Sydney-based provider GKM2 Solutions was born in the cloud. From its humble beginnings as a startup Co-founded by partners George Khalil and Michael Milad-Said, to becoming an industry-renowned provider of IT end-to-end services and support -

GKM2 attests "the key success to any organisation" is to implement the right tools, where investing "very very quickly," is sure to pay. 

For the average owner of a Managed Service Provider (MSP), working out the accounting side of things can feel like learning a foreign language - 

For George, this wasn't the case. With a degree in accounting and no dedicated finance team, George would become the primary bookeeping person. Each cycle, George would prepare their month-end billing before handing it over to his business partner to double check; a process where "doing things manually from a bookkeeping perspective" would suffice during their early startup days...

...that was, until they experienced "a massive surging growth," prompting a determined George "to investigate and find a fully fledged PSA system." 

Challenge

George is no stranger to digital transformation, in fact, he swears by it. While managing the company's finances, George also oversees all other areas of the business, where he utilises his solid industry experience to help clients digitize their workplace through innovative technologies. 

As a passionate advocate of implementing time-saving solutions that drive greater efficiencies, George continually searches for those tools that can help grow the business (without expending resources). 

"For us, it's always about working smarter versus working harder." 

However, using MYOB, together with a custom-built solution in SharePoint for timekeeping, and Microsoft PowerBI for reporting, was a monotonous process that saw a young GKM2 only work harder as they manually rekeyed information (that was already manually collated into MYOB). Even then, they would still need multiple eyes to ensure the data was actually accurate. 

One of the gravest drawbacks from this manual "two-pronged approach," was that having financial visibility only occurred on a month-to-month basis "and it wasn't a true month;' information was constantly "delayed," says George. 

Within their first two to three years of operation, GKM2 experienced "a massive surging growth," with a strong marketplace presence, when George recognised now as the opportune time to transform their financial processes. 

"As our business expanded, we needed to put these systems in place fairly early on so that we weren't playing catch-up or getting to a stage where we're literally drowning in the work that we're doing regarding basic bookkeeping, timekeeping, and agreement management." 

After implementing ConnectWise Manage (PSA) to help with their agreements, billing, and timesheets, GKM2 were still facing two of their biggest time-consuming dilemmas: Rekeying invoices into their accounting package, and double checking various financial information had transferred across accurately. 

Solution

Results

• Cost-savings of $44,000+ a year  
• Slashed month-end billing workload from days down to just 30 minutes per month 
• A "very smooth, seamless" implementation with "always accurate" data 
• Funds upfront and clients provided payment flexibility with Wise-Pay 

Feature Quote

"Wise-Sync solved our biggest issue, which was end-of-month billing. That would take us days, and now it only takes hours.

Without a doubt, by freeing that amount of time, Wise-Sync has provided us with greater opportunities to service our customers and our business growth.

And with Wise-Pay, it's just given our client base the opportunity to have more auto-debit options with credit card. We introduced Telephony services within the last two years, and we needed to be able to auto-debit because not everyone that adopts our telephony services is under a managed agreement -

We wanted to ensure we get these funds upfront." 

The Journey

For more than a decade now, Australia-based provider GKM2 Solutions, has delivered exceptional IT end-to-end services and support for mostly small to medium-sized enterprises. GKM2 works to support, architect, and digitize their clients' work primarily through Microsoft technologies (Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure), together with a range of backup and disaster recovery options and cybersecurity services promoting data security and data protection, including software and hardware procurement. 

Now within their own business, GKM2 Solutions needed to digitize their financial administration, specifically bookeeping, timekeeping, and agreement management. With no streamlined solution in place, GKM2 would use MYOB as their desktop accounting package, together with a custom-built solution in SharePoint for timekeeping, and Microsoft PowerBI for reporting; a monotonous process that saw a young GKM2 only work harder as they manually rekeyed data (that was already manually arranged in MYOB) - and even then, there was no concrete way of ensuring the data was actually correct - 

Co-Founder George Khalil reflects on this process pre-automation as having caused "inaccuracies in the information transferred across," where it would take two staff members days to double check the numbers each time; a stressful and "time-consuming" process where consequently, GKM2 found their financial information was never up-to-date.

Unlike your typical MSP Owner, George speaks accounting; he has a degree in it. This knowledge, together with a strong passion for digital innovation, meant that George recognised the need to transform their financial processes "fairly early on." 

Just two to three years from their conception, GKM2 experienced "a massive surging growth," the catalyst for prompting a determined George to "find a fully pledged PSA system."

On July 1, 2017, GKM2 Solutions implemented ConnectWise [Manage], Wise-Sync, and Xero, within a short period of six months, where George found these systems "married up quite nicely." And with the help of the Wise-Sync team, what GKM2 feared would be "a daunting process handling the three systems," was an end result that the team "couldn't be happier with;" a solution that solved their biggest problem: Month-end billing.

"It just works. It's a seamless integration." 

With this automated solution stack in place, month-end billing takes just a few hours as opposed to a former few days each month, where all work's completed "within the first week of the new month." Prior to this, George, together with his partner, GKM2 Co-Founder Michael Milad-Said, would each check the numbers to close their end-of-month billing. Now, George is able to solely rely on the "always accurate" data without needing a second pair of eyes. 

Just a few years ago, George ran into Wise-Sync CEO Paul MacNeill at IT Nation (Gold Coast), where they discussed how to achieve an entirely automated invoice lifecycle with Wise-Pay. Not long after this encounter, an ever-growing GKM2 would add Telephony services to their business, where George recalled this conversation - 

Wise-Pay would facilitate users of GKM2's Telephony services, in particular those serviced outside of a managed agreement, to be auto-debited; providing clients various ways to make payment whilst ensuring their business would receive funds upfront and on time. 

"With our telephony clients, we needed to enforce auto-debit, so that was one of our biggest reasons for implementing Wise-Pay and of course, it worked well with Wise-Sync so everything just synced quite nicely. 

We have a handful of clients that like to pay via credit card because they want to obtain points, so now with Wise-Pay, they've got that flexibility; it's also introduced another avenue of payment versus receiving a check or a direct debit transfer," says George.

"We're always on the lookout to see what else is out there to grow our business -

But Wise-Sync and Wise-Pay were the solutions we implemented early on, and most definitely, contributed to our growth." 

Month-end billing is no longer an area that George needs to stress about. Instead, all financial administration is automated and up-to-date; providing the company with a surplus of $44,000 cost-savings each year that they're able to strategically reassign toward business growth. 

Of course, financial automation not only saves GKM2 significant cost-savings, time, and resources, but as equally important, it also empowers George and his co-decision makers within the business, to have the readily available and up-to-the-minute financial information they need in order to make stronger business moves moving forward. 

Now, I've got that information to me on a day-to-day basis; that's probably the most important thing. Whereas before, it was on a month-to-month basis and it wasn't a true month - it would always be a week after but now we've got that visibility from a financial cashflow perspective - 

And when we implement Real-Time Sync (RTS), it'll be on a minute-to-minute basis (laughs), not that we look at the financials on a minute-to-minute basis, but one of my roles as the primary bookkeeping person for the business, is to look at the financials on a day-to-day basis in the morning and to reconcile. 

Again, we never had that visibility prior to ConnectWise Manage and Wise-Sync - it would only be month-to-month," says George.

Since the implementation of Real-Time Sync (RTS), there's no need to even press a button; everything's completely automated for fast data at your fingertips whenever, wherever needed. As GKM2 continues to rapidly grow each year, this automated solution stack facilitates their subsequently increasing invoicing and payment processing; it's the solution that grows with you. 

"I never had to look elsewhere. Your support team is one of the best in the industry." 

When choosing the right solution, the average MSP typically deems the product and the price as their two biggest deciding factors. For George however, there's one factor that's imperative to their decision-making at GKM2 Solutions; an element they regard as just as important as the software and its cost, "it's actually the support." 

"In the event that there is an issue with the software which is quite rare, admittedly, your support team is one of the best in the industry; they jump on it right away - it's a phone call or a remote session, and they talk you through it. When we're doing our analysis with any vendor; if a product is great but it's got very poor support, then we would potentially look elsewhere; it's not always a price thing - I think price is probably the least important factor when we make our decisions. It's about looking at a product that's quite robust and has great support, and I think that's been one of the highlights of this journey." 

On the support GKM2 Solutions receives from Wise-Sync, George encapsulates their team's five-and-a-half years as a customer to-date, as being "extremely happy," where he particularly appreciates dealing with an Australian company. 

"It's great that you guys are an Australian company as well, so we're in the same time zone. But the dealing with the entire company, even from an implementation perspective; there's never been an issue with Wise-Sync. I think I've only ever had to contact support on a handful of occasions, and it was something that was dealt with very very quickly.

If there is an issue, it gets raised and escalated - and it all happens again, very quickly. To us, it's quite appealing that we're not having to wait days to get a reply to a ticket for instance; we get replies within a couple of hours." 

As an intended outcome of implementing the right tools, GKM2 Solutions is a business set to scale; the ultimate goal of any Managed Service Provider (MSP). But that's not all it's about for GKM2, it's also being able to "bank the happiness account," a phrase coined by another successful Wise-Sync customer (Damian Moscatt, Classic Evolutions). Here, the return on investment for implementing financial automation is reclaimed time and cost-savings better allocated toward both business' expansion and greater work-life balance, where the two go hand-in-hand for George. 

In the early days, we needed to work harder because we were doing multiple things, and a lot of things were done manually. By putting these systems in place, we're now working smarter, and a lot better from an accuracy perspective. We're cutting back the time that's spent because we've got automation in place. 

That allows us to focus more on the business; to focus more on our family lives as well, so we're not doing the 14 or 16-hour days that we were doing in the first couple of years - 

Without a doubt, it's given us that time back to be able to focus on a 360-degree view of the business versus a 180-degree view.

At this point, the journey of GKM2 Solutions, along with the customer success of these Wise-Sync and Wise-Pay users presents a no-brainer: More time means less stress, and more energy to focus where it matters most. 

"It's important to have that work-life balance, and now, financial admin is just one component that we no longer need to spend days focusing on or stressing about."

For those MSP business owners reluctant to embrace automation, George Khalil shares some final words from one business owner to another - 

"You're shooting yourself in the foot by not doing so, and you're not going to grow. You'll be continuously overwhelmed with the amount of work that's continuously compiling because you don't have that automation. We talk about AI and artificial intelligence, that's kind of the next big thing in automation - no business will grow without the correct tools. A tradesperson can't do his work without his laptop etc,. but there's obviously all the other things in place that manage and control that as well, so that would be my advice," says George. 

If you're ready to put your manual accounting tasks on autopilot and take back control of your finances, WisePay's here to make it happen: Get in touch with our friendly team.