisting clients that were not paying for IT Support. Now thanks to the Accelo Contracts feature we are able to set up individual contracts for each of our clients which enables the Helpdesk to instantly see what type of cover any client has in place. Accelo has also allowed us to offer 'pay-as-you-go' contracts where our clients can purchase a block of time and any issues we work on during that time is automatically deducted from their balance. This has proved popular with our sub 10 user sites and boosted our profitability by 9% in 2016 - all of this untracked time is now going straight to the bottom line, improving margins significantly.
The Sales Product and tracking ability of Accelo has also increased our new customer conversion rates significantly, Knowing when you last spoke to a lead and what was discussed without searching through thousands of emails is a major advantage in this. A big surprise for Leap IT was how many sales leads we were able to win 'second time round' because of Accelo's automation. We found that simply putting tasks in Accelo to contact a lead again just before their 12-month renewal date meant we had a second bite of the cherry. Those leads that were unhappy with the IT partner they initially chose were easily converted to Leap IT by calling them at the right time. We also had the entire sales thread previously discussed which helped our sales team to eventually win the contract.
Team Scheduling in Accelo gives us complete visibility of each employee instantly - not only what they're currently working on but also how much time they have left to complete their work. This visibility allows us to schedule projects correctly and allocate time to the right member of staff based on their current workloads which in turn helps us hit client deadlines with much more effectiveness.
This same control is also evident in Accelo’s Projects Product which manages all of our ad-hoc work outside of day-to-day IT support. With our typical client having around 40-60 users, we receive a large amount of individual laptop and PC orders that our clients need. Accelo projects allow us to manage the hardware, installation, and billing of lots of 'small ticket' items that previously were being tracked in several Excel Spreadsheets! It’s not uncommon for Leap IT to have in excess of 30 laptops and the same number of PC’s coming through our doors each month, more often than not for 20 different sites. Accelo is instrumental in the success to manage these small ticket items and keep us in control of our orders - making sure no invoice or hardware item that has been installed goes unnoticed!
Accelo has all the tools and integrations that your business needs to operate and my advice would be to jump in with both feet. If you have a particular challenge or hurdle you need to incorporate into Accelo, their support team are great at showing you how Accelo can accommodate this. You do need to invest the time however in learning the product. This is a powerful business tool and not an app you just download from the App Store and play around with for a couple of hours. My advice: Speak to Accelo or an Accelo partner and invest time and energy in learning the product in order to get the best out of it. Start the journey with the mind frame that you are going to adapt your business to work with Accelo - otherwise, you may not benefit from all the great tools that are under the hood. Processes will need to be re-written and your business will need to align with Accelo in order to get the most out of the product, but all of the efforts will be worth it in the long run.
Leap IT as a company is in fantastic shape with Accelo and how it manages the business; the pathway to expansion is quick and seamless, all of the processes are already in place, and scaling is simple and straightforward.
