We are excited to announce that LabTech is supporting HTG as the sponsor for our upcoming Service Management Summit Webcast which will be happening live from the Heartland on August 16-17.  The event will be broadcast live by Varvid.  We have two days of great content focused on the people side of service management.  LabTech and ConnectWise are great companies that have created fantastic tools, and they add much value to those of us who depend on them to operate our company day in and day out. But at the end of the day, it is people that really make service delivery happen.  And these two companies (now three with Quosal) understand that reality and are helping us educate service managers around the globe with skills to more effectively lead and manage a service delivery team.

I have often said that our investment in ConnectWise as our PSA platform back in 2003 was the best money I have ever spent.  That statement still remains true today.  We have worked with that platform as our foundation through all our growth.  We were about 1/3 the size we are today when we implemented ConnectWise. Actually Arnie came and did our implementation himself here on the farm that year.  We've never looked back and have seen continual growth as we have learned to leverage the platform and utilize it to drive our company in many ways.

About 8 months ago now, HTS began a journey to evaluate our approach to service delivery.  The cloud reality was heading our way, our managed services practice was somewhat lackluster, and it was time to evaluate the tools we were using to serve our customers.  This coincided with bringing Brad Schow onto the Heartland Leadership Group consulting team, and his first assignment was to review and re-engineer our service delivery model.

He's been hard at work on that project ever since arriving, and hundreds of hours later, with the help of the HTS team, we are on a new course.  LabTech is at the center of our new service delivery model.  We are moving through the implementation and transition quickly, and are moving to a "remote first" approach rather than our traditional "roll the truck" mentality.  It is a big shift for a traditional VAR company to make, and has not been without it's challenges.

That will be a key part of our discussion at the summit this week because a transition like this is as much about the people as it is about the tools.  If you don't get the people on board, get the people trained, get the people behind the transition - well things don't go well.  So Brad has been patiently bringing all of us along on this journey.

LabTech has been instrumental in helping us make this transition - because they understand the reality that people are what make the tools work.  They have come alongside us to design, transition, and implement this tool set and then train up our team, tweak for our model, and just support us through it all.  Brad and I will be discussing this in one of the sessions this week.  It is so critical to find a strong vendor partner to work with, and LabTech has been exactly what we needed to make this all work.

We've gone 'all in' to the ConnectWise/LabTech bucket.  During the implementation we had the ConnectWise consulting team take a look at how we were using our PSA tool as well.  The good news was that we were doing pretty well there.  But having a tightly integrated solution where we can work wtih experts that truly understand the whole landscape was very valuable.  It has been a great experience considering the magnitude of what we have been working toward.

We'll be talking about the real life story of making the transition this week during the Service Management Summit.  There is still time to sign up and be part of the activity.  Just follow this link and register for the Varvid delivered webcast. 

http://www.htgmembers.com/ServiceMgmtSummit2012.htm

I hope to see you online as we grow together in effectively managing service delivery.  It all begins with the people!