When driving scalability for their clients, it's all or nothing for the industry-renowned Sierra Pacific Group.
Sierra Pacific Group's* no stranger to system integration, in fact, they pride themselves on embedding only the top-tier solutions for leaders of tech companies -
When analyzing the efficiency of their own financial systems, they knew it was time to shake things up (their business would depend on it).
*Editorial Update: Since this article was produced, Sierra Pacific Group (SPG) has experienced tremendous success through merging with and acquiring four other companies, with SPG emerging as the surviving entity, they're now MSP+OS—read about their M&A here.
Challenge
CEO, Adam Bielanski, recalls their invoicing stress as having begun in 2012. At this time, Sierra Pacific Group (SPG) had just four workers, including Adam.
Adam had invested in a financial controller, which saw "a high-paid resource processing invoices."
And even with the implementation of Mobius Gozynta in 2016 (for syncing invoices) and later ConnectBooster (for payments), invoicing alone would still cost their team 16 hours of labor each week.
When COVID-19 hit, making the shift from QuickBooks Desktop to Online would be "a huge requirement," especially for a now, entirely remote team -
In an urgent bid to end such "tedious" work, everywhere from hefty timesheet reviews, to manually adjusting invoices, Adam looked for a unified solution to finally put an end to such "disparate systems."
Solution
After their "big shift" from manual to Mobius more than six years ago, SPG would now face "another big shift," and inevitably, what would soon become, a major step forward -
In 2022, SPG implemented Wise-Sync and WisePay, and has already slashed their accounting workload by a staggering 75%.
What once cost the team sixteen hours of labor on invoicing alone, is now down to a mere four hours of manpower; a task handled by much "lower paid resourcing."
Adam attests their "really fast" audits to the implementation of Wise-Sync and WisePay, where he's able to now trust the data (and in the real-time he needs to make those high-level decisions).
Today, a distinguished SPG has grown from four to 40 employees, with grand plans to expand to 50+ staff within the next two quarters.
Results
- Automated time-savings of 12 hours per week
- Invoicing workload slashed by 75%
- Cost-savings of $1,536/month on strictly invoicing
- Staff expansion from four to 40+ employees
- "Really great [credit card] rates."
Feature Quote
"There's absolutely no way I would be able to grow my team and my top-line revenue without this tool. WisePay is critical to my business.
The scalability is what it comes down to. Previous systems and processes were not as scalable as what we have today, and that's super important -
Now, it takes us up to four hours. We’re moving 2-3x faster than before!"
The Journey
Sierra Pacific Group (SPG) is a tech consulting agency headquartered in Madera, California. SPG empowers business leaders through the implementation of key strategies and systems for motivating growth and scalability.
We sat down with CEO, Adam Bielanski, to discuss SPG's dynamic journey. When the COVID-19 pandemic started, Adam fast recognized the dire need to switch from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online; a shift that would meet the demands of a completely remote workforce -
"The shift to a remote workforce really had people focussed on the systems, processes and tools that they use in their business -
So we've seen a significant shift in how to leverage those systems.
At Sierra Pacific Group, we do a lot of systems' integration here, where we're taking data and ingesting it into the larger instances of ConnectWise's suite of tools."
Most business owners will tell you, "it takes a village." For TSPs, that village is ultimately a sharp solution stack. While using the solution stack ConnectWise PSA, QuickBooks Online, Wise-Sync and WisePay, Sierra Pacific also utilizes a suite of ConnectWise tools, including Remote monitoring and management (RMM), ITBoost, and SmileBack.
No More Manual: We've Found "A Fully Integrated, Automated System."
SPG had faced immense invoicing stress from as early as 2012. Even after implementing invoice and payment automation from two competitors, Adam recalls, these were still "disparate systems."
Growing more and more tired of having to run manual timesheets, double check the numbers across systems, and manually adjust invoices and their PNL classes, among a long list of other financial admin items, Adam searched for "a fully integrated, fully automated system."
When Adam found Wise-Sync and WisePay on the ConnectWise marketplace, it didn't take long for him to realize that this was "the true, fully automated solution that's actually going to save [you] time."
"Back in the day, I know that I was taking on a lot of that work myself... it was tedious.
I consider the Mobius Gozynta way of doing things with ConnectBooster, I consider that today, as a manual way of doing things.
And at the end of the day, the scalability around my financial processes and systems, where Wise-Sync and WisePay are a critical component to that, critical, my business would not exist today without your tools being properly configured and having that scalability."
What once cost their team "a high-paid resource" with 16 hours of manual labor each week spent on invoicing alone, has since been reduced to a mere four hours per week to "get all of [our] invoicing done."
Since their implementation of Wise-Sync and WisePay in March 2022, Sierra Pacific has been able to instead utilize "lower-paid resources" to complete their invoicing, which sees cost-savings of $18,432+ each year.
Adam deems "the automation that comes with Wise-Sync," as "the biggest difference." When comparing Wise-Sync to other competitors, "it just didn't work out, and it just wasn't as polished off as Wise-Sync."
Adam rates Wise-Sync's Real-Time Sync and its unrivaled ability to handle and change statuses as a feature that "no other system has today," while WisePay makes it "easy for the clients" to view and pay their bills, and even easier for their staff to realize where a payment failed, with instant notifications.
"It's the whole system and the processes inside there, and talking specifically about invoicing and payment processing; that's how I collect money, that's how I generate revenue," says Adam.
Delegate & Elevate: Financials Served Like A Prime New York Steak?
Now that invoicing is no longer on his list of priorities, Adam's been able to delegate and elevate (EOS Worldwide) much of his responsibility within the financial department, to their newly appointed CFO -
Who strives to level up in her role, with quarterly plans to focus on big business, notably including the implementation of ASC 606 revenue recognition.
Whether you're a vegetarian or a carnivore, Adam makes a great leadership analogy as food for thought. When cooking a prime New York steak by yourself, sure, it'll "be okay," but when paying a Michelin star Chef to cook that same meal, one can only expect the best results -
"You’ve got to trust those process decisions because I’m used to doing things a certain way and having certain steps, and now that someone else is in charge of that, and someone else has taken my idea and morphed it into their own to make it more efficient -
It's like "Hey, I started cooking this New York steak," and it's just a basic steak, but if I go to Chef Gordon Ramsay and he’s going to cook it, it’s going to taste way different!
And it's also like, “Hey, I’m going to trust Gordon Ramsay to cook that steak right,” because he’s the guy! And now I have a CFO, and she’s the lady, she’s the woman in our business - and so, that’s what I’m doing, that’s where I’m at!"
Even though letting go of such responsibility can sometimes feel "a little uneasy" for Adam, especially after having managed so much of this for so long - and on his own, Adam maintains immense trust in the process -
"In order to grow your business, you have to go down this path."
Adam says he's "disconnecting from some of that emotion" involved with running the finances; a valiant feeling that any hands-on business owner can relate to.
"We're preparing a lot of initiatives for our employees that are going to take place over the next year," says Adam, who trusts his newly appointed CFO to manage their finances while he looks to grow and shift their organization.
As Adam reflects on SPG's journey to-date, he adds his final words, "You guys have really great rates too."
When we were given the ultimatum by Kaseya and we saw our rates would essentially triple, our biggest roadblock was doubting whether we could move all of that payment information into a new portal.
When we learned that Wise-Sync could solve that for us (it actually transfers the stored payment information from one system to another), it was a no-brainer at that point.
Today, a scalable Sierra Pacific Group revels in "complete invoice and payment automation," freeing both their CFO and CEO to instead focus on their number one priority: The future.
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.
