We have been hard at work at Shockey Monkey addressing the bugs, feature requests and all the little things some of you have brought to us through the phone, forums and email. Keep it coming and keep on showing Shockey Monkey love, we truly appreciate it. As mentioned in November, it’s time for Monkey Remote and the beta is ready to go: Shockey Monkey is all about the client experience. If you limit the software and only make it about your business, your clients will not use it – they’ll just pick up the phone and call you instead. If you give them a reason and a value to use your portal they become a lot more dependent on it. Monkey Remote is the reason for your managed clients to use your portal beyond opening tickets. They can watch their employees desktops. You can be alerted when there are issues with their PC. With Shockey Monkey advancements in ticketing and chat, you can elevate your support beyond what your competition is capable of doing. You can truly be there for them when they have technical issues, even from far away.
Be there. There are special perks for those that participate in the beta but there are some expectations as well – along with an aggressive rollout schedule. We expect to have the Monkey Remote released in 2010 – right after Christmas. So now is the time to take up the Monkey.
We are currently performing a hardware upgrade to Shockey Monkey infrastructure in order to prepare for Monkey Remote beta launch this Friday. While we do not expect services to be interrupted to all users, please accept our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this may cause you as we roll the upgrades across the SQL backend.
Yesterday we announced the big changes we’re delivering to the Shockey Monkey platform as a result of the overwhelming feedback we have received from you. We’ve had the highest attendance ever for the webcast and many have asked for the recording which we always post here the day after the meeting and you can download below. As Vlad stressed during the webcast, every feature we have developed is developed for you. We are always asked: if it’s free, how do you make money? We make money through advertising and sponsorships of the platform, Pro upgrades and goodwill towards Own Web Now that funded the project initially. But in order to make all of that happen, we need you to use the platform. This is where surveys play such a key role: they guide us to what you need and when you need it. As a brief recap, we introduced a new tier between Free and Pro: Fro starting at $14.99. This will enable some Shockey Monkey users to contribute towards the development of the platform, remove ads and obtain technical support. Technical support was the second announcement of the day, announcing that we will officially start providing onboarding and technical support to our Fro and Pro clients because if you are serious about taking on Shockey Monkey we will make sure you hit the ground running. Shockey Monkey Remote was also announced as a remote inventory and screen view/interact component, beta launching towards the end of the month. Finally, Vlad spoke extensively about the philosophy of the platform and how it further moves away from the traditional PSA/CRM concept you may be used to: Your portal should be about your client, not about you.
More about support, Fro, Shockey Monkey Remote and Vlad in the next post.
Shockey Monkey team proudly invites you to a webcast covering two large announcements next Wednesday, 11 AM EST:
This is a short webcast and will only take about 30 minutes of your time but will likely redefine how you look at Shockey Monkey and the opportunities everyone has in the product. We have listened to your feedback and your concerns since we launched Shockey Monkey at CompTIA earlier this year. We have so far presented Shockey Monkey at five events and have enjoyed great success and interest in the platform. We know there is so much more to do and are working around the clock to bring you everything you want – on the terms you want – as quickly as possible. This webcast will cover the most significant announcement since the launch. We hope you join us!
It has only been a little over 2 months since Shockey Monkey has been released and it is already creating a huge buzz in the IT community! This past week, Shockey Monkey was a sponsor at SMB Nation in Las Vegas! We received a wonderful response from event attendees and we were presented with a lot of questions and additional interest in the product. It was great to see that people had previously heard of Shockey Monkey and that they were interested in seeing just how much the Monkey could do for them! Since the launch in August, we have been working with Shockey Monkey users to get additional feedback on features and offerings and also to receive suggestions for future developments. At SMB Nation, people were very interested in the CRM component of Shockey Monkey as well as the new Invoicing and Accounting capabilities. Another interest point was that people could not believe that Shockey Monkey is FREE! They were surprised that something that presents so much value is FREE! Shockey Monkey is ultimately our gift to the community and it comes with no strings attached. We believe that offering service providers a solution that is free will streamline operations, automate processes, and help them to create more value and success. All in all, the event was a huge success and the Monkey was more popular than we could have ever expected! We completely ran out of our SWAG t-shirts! Here is a look at our display and spread before the event started.
If you are interested in learning more about Shockey Monkey and what it can do for you tune in to our weekly Shockey Monkey Townhall Meeting webcasts. Also, for your benefit, here is a link for the Shockey Monkey Business Model Overview webcast. To keep up with new features and additions to Shockey Monkey and also to follow us on the road, please follow us on Twitter and Facebook!
Yesterday we held our townhall meeting to discuss the new Shockey Monkey Accounting module. As with all things Shockey Monkey, about 99% of it is absolutely free. This is because 99% of it is absolutely essential for the business operation of the MSP 2.0 – one that deals with the cloud, with the steel, with the people and everything in between. Here is a snapshot at a glance:
This flat view really doesn’t do Shockey Monkey any justice and the amount of attention to detail in this solution is immense. We are also preparing you for the future – where you will have a new level of billing efficiency to remain profitable and successful. Start with the Accounting Features page. Next, go to the Accounting Documentation page. Finally, watch the video of yesterday’s webcast. (hint: you can right click to save to desktop if you want to watch it later) Most importantly: use it! We are not joking when we said we wrote the monkey because we wanted people to use it. Less than 10% of the IT Solution Provider market has a PSA solution and we bet the overwhelming majority of those aren’t using all the systems they have due to the complexity that is involved in a highly vertical specialized app. This is where Shockey Monkey can help you immensely. One more thing.. everything you see from Shockey Monkey was built by it’s users and partners. We are actively developing the solution so by all means please fill out the survey and let us know what you want to see next. We aim to please! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7FR68W7
Ever since we launched Shockey Monkey we’ve vowed to make the accounting part of business simple and fun. Money makes the world go round and everyone works hard for it – so there is no excuse for ever letting it slip through the cracks. Unfortunately, it does because sometimes we fail to properly account for everything we do and make it one easy, seamless process of getting paid. What if just sending an email would drastically improve your ability to get paid? What if there was something so specific, so fool proof, so easy to use that you can’t live without it? No need to wish anymore, Shockey Monkey Accounting is here. As you’ve probably come to expect from us, it’s also free. Gratis. Zero. Zip. Nilch.
During the webinar you will have an opportunity to register for the advanced onboarding and Quickbooks setup & configuration hands-on! Here is a glimpse at all the power and flexibility we’ve built as a part of Shockey Monkey accounting systems.
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:
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
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!
Shockey Monkey had a huge week. Earlier this week we sponsored the XChange America’s event in Dallas and spoke to many IT service providers around the world that were quite excited about Shockey Monkey. One big piece of feedback we received was the need for internationalization – and certainly, as we grow outside of USA we’ll teach the monkey new languages. If you’d like to see the pictures they are at www.facebook.com/shockymonkey On Wednesday, we held our first towhall. With exactly two weeks since the launch we’ve collected the bugs that we’re documenting as fixed here. The entire webcast with the new features, feature update and more was recorded and is available for your viewing pleasure now:
The video included a discussion of the roadmap as well as a new feature: Contact Imports
(click the image to enlarge) What is it? Well, it’s an import application for Shockey Monkey that allows you to pull in contact information from Outlook, Quickbooks and any other application into Shockey Monkey. Simply download the Excel template included in the application, or map your fields appropriately, and let the Monkey create all the contacts, send welcome letters, etc. More details on this over the weekend when we publish the documentation and requirements – and for the time being Contact Import is absolutely free! iCal & HTML The dispatch (calendar & schedule) screens are getting full iCal support. Once something is dropped on the calendar, you will be emailed an iCal file that can automatically create a task in your Outlook, Mac or Google Calendar. The coolest part is that the iCal has embedded HTML with the ticket summary, client contact details and more allowing you to carry all the info you’ll need inside your calendar/appointment. Email To Ticket Gateway Multiple bug fixes and new features are now a part of an Email To Ticket Gateway – most importantly, content stripping. You can now update a ticket simply by replying to it on your phone or email client. The gateway will automatically strip your signature and reply copy text and only provide your “update” to the portal and down to the user. This means you no longer have to login to the portal to update support requests. Feature & Bug Manager You will notice someone new in the Jungle. That’s right, we’ve hired a person whose sole responsibility is to deal with community feedback and talk to the developers about adding functionality along the way. You will see frequent updates on the forums indicating any progress or additional questions we may have. Look for a post this weekend with more details about how to enable the new features, what we’ll be bringing to you in the next two weeks and more. As always, thank you for your business and hopefully the monkey is making your life and job easier.
If you have not yet participated in the webcast series, please check out the above webcast. We are committed to the long future of Shockey Monkey and to making even more of it’s components and the roadmap free. We, and our sponsors, believe that in order for us to prosper you need to have an accountable way to manage, bill and serve your clients in the cloud and we want to make sure our business is aligned with your business interests. Please tune in this week for the Townhall Webcast:
I will be holding these webcasts regularly for both Shockey Monkey and Own Web Now companies as we continue to reinforce the importance of having true business alignment. By making Shockey Monkey free we have proven that we have our clients best interest in mind and that this is the solution to manage the cloud with. Regardless of which PSA solution you use. We have been very honest about our roadmap and your response has been terrific. If you are at Xchange this week please stop by the Shockey Monkey booth and let us know how we can work better with you. As a CEO, I’m out there for a reason, and it’s to make sure we build the best offering we can. Together. |
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Our second trade show starts today, less than two weeks since our official launch. We will be at Xchange America’s event in Dallas Texas (Gaylord) from August 22 to August 24th. We have been working extensively with the partners that have signed up with us so far and have been eager to act on all the feedback so many have shared about the business model, features, offerings and more. We have held 6 webcasts since the launch and even recorded a summary one for your enjoyment: