Syncro has jumped into the artificial intelligence ring today with the new Smart Ticket Management, its first deliverable on the company’s roadmap to incorporate AI throughout its all-in-one PSA, RMM, and remote support software solution to improve operational efficiency.
“We are maniacally focused on improving the work of the technician to higher value work and to reduce all of the rote, mundane, repeatable efforts,” says CEO Michael George, who joined Syncro in March and brought onboard some of the former AI/automation team from Continuum, the IT platform company he led prior to its acquisition by ConnectWise in 2019. “This is really one of the first steps in our offering that is going to be leveraging AI technologies.”
Chief Product Officer Dee Zepf, a Continuum alumnus who joined George’s leadership team in March, says Syncro developed its own large language models from the ground up and trained them on a real-world curated IT data set from its RMM/PSA solution.
“We really feel good about the mapping that we’re doing as well as the curated solutions that we’re matching up with that data to offer to MSPs,” Zepf says.
Is Syncro Playing Catch-Up?
Asked if Syncro is playing a bit of catch-up to its RMM/PSA competitors such as Kaseya and ConnectWise that have already rolled out AI capabilities and assistants, Zepf says no. “What I’ve seen from competitors in the market has been a little bit more of leaning into ChatGPT and external models and kind of putting AI around the edges … but I have not seen anyone else really taking this approach that we have, which is to really embed it deeply into the platform and use it as an underlying technology driver.”
Adds George, “We’re building really powerful proprietary models, kind of doing all the hard work in advance to build a platform for all of the things that we’re going to be releasing over time. … “This is the first of many of the benefits that are emerging, the actual applications, that will benefit our partners.”
Syncro’s Smart Ticket Management automatically categorizes tickets (40 categories), determines if the ticket has an associated printer or asset and displays relevant asset identification information, and creates guided resolution steps with a checklist embedded in the ticket. Many tickets include links to scripts and automations. All suggested automations and scripts are vetted and pre-approved by Syncro’s team to ensure a safe and secure computing environment.
“We’re taking existing scripts that have been vetted and written by humans and mapping those to problems,” Zepf explains. “So we’re not introducing any potential for hallucination that might exist in products that are generating scripts for you or doing generative solutions.”
“This solution has the potential to address common issues that other products often miss,” says Jasper Grewal, president of ROI Technology, and an early user of Smart Ticket Management. “We don’t get the sense that this is something bolted on to an existing solution to check the ‘we have AI’ box. Instead, it is designed entirely to automate in support of the human element – not in spite of it. We don’t feel it’s built to replace people – and that’s exactly how I believe an AI tool should be used in business.”
ROI Technology has been using Syncro for about two years, and Grewal says he sees huge potential for improving service delivery “although it’s still early days for the feature. We always want human involvement in our support process because our business is built on relationships. No one dislikes fighting with chatbots more than we do. Smart Ticket Management is the natural evolution of a platform already built for speed. It’s not about eliminating the need for techs to touch a ticket altogether—the stakes are so high if mistakes are made. Instead, this tool can nudge our techs in the right direction, save them a few minutes every day, and improve our service delivery. That’s an undisputed win in my book.”
Smart Ticket Management will also include Smart Search in a future enhancement. Syncro has made Smart Ticket Management available to some early MSP users and expects it to be generally available before the end of July.
What’s On The Cybersecurity Roadmap?
Also on Syncro’s roadmap is cybersecurity, and in May it announced an expanded partnership with Bitdefender to make Bitdefender’s MDR (managed detection and response) services available directly through Syncro.
Asked if the company plans to add other cybersecurity offerings to its RMM/PSA platform, George says, “You should assume that we are going to be in it [cybersecurity] in a material way.”
He adds, “We’re really very, very happy with that [Bitdefender] relationship, so we will continue with that, but it is our obligation to always do what is in the best interest of our MSP partners as well. So you know where it makes sense to integrate, we’ll make our API available and do whatever we can. … We are looking at acquisition candidates as well.”
A lot of the roadmap is focused on scaling the platform, Zepf says. “There are things that people love about Syncro,” such as simplicity and speed, but she acknowledges that they hear complaints about MSPs outgrowing it. “We’ve got a pretty aggressive roadmap for this year so that they don’t outgrow it and we’re already delivering features to get ahead of that issue,” says George. “We’re very focused on making sure they grow from Syncro into Syncro, not out of it.”
