Pro Computers: Doubling Down on Business With $100K Expense Reduction Case Study

Pro Computers: Doubling Down on Business With $100K Expense Reduction

The "nightmare" Pro Computers endured would see their team expend a staggering six hours a day on manual entry alone; combatting double entry errors, and feeling weighed down by tedious human input. 

Fast forward to four years since Pro Computers implemented a seamlessly integrated solution stack, and this rapidly growing MSP is now reaping the benefits of complete invoice and payment automation, catapulting their business expansion to unprecedented levels. 

Challenge

In 2016, a restless and hands-on Grant LeHelloco would leave corporate management to pursue his next major milestone; Grant would invest in an IT business called 'Pro Computers,' a conglomerate of three sub-companies specializing in phone, internet, and mobile services. 

Armed with a plethora of knowledge and extensive practical experience across various corporate business functions everywhere from HR and finance, to legal and marketing, Grant would dive headfirst into a company that initially operated in just two locations. 

Now faced with the major hurdle of finding a holistic solution for streamlining their three distinct entities, Grant would soon establish a fully integrated system for efficiently running their manifold business.

Solution

With his unwavering determination and years of hard work and persistence, Grant's ambitious aspirations would transform this MSP into the thriving multi-location brand it is today (now with nine store locations Australia-wide). 

After a tried competitor and its ineffective integration, Pro Computers "finally" unlocked their ultimate solution stack through the implementation of ConnectWise PSA, Xero, Wise-Sync and WisePay - 

From double entering payments and invoices to revelling in complete end-to-end automation, now the only 'double' Pro Computers is faced with, is a complete double down on business. 

"I got more out of Wise-Sync and WisePay than I anticipated. Once we went through the initial setup, I found that it actually made my life and our admin life much easier in the background - 

And now, I get to deploy those resources in other areas." 

Results

  • Annual expense reduction of 1.5FTE
  • $80-100K+ cost-savings per year 
  • Slashed financial admin from six hours a day down to just one hour a week
  • Facilitated expansion from two to nine locations nationwide 
  • ISO Certification sanctioned from systems' implementation

Featured Quote

"We had to double enter invoices, double enter payments, and reconciliation was an absolute nightmare. It was extremely painful.

The pain of all these manual transactions forced me to look at WisePay.  We just grew to a size where it took too much of the day, the week, and the month, to do all the manual chasing of debt.

But we tried this solution, and I got more out of it than what I expected. The synchronizations were clean, the bank feeds into Xero were surprisingly easy. It surprised the heck out of me because I've had some bad experiences."

The Journey

Grant Le Helloco, a man who thrives on constant activity, will tell you, he simply “can’t sit still.”

In 2016, after leaving his renowned position as a manager in a billion-dollar corporation, Grant decided to invest in ‘Pro Computers,’ an IT business first established in 1993, with initially just two locations - 

Coming into this small business now as its third owner, fully hands-on and armed with thorough experience across HR, finance, legal, and marketing, Grant identified the challenging need to implement the right PSA (Professional Services Automation) software. After trialling a few options, Grant eventually decided to go with ConnectWise Manage. 

Now revelling in the power of ConnectWise Manage, Grant realized this PSA alone still didn't solve their "extremely manual processes." 

"We had to double enter invoices and payments, and reconciliation was an absolute nightmare. That's when we discovered the power of ConnectWise Manage and Wise-Sync -

And that onboarding was excellent. I can't speak highly enough of the Wise-Sync team that helped me set all this up. I told them what I wanted to achieve, and your team just said, "Yeah, we can do that!"

When we used other PSAs, one of the problems we encountered, was the rounding error... but it just worked with Wise-Sync, and I thought that was pretty cool.

I couldn't even imagine doing this manually. You know, we'd be there for six hours out of eight a day doing just that manual fix up -

And being manual, human intervention means that you're inevitably introducing mistakes."

With this newfound, real-time visibility across their accounting and most notably, payment collection, enabled through ConnectWise Manage, Xero, Wise-Sync, and WisePay combined, Pro Computers now thrives from a system so seamless, "[We] don't have to think about it." 

Empowering their customers with the autonomy to choose how they pay an invoice regardless of it being a prepayment or a downpayment, means "[Our] next interaction will always be at reconciliation time."  

Not having to double handle invoices thanks to two-way automation has since enabled Pro Computers to reprioritise such dense time and resources into their business expansion. 

For most corporations, two of the most important metrics are Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) and Days Sales Outstanding (DSO). With his extensive financial knowledge naturally making him "tight fiscally," Grant deems any bad debt as surpassing two to three months unpaid. 

Now, Grant runs his PNL (Profit and Loss) statement just once a week and in real time, which only takes him up to an hour each week; a staggering reduction from spending up to six hours a day on financial admin alone. 

With their significant time and cost-savings from Wise-Sync and WisePay, Pro Computers has saved one-and-a-half employees (FTE), with resources now dedicated to building other parts of their business.

Along with reassigned resources, Pro Computers has since become ISO certified; a process Grant explains, wouldn't be possible if his team were still "muddled in everyday admin." 

On having a ConnectWise dashboard in Wise-Sync, Grant likens this experience to that of "magic," a "very helpful" tool that clearly indicates where a sync error occurred thereby enabling you to simply delete in just "a few seconds."
 
"My team can do more with less. We're working smarter not harder. And my workload's reduced because we put all this automation in place.
 
Now, I'm doing what a proper CEO and Managing Director needs to do, which is work on the business not in the business.
 
I know that I can trust the figures and the numbers because I've forced myself to be in the trenches to see how everything works -
 
So when I sit at the top and run my reports, I know that the information is valid and I can trust it." 
 
On the various business growth initiatives Pro Computers has since been able to pursue from such vast time-savings, Grant shares a strong focus on their acquisition growth strategies; analysing different products and trends in the market.
 
While the first of the month is always a busy time for Pro Computers, with invoices across all three sectors coming in, Grant says, "the cash collections are easy because the systems are as they are."
 
"All I can say is, the rest is history. Having ConnectWise Sell, we're now collecting deposit payments, it's automated, and it's running into ConnectWise Sell to ConnectWise Manage through the syncing; it's all going into our bank account -

The transactions are being automated in Xero, and reconciliation is a breeze. We're also putting customers now on direct debit plans so that they don't have to pay the credit card fees, and it's making our lives easier and easier; our debtor days are reducing -

Our bad debts, which weren't very big anyways, are reducing, and we can see that if a debtor blows up to two or three months, we already know that - well, that's a real problem.

Whereas before, it was a bit out of control; it was a lot to manually collect our debtor list every month. And having automation like this, has made our lives a lot easier (and reconciliation in Xero is a breeze)." 

Grant embarked on a journey towards achieving payment success by emphasizing the importance of automation in running a professional organization. He believed that to truly own a business, one must focus on working on the business rather than getting bogged down in its day-to-day operations.
 
Grant asserts, it's a business owner's role to drive growth, seek opportunities, and improve processes, tasks that require a strategic focus rather than being consumed by administrative duties like matching bills and payments. By implementing automation, Grant found the freedom to fulfill his role effectively, instead focusing on leadership and management while assuring both the longevity and success of his business. 
 
For those businesses yet to embrace automation, Grant shares his final words from one business owner to another -
 
"All I can say is, the rest is history. Having ConnectWise Sell, we're now collecting deposit payments, it's automated, and it's running into ConnectWise Sell to ConnectWise Manage through the syncing; it's all going into our bank account -

The transactions are being automated in Xero, and reconciliation is a breeze. We're also putting customers now on direct debit plans so that they don't have to pay the credit card fees, and it's making our lives easier and easier; our debtor days are reducing -

Our bad debts, which weren't very big anyways, are reducing, and we can see that if a debtor blows up to two or three months, we already know that - well, that's a real problem.

Whereas before, it was a bit out of control; it was a lot to manually collect our debtor list every month. And having automation like this, has made our lives a lot easier (and reconciliation in Xero is a breeze)." 
 
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 today or book a demo to see how it all works

 

 

 

Pro Computers: Doubling Down on Business With $100K Expense Reduction
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