How SMP reduced time spent scoping services by 98.3%

SMP, acquired by ePlus in 2021, did over $100 million in revenue each year and was recognized by CRN as one of 250 2020 Tech Elites. SMP also made the Solution Provider 500 List six years in a row.

Sean Wilson, VP of Client Solutions, originally joined SMP in 2012 to develop and lead the Unified Communications and Collaboration Practice.

Challenge

SMP set high standards for itself, so Sean wanted to see improvements across a four key areas:

1. Increase the speed at which services could be scoped, priced, and sent to the client,
2. Develop clear standards so that any architect could write services the same way a senior principal architect would,
3. Implement a well-defined process to get new solutions architects up to speed in a hurry, and
4. Build a single dashboard to track customer success metrics.

SMP was spending an average of five hours writing services and SoWs. Sean wanted to reduce this number as much as possible. And while Sean says SMP’s approval process was OK, it was all driven through ConnectWise, so he couldn’t see everything all in one place.

Finally, the reporting wasn’t what they needed. The default reports didn’t provide enough data, and custom reports involved a high level of effort. Even with ConnectWise custom reports, Sean couldn’t see:

• average win-loss percentage,
• amount of total revenue scoped, or
• average cost per SoW.

Solution

The SMP team got together with the team at ScopeStack and began to automate and standardize their presales process.

“Jon and Alex have just been incredible,” Sean said. “The speed of support has been great, and the team has allowed us to help mold and shape the product.”

Results

“Automating the pre-sales process has always been a big piece of our vision,” Sean said, and “ScopeStack is just what I envisioned.” After implementing ScopeStack, SMP saw improvements each of the four areas Sean prioritzed.

1. Time savings. SMP spent 80 to 96% less time scoping services.
2. Risk reduction. By ensuring that any deviation from their standards had to be approved, SMP significantly reduced their risk.
3. Increased visibility into presales. Thanks to ScopeStack's automatic governance, Sean was alerted and could approve or deny changes.
4. Faster onboarding of new engineers. Sean says that “with ScopeStack, it doesn’t take weeks to get people up to speed.”

“We used to spend an average of five hours writing services and putting the SoW together,” Sean said. “It could take as long as fifteen hours. With ScopeStack, it’s always going to be two hours or less. As our SAs get used to sticking to the standards and using ScopeStack Blueprints, they can be as fast as 30-45 minutes.”

“And with ScopeStack, our architects can write services the same way a senior principal architect would.”