HarmonyPSA is ramping up its voice in the market. It recently announced an integration to NinjaRMM to strengthen its functionality for the MSP market.
This is the second integration announcement this year. Harmony PSA also integrated to the e-payments BlueSnap platform.
ET spoke to Steve Duckworth, CEO of Harmony Business Systems about the NinjaRMM integration. He also talked about his strategy for integrations and the development roadmap for 2018.
As Harmony moves through 2018 it seems likely that it will emerge from the shadows and become a vendor to watch in the PSA space.
NinjaRMM integration
The NinjaRMM integration was actually available last year. The integration provides a bidirectional flow of ticket information between the two systems. Ninja Remote monitoring and management solution offers more than 100 features for IT management. When it raises alerts it will send those through to Harmony PSA through the integration to raise tickets. If the incident is resolved then the ticket is automatically updated.
ET asked Duckworth about how customers can configure which alerts will raise tickets and are awaiting a full response. Duckworth was clear that duplicate alerts would not raise new tickets.
The integration was developed using standard API’s. This is an approach favoured by Duckworth as it enables Harmony to increase the number of integrations that it has. Beside tickets, the integration also covers client account mapping, automatic asset discovery (into a staging list in Harmony to provide control over asset acceptance under contract).
Duckworth commented: “We are very excited about integrating with the newest, most dynamic RMM platform available. As with other RMM ticket integrations, we can map a closure event to a fund, creating the basis of event-based billing without timesheet bookings. Used in this way, this enables your RMM solution to become a direct revenue generator.”
For Ninja this adds another PSA integration to its solution. It already has integrations to ConnectWise and Autotask. Andy Zhu, Vice President of Growth, NinjaRMM commented: “We are very happy to now be integrated with Harmony, a clear thought leader in the MSP/PSA space. NinjaRMM’s RMM solution is designed to save MSPs time and money by reducing the need to go onsite. HarmonyPSA makes RMM even easier by providing immediate views to potential and real issues via its Ticket view, making the entire system that much more efficient.”
Other ticketing integrations
Harmony PSA already has integrations to two of SolarWinds products: Solarwinds MSP and Solarwinds MSP N-CENTRAL. The N-Central integration is another full API integration, similar to NinjaRMM. Harmony are currently looking to add to that list. Duckworth mentioned that they are talking to both Continuum and Auvik, though the latter is still developing their full API which might delay the integration. Duckworth sees this as a key differentiator against Autotask and ConnectWise, both of whom already connect to this RMM solutions.
He commented: “Autotask and Connectwise don’t connect to RMMs using a generic API they are all bespoke connections.” Duckworth continued by explaining the benefits of using the API approach adding: “That makes the integration very simple and quick to do rather than a whole bunch of one-off code. The API code is all reusable and it is largely configuration. It is a better way of doing it and a better way of adding other products in the future.”
The API approach is a common one across the industry and having done the up front work it makes sense for Harmony to continue that approach. So what kinds of company will they be integrating to next? The inference from Duckworth is that clients will probably drive that conversation. The target client base for Harmony is not just MSPs, they also have customers in consulting (professional services), software vendors and VARs.
…and billing is next
Harmony is also working with Cloudberry for both ticketing and billing. Duckworth explained: “One of the things Cloudberry does is that it manages the Azure environment.it tells you what your Azure volume charges are and how many restores you have done. With this integration that will flow through to consumption contracts in Harmony and then again on to automate the invoicing. From Cloudberry’s automated measurements of your Azure environments through to the cash in your bank, that should be an automation journey that we will deliver.”
Once complete this will have improved the Harmony billing API and Duckworth inferred that further integrations would follow. It is a strategy that should see Harmony start to expand its existing customer base as it becomes more attractive to MSP’s and IT services firms.
Focus for 2018
The next major release from Harmony is due around March. It updates the software every six to eight weeks with minor releases in between.
This year Duckworth has three themes running. The first is in support of MSP’s. There will be more work on ticketing area in the next release. Duckworth promises several improvements in an area he already considers is strong. He continued: “adding dynamic checklists is one of them. Configurable checklists that will appear on the ticket based on workflow stages. If you have someone to site to commission something, when they get to the commission stage of the ticket it will give them a commissioning checklist.
Automation
“The second theme is automation.” Duckworth said. “This release automates the invoicing of recurring contracts. When you set up a recurring schedule you can set it to auto-invoice.” This ties back to the integration with BlueSnap mentioned above. Duckworth believes that MSP’s can reduce their accounting workload through an end to end automation, with checkpoints. Accounts will see a list of invoices automatically generated by Harmony PSA for recurring contracts. Once approved the batch is processed automatically through to BlueSnap, delivering end to end automation in the cash cycle.
Duckworth summarised: “That would go from switching on a recurring contract to actually putting cash in your bank without anybody having to do anything. We can already auto-settle funds. Auto-settling through to auto-invoicing is in probably in the next release. What we are doing this year is adding more and more end to end automations on the cash cycle. We are really trying to do as much as we can to eliminate back office operations.”
Resource Management
The third theme has nothing to do with MSP’s according to Duckworth. It is focused on consulting and professional services firms. Duckworth added: “The one thing we are missing is for these people is good workable resource management. That’s a major roadmap item we are working on right now.” It will be available later in the year. This will be an interesting addition and while Harmony works at the smaller consulting firms in developing this functionality it will appeal to larger businesses as well.
Most of the improvements are driven by customer demand. He commented that there was currently no intention to integrate to an HCM provider to bring skills data across. This is an area that few vendors do currently. For Duckworth, no customer has yet demanded it but with the growing importance of HRM strategically and with smaller companies starting to adopt solutions such as BreatheHR it will be interesting to see if it gets added to the roadmap.
What does this mean
Harmony is now looking to grow. It is already selling in Australia, North America and has a strong channel partner in Germany in Acmeo GmbH. In fact, Duckworth revealed that they have customers in eleven different countries. It will further extend its reach in Europe to another country later this year. The solution already supports multi-entity and multi-currency. It also supports German as well as English and will add a further a language when it launches.
Geoffrey Moore talks about the growth of technology companies in Crossing the Chasm. It seems that Harmony is looking to cross that chasm now. It has its innovators and early adopters and is now hoping to win over the early majority. If it can do so then Duckworth may need to think about opening another office.
Harmony could be about to come out of the shadows. Ironic considering its latest integration with NinjaRMM.
