Jenna Miner is a big fan of all things easy. The channel development manager for managed IT software behemoth ConnectWise wants to make it easier for office technology dealers and MSPs to do business with her company. She also loves technologies that can make work easier for clients and their end-users while incorporating the same tools to eliminate the mundane and repetitive aspects of her own daily tasks. Most of all, Miner wants to make it easier for ConnectWise’s partners to grow and thrive.
ConnectWise may be best known for the Asio platform that provides a bevy of IT service management tools, as well as its PSA tool and countless integrations with other product/solution providers. But in order to press the ubiquitous easy button, it embraces what’s coming as opposed to the past. Sure, ConnectWise is still an MSP at heart, but the future roadmap includes cybersecurity and AI—a pairing that may ultimately demand increased solutions when the two avenues intersect.
In this installment of Getting to Know You, Miner underscores the ever-growing importance of incorporating cybersecurity protocol along with the various integrations that continue to expand ConnectWise’s influence in that realm. She also shares how the company will continue to leverage the possibilities offered by AI now and in the near future.
ConnectWise is 40 years old, but some of its biggest changes have occurred in the last five years. Talk a little about its evolution and the channels it serves.
Miner: Forty years is the new 20, right? Our humble beginnings saw us start out as an MSP, but since then we’ve grown well beyond. We’re integrated with 300-plus vendors and partners in our ecosystem. We have a really dedicated initiative to the pure MSP space. We call our clients partners, and we have 17,000 of them. On the imaging channel side, we have just under 400 office technology dealers as partners. We’re definitely the market share leader in the IT services space.
Over the course of the last five years, we’ve shifted our focus while remaining true to our core on the MSP side and ensuring we’re the provider for managed IT services, both within the MSP space as well as the imaging channel. We’ve pivoted and funneled a great deal of financial, product and people investments into the cybersecurity side of the business. In recent years, cybersecurity has impacted our personal and professional lives. The imaging channel also pivoted into IT services, and those dealers who are in it are making a good deal of money and are profitable. They’re seeing major growth in the IT services side of the business, and it’s time for them to pivot to the cybersecurity side. That’s going to be our main focus over the next couple years. Whether it’s our ticketing system in TSA or our RMM tool, cybersecurity is the umbrella over all of our tools, services and offerings.
The term AI is probably overused in our channel. But for the last year or two, ConnectWise has been truly dedicated to the AI environment as a whole: product services, how to monetize it and keeping it secure. ConnectWise continues to evolve, and we still have all the offerings that make the office technology dealer tick and ring the cash register. But we’ll always be security first when it comes to our solution and our offerings. We want to take care of our clients and our partners.
What are the core strengths of ConnectWise, and what makes it unique to the MSP space?
Miner: In February, we announced our relationship with Microsoft. We’ve always had a relationship with them, but now we have an integration that’s focused on Microsoft Defender for Business. We’re bringing a large-scale, enterprise-level solution offering that’s a cost-effective, extremely powerful cybersecurity solution for the SMB space, specifically the dealer channel. It’s part of our core makeup and something we’re really focused on. We offer it differently for the MSPs and the office technology dealers. Our MSP partners are smaller in size, between $5-$10 million. The imaging channel dealers are much larger, especially the ones subscribing to our IT services and cybersecurity. We have an incredible cybersecurity partner program that provides dealers with sales enablement, pricing and packaging, MPS, go-to-market strategies and campaign creation. We put a nice little bow on it to help MSP dealers and traditional office technology dealers go to market quicker and better. In the past, dealer clients would talk about security and have a need for it, but they didn’t know how to put one foot in front of the other. But with our cybersecurity partner program, we really provide a great little package for dealers to kick start their clients’ initiatives.
During IT Nation Connect 2023, ConnectWise CEO Jason Magee focused on hyperautomation and how AI will touch virtually every aspect of business in the near future. Talk about how RPA and SideKick are aimed at helping accelerate this movement.
Miner: It’s been reported that 50% of the workforce can be automated, and 94% of people in the workforce are performing repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Wow, nearly 100% of your workforce! That presents a great opportunity for AI within the office technology channel. Think about the things you do and all the repetitive tasks. I do a lot of repetitive tasks. I use ChatGPT daily as well as ConnectWise’s SideKick. I also use our little bot in Microsoft Teams that kind of helped SideKick with open tickets and checking invoices in Salesforce. It pulled all the information for me directly into my Teams’ channel. That bot is my own personal assistant. It’s going to augment what you do daily and open you up to do more revenue-generating tasks, which is what it did for me. The goal is to automate the portion of my business that isn’t focused on generating new partners or keeping the existing ones happy.
We have an incredible cybersecurity partner program that provides dealers with sales enablement, pricing and packaging, MPS, go-to-market strategies and campaign creation. We put a nice little bow on it to help MSP dealers and traditional office technology dealers go to market quicker and better.
— Jenna Miner
It’s going to be interesting to see what the next year or two holds for the SMB space and the workforce. One thing we don’t talk about enough is that the younger generation—such as my 13-year-old and my babysitter—is constantly using AI. My sitter, for example, is using those tools every day for college. I think there’s going to be an incredible paradigm shift in the next 12 months, especially as the younger generation is entering the workforce. I’m really excited, because the possibilities are endless.
What are some of the goals for ConnectWise over the next 12 months?
Miner: ConnectWise has two goals: number one is always retain partners and grow. We want to make sure our partners are happy, growing and continuing to consume our book of services. We really started to expand some of our solution offerings. Our dedication to the partner is next to none. We have an unmatched ecosystem of integration partners—more than 300 third-party solutions integrated into the ConnectWise book of services. Whether you’re an MSP or a dealer, if there’s something you’ve thought about, we probably have an integration for it; you’re not waiting on us to develop it. If there’s something we don’t have, we’ll definitely do our due diligence and add that into our ecosystem through our integration partners.
We also offer expert services, which is something that we probably don’t talk about a lot. This includes NOC, SOC, help desk, dedicated technicians and consulting services. It’s basically anything you need to kick-start and get into this space. We also have an incredible community. We’ve got users groups, peer groups, ConnectWise University, IT Nation Connect—basically an ecosystem for you to meet with your peers or our executive leadership team and to help you understand our product roadmap, the go-to-market strategies or anything new on the horizon. We have incredible growth accelerators through the cybersecurity programs. We have industry benchmarking for SLI programs. So we’re really focused over the course of the next 12 months on tapping into these resources that our partners may not know about or have forgotten.
The second goal is to keep our eyes on hyperautomation and AI. As mentioned earlier, CEO Jason McGee has an aggressive and bullish stance on hyperautomation and the use of AI workflow automation, whether through our Sidekick or RPAs in general. We’ll be rolling out some pretty aggressive enhancements in our processes, whether that’s through our product development and our current offerings or integration into some of the major players on the market. 2023 was the year of talking about AI and its possibilities in your personal or professional life. 2024 is going to be the year of action for AI and hyperautomation.
In what other areas will ConnectWise focus its technology investments?
Miner: We have an incredible partnership with Sharp, and it’s really going to determine our future investments. Sharp wanted to increase and strengthen its cyber posture within its MFPs and printers while demonstrating to dealers that security is a top-of-mind focus. ConnectWise and Sharp developed a managed print security service called Sharp SI EM (security information and event management) Technology that’s integrated with the OEM’s MFPs and printers. We’ve created predefined, fixed alerts that Sharp has deemed necessary for intervention. Examples are notifying the end-user that something is going on with a machine that’s a little bit weird. Or maybe the admin logged in and failed three times, or somebody tried to log into a secure folder and they couldn’t access it. These are informational types of alerts and also critical alerts that demand action be taken.
Our investments will be focused on the imaging channel as a whole and how we can better fill the gaps within our own product roadmap—the tools and service offerings—but also within that of our partners and the ecosystem. It could be through our integrations and partnerships with GreatAmerica and CEO Juice. We’re hyperfocused on how we can continue to add value to the dealership and make their employees’ lives easier.
I’m the facilitator of our dealer advisory council, which is made up of 12 small and large independent dealers that act as our sounding board and help us determine where our investments should go. That really speaks to ConnectWise’s dedication to the imaging channel and the dealer space.
We have an unmatched ecosystem of integration partners—more than 300 third-party solutions integrated into the ConnectWise book of services. Whether you’re an MSP or a dealer, if there’s something you’ve thought about, we probably have an integration for it; you’re not waiting on us to develop it.
— Jenna Miner
The dealers are extremely sophisticated when it comes to understanding how they run their businesses. The relationships they have with their end-users are second to none. I think they’re seeing that cybersecurity is the future and an added tool in their toolbox. The channel is really going to take off on and embrace the cybersecurity side. It’s going to be fun to see.
Are there any unchartered waters in IT management? Have we left any stones unturned?
Miner: That’s something we talk about in executive team meetings, discuss with product development and explore even within our SOC and NOC. The bad actors will continue to find a way to exploit cybersecurity, and the next outlets could be ChatGPT or AI in general. As we’re feeding good information into these large language models such as ChatGPT, the bad actors can feed the machine in a way that could possibly be detrimental to users leveraging AI tools. As the threat actors make their way into AI, it’s going to force the dealer channel and MSPs to get ahead of those risks and have a plan in place to thwart them.
In the next few years, cyber insurance is going to grow. Dealers and MSPs will need to help increase their clients’ knowledge base and understand what the coverage should entail and how will it impact their offerings. In the auto insurance space, customers can get a 10% discount if they adhere to certain guidelines and prove they’re good drivers. That could be the case for cyber insurance, where you need to meet X, Y and Z guidelines to qualify for a discount. I feel it will shift the discussion for the MSPs and dealers when they’re consulting with their clients and end-users.
Is there anything from a personal side that you’re looking to accomplish this year with ConnectWise and the channel?
Miner: My personal goal is to manage the dealer channel from soup to nuts. I want to make sure dealers know what services and offerings ConnectWise has to offer that will make them better at their job and make it easier. A lot of people focus on how big ConnectWise is and the many solutions it offers. I want to make sure our dealer channel knows how much we appreciate their business, because as they grow, we grow.
