During the launch of Shockey Monkey we talked a lot about the consumerization of IT – how IT departments, and us as managed services providers, will have to deal with clients demanding IT services in business that they get on their personal computers, phones and devices. Ever heard this one:
“How come we have to spend all this money when I can just send files and collaborate through yousendit.com and dropbox.com?”
This is the cloud services trend that we are seeing and it is not one we can fight effectively through scare tactics of compliance, regulation and corporate security – users tend to do whatever it takes to get the job done and will eventually displace the IT managers and MSPs that stand in their way, even with the best of intentions.
With the design of Shockey Monkey we wanted to enable MSPs to embrace the consumerization and offer clients a simple, easy to use interfaces and processes that require little hassle in making the transaction and an agreement.
With Service Manager, Shockey Monkey enables you to become an instant cloud services provider. The future of the service manager will transform how you sell software and services as well. Think of it this way: If you make it easy for clients to buy your services, they will.
Powerful Integration with Own Web Now
Currently, the only services available are from Own Web Now. We anticipate to use it as a showcase to help third party vendors include their products in Shockey Monkey for you to resell. Through the API we can automatically link your Shockey Monkey with a third party web service:
Reselling services comes at a cost that managed services provider incur to procure, deliver and configure the service. Shockey Monkey enables you to set your pricing defaults and markups so that your clients can tell what they will be paying for the service when they sign up for it. Since your clients pay you directly, the cost and margins are controlled by you.
Shockey Monkey can also keep your clients billing information up to date. For those of you that have SAS 70 audits, keeping client data up to date is critical and you can prompt for periodic updates right when the client signs in. For Service Manager purposes, entering into new agreements and service subscriptions means that the subscriber would have to agree to the terms and pay with a credit card. If this is how you operate, which is the best practice, Shockey Monkey Service Manager will prompt for a valid credit card when the client attempts to sign up for a service. If you bill for services through a third party, or do not wish Shockey Monkey to collect credit card information on your behalf, you can turn this feature off and your client will never be prompted for the credit card information. This setting is controlled through the Company tab by checking or unchecking “Disable Services Billing Info” feature.
Branding is critical in both preserving your business as the service provider as well as delivering useful information and notifications with the service subscription confirmation. Service Manager comes with default notifications that are sent to the user when they sign up for the service. You can customize those notifications through the Settings pages.
Finally, the actual service provisioning and configuration is a snap. The example illustrated here features Exchange 2010 order and shows the bare minimum of information required to setup an Exchange 2010 hosting service. As the user goes through the wizard they can add multiple mailboxes, setup email addresses, passwords, etc. The interface also provides helpful visual and service related information queues as the order is put together by the client. The overall design direction is to collect the minimum amount of information required to establish the service because our goal is to sign the client up and get them going. Once they are in the system, the more powerful dashboards and configuration screens become available for advanced configurations and powerful management.
The Future
Service Manager is about the future of how software, service and management contract subscriptions will be managed. Managed services providers need to become more agile and more flexible in the way services are delivered and purchased.
What you can expect in the future? Since the launch of Service Manager last week we have been contacted by many MSP vendors who wanted to offer their services through the Service Manager. Likewise, many of our Shockey Monkey customers wanted to offer their own, in-house solutions as a part of the service manager.
Think of a world in which all of your services are available through your portal and all you wake up to is orders streaming in around the clock. We hope Shockey Monkey is the center of that world!
Important information: Live presentation of this feature and many of the Q&A associated with it was recorded last week and is available for your viewing pleasure.
Click here to download the video.
