ECI’s Laryssa Alexander
ECi Software Solutions is well known in the dealer community for its e-automate ERP software for technology service providers as well as FMAudit MPS management software and Naverisk remote monitoring and management software. ECi provided a roadmap for those products at its user conference, ECi Connect on November 3 in Nashville.
Laryssa Alexander, president of ECi’s Technology Services Division, emphasized that the company is committed to serving customer requests faster and more efficiently. She outlined steps the company has taken, including more cross-training of customer service representatives so they can better handle problems that involve more than one ECi product. The company has also improved its case management capabilities, and it has initiated formal programs to promote accountability within its customer service department.
Those efforts seem to be generating good results. The company handles about 2,400 support cases for e-automate each month and has achieved a significant improvement in response time from Q1 to Q3.
Cloud-based adoption of e-automate is also growing. About 10 percent of the e-automate customer base is now working from the cloud, with the majority of new system sales being sold this way, and the company promised further investments in its cloud offerings.
ECi also promised more frequent feature updates. The current e-automate 16.1 release represents the first using a new portfolio approach that concentrates on a specific area of the software. Organizing releases in this way will allow for more frequent releases going forward with minimal impact to other areas. The next release targeted for beta in January will include updates to their Sales and Account Management function.
About 7.5 million devices are now monitored through FMAudit. Brad Sorensen, ECi’s Director of Development, cited updates to FMAudit that have happened this year, including a new partnership with HP with combined monitoring and management and a partnership with Static Control that could result in cost savings on consumables.
Recent improvements to Naverisk include real-time monitoring, patch management, more robust scripting, device management, and stronger integration with e-automate. The company is planning more remote remediation for printer problems through Naverisk as well as the ability to set supply suppression levels.
In an interview following her session, Alexander talked about ECi’s office equipment dealer customers, “BTA dealers are a resilient group, how they’ve evolved and reinvented themselves is incredible,” she said, “They need to be the best at what they do.”
To that end, ECi has continued to deliver new solutions and partnered with many companies to help dealers fine-tune their businesses and offer what Alexander calls a “white glove approach.” A significant portion of ECi’s e-automate customers use these tools and integrations, which helps dealers improve and streamline processes in all areas of their business.
