Team Invarosoft - Dean Turnbull; Vivian Zhu; Jessica Ross and Jamie Warner
If the technology industry today had a slogan, the billboard would read — “the world is your oyster”.
Originating from Shakespeare, the concept that businesses can capitalise on the opportunities that life has to offer has encapsulated the Australian channel, leading to a surge of partner expansion plans across the globe.
Through looking beyond a nation or a region, businesses are leveraging software-as-a-service (SaaS) demand to develop new offerings for customers from across all corners of the world.
Because the global SaaS sell is appealing, with market valuations sky rocketing as customers consume, consume and consume.
And the ripple effect is far- reaching, with Australian IT services company eNerds launching a SaaS start-up, spinning off from the main brand to target managed service providers (MSP) across the world.
Under the banner of Invarosoft, the new business serves a brand-new category across the channel, zoning in on Client Portal Software.
Specifically, the start-up offers IT providers, MSPs and IT departments a front-end application designed to “super-charge” ticketing or professional services automation (PSA) back-end capabilities.
Delivered through ITSupportPanel, ITNewsPanel and ITAppsPanel features, Invarosoft — which taps into Autotask and ConnectWise ecosystems — aims to provide increased support experience for MSPs, aiding business profitability in the process.
“We decided to commercialise the internal IP of eNerds to solve a problem we felt wasn’t being solved by the available tools in the market,” Invarosoft CEO Jamie Warner said.
“The problem was that the PSA, remote monitoring and management (RMM), documentation and dashboard tools were all focused on the MSP — not the end-user.
“The end-user’s experience of IT support was less than impressive with hard to find web portals which meant they still called and emailed for support. They had no visibility of their IT provider and wasted a huge amount of time on the phone.”
Consequently, Warner and his team built ITSupportPanel, enabling the end-user to view a streamlined IT portal across Windows, Mac, iOS and Android platforms.
“No more confusion, no username or password, just an easy to find IT button to get access to support, news, feedback and apps,” added
Warner, who said the feature helps reduce in-bound support calls by 50 per cent. “It provided eNerds with a unique selling proposition to win more monthly support deals.”
Alongside improved satisfaction levels among customers, Warner said added benefits also include increased capacity for engineers to carry out billable hours, rather than spending time completing the admin work associated to logging a ticket.
Built from the ground up
After launching eNerds in 2000, Warner remain challenged to brand his services and improve productivity, leading to the creation of an internal product in 2009.
With an early version of ITSupportPanel born 12 months later, the new platform enabled end-user access to a streamlined branded portal, spanning IT support and ticket logs, as well as feedback and news reading capabilities.
Through using ITSupportPanel internally, Warner doubled the size of eNerds organically, sprouting to over 40 staff and more than $7 million in revenue.
Warner began commercialising the product in 2014, taking three years to build before launching in 2017.
“Most of our MSP competitors used the same great below-the-line PSA, RMM and documentation tools, but nothing to provide on-going value for end-users,” Warner explained. “ITSupportPanel provided for the first time an above-the-line branded platform which clients could use every day to increase their productivity.
ITSupportPanel enabled us to win more MRR deals, reduce in- bound support calls and increase our referrals, NPS scores and fees.”
From an MSP perspective, Warner said the providers can increase profits by charging for the software, alongside retrieving lost capacity internally.
“We allow MSPs to differentiate themselves by using it as their IP to win new monthly support business,” Warner added.
Headed by Warner, the team also comprises of Jessica Ross; Dean Turnbull; Greg Krzeszkowski and Vivian Zhu, as vice presidents of sales, cloud, engineering and finance respectively.
“We’re global from day one,” added Warner, with MSPs from across the globe already trialling the product. “With SaaS businesses you really need to be thinking global from day one, especially from Australia.”
Alongside the restrictive size of the Australian market in terms of scale, increased levels of connectivity through the cloud and internet means customers can source products from anywhere in the world.
Therefore, SaaS offerings are now available to be trialled and bought from a website without speaking to sales people, rendering the location of the provider irrelevant.
“So whether you like it or not you are global from day one,” he added. “Plus the MSP community is a global community, with thought leadership and idea sharing knowing no boundaries.
