In the beginning, we were using Atera to go into companies and get them onto a remote management system. Many of the companies that we worked with didn't have any type of remote management.
We also utilize it for invoicing services, when we have to go out to a customer and help fix different things, and that has been very helpful.
During these past couple of years, Atera has brought out so many extra integrations which have been very helpful in improving antivirus work, such as Bitdefender.
The solution enables us to be very transparent with our customers, which they find very comforting. In our business, we're normally hired by companies that can't quite afford an IT department. We help them with that aspect and with their tech debt analysis, helping to make sure that their equipment is productive for them and that they have less downtime. That increases their productivity and makes them more profitable. That's one reason why we really love Atera.
In addition, if you end up having a lot of tickets about one particular machine, it helps us justify suggestions we make. "Hey, you have this one desktop that for some reason keeps having a fan overheat" or "this machine ends up having ghost files that keep filling up the hard drive no matter how many times you wipe it." We can say to them, "Why don't we go ahead and upgrade the fan?" Or, "Why not change the hard drive?" It helps explain to customers what is going on with the machine. We can tell them, "We've been monitoring it for a few months," and give them something tangible that they can see and understand, whether or not they understand technology.
Using Atera has eliminated quite a bit of frustration, especially in our experience with everyone having to go remote as a response to COVID. A few of our clients had never done that before. It really provided a lot of comfort because they would have support whenever they needed it on various wireless networks. I've had clients that were so happy that they were able to utilize us, their remote IT support company, remotely. If they asked us, "Hey, do you know when this computer might have gone offline?" we could show those trends. We could tell them, "Here's the last user who logged in on this machine."
With COVID, one of our very large clients was able to leave their office and pick up the very next day, without hiccups. There was a lot of anxiety, especially for companies that run a call center or a customer service center. They don't want to have downtime because that reflects badly on their customer service. The fact that we were able to help this large company go fully remote, which is something they had never done, without any downtime, was amazing. We know that was successful because we had Atera.
I've worked with tools before that are locked into domains and if they aren't logged in through a VPN you can't connect. Atera is probably one of the first RMMs that I've used seamlessly on different wireless networks. For example, in my household alone I have two separate wireless networks. If one dropped, I was able to get on the other one and, once it connected, the monitoring would pop back up. That was a very new feature for me, and I've used much larger RMMs. For some of those other solutions, that situation would be a hindrance, and you would have to restart the whole machine. With this one, you end up with less downtime, which I have found to be very helpful.
Using Atera is saving me at least three hours a day, easily, because I'm not having to spend so much time on things like, "How can I access your machine? Can you log in to this one site?" and then having to talk that client through the connection process. Now, it's just, "Hey, do you have time available? Can I remote into your machine so I can show you where this is located or show you how to fix this one setting?" We like to educate our clients a little bit so they don't have to ask the same question a lot. A popular one is clearing the cookies and cache. You can send them a how-to, but sometimes they just need to see you do it. I'll jump on the remote. I love that it announces to the client, "Hey, Kim Basset is connected to your computer." I like that transparency, because I never want our clients to feel like we're spying on them. And then we walk through whatever we're we're trying to fix. And then it lets them know, "Kim Basset has disconnected from your machine." That's been very helpful in saving time. It also keeps us transparent as a company, while showing our clients that they are supported, no matter what day or time it is. It is very easy to connect. Something that might have taken 30 minutes to an hour in the past, might be an under a five-minute fix now.
It has also saved us money because of the way it scales. We had one company that went through M&A and went from about 20 machines to 150, overnight. If we were having to pay per device, even if it was $3 to $4 per device, that would add up to a lot of cost for us. We want to give our clients the best tool, but we also want to make sure that we're not having to charge them so much because they're scaling. You don't want to penalize a company for growing. That was very important for me and was the main reason I really liked Atera when I tried it two years ago. As my business has grown, my cost has stayed the same.