Jill AlJundi was moving Pendello Solutions onto a new PSA in seven weeks, rebuilding fifteen years of processes as she went, and running her leadership team’s Rocks and Issues the whole time.
Most MSP owners hit that same question well before a migration forces it: you already have a PSA that runs the business, so where does an operating system fit?
EOS software runs the accountability layer — Rocks, Scorecard, Issues, V/TO, L10 agendas, and the Accountability Chart. A PSA runs service delivery: tickets, contracts, time entry, and billing. The two connect through an integration so the same number never gets entered twice.
Since Jill was running on EOS, she had clear goals and accountability helping her move the migration forward. Even better, her EOS implementation connected with her PSA through Strety’s integrations, keeping a daunting migration manageable.
Brian Dosal and Larry Garcia built BrightGauge, ran it on EOS, and sold it in 2019 — an MSP-industry company serving MSPs. Strety came out of what they needed and couldn’t buy.
Table of Contents
Why MSPs land on EOS
The first thing EOS fixes at an MSP is usually seats.
In a growing MSP, techs, sales, and service delivery all report up through one or two owners. Everybody knows what they do day to day and nobody agrees on who decides. Building an Accountability Chart forces that conversation, and the relief operators describe afterward is less about the chart than about no longer being the default answer to every question.
The Scorecard does something similar for numbers. Most MSPs have plenty of data — the PSA sees to that — and no weekly ritual for looking at the five numbers that predict next quarter. A Scorecard picks the handful that matter and puts a name next to each one.
Then there’s the meeting. An L10 gives issues somewhere to go. Rather than resurfacing the same three problems every month in different clothes, the team names them, prioritizes them, and solves them on a clock.
Pendello came out the other side of that seven-week migration with something they hadn’t had before: a department manager in a seat Jill used to own herself. She described what carried the leadership team through it:
“Strety being easy to use helps to ensure we’re progressing on the wide variety of issues and priorities associated with the transition.” — Jill AlJundi, Integrator and VP, Pendello Solutions
What lives in your PSA and what doesn’t
Here is the split, as plainly as we can put it.
Your PSA owns service delivery. Tickets, contracts, time entry, billing, SLAs, agreements, technician scheduling, and the service metrics you report to clients. This is the system of record for the work.
EOS software owns the accountability layer. Rocks, the Scorecard, Issues, the V/TO, the L10 agenda, and the Accountability Chart. This is where the company decides what it does next, and where everyone carrying a Rock or a number can see where they stand.
The two do different jobs, and no PSA was built for the second one. That’s why the common pattern is a PSA running beautifully next to a folder of spreadsheets — a V/TO in Google Docs, a Scorecard in Excel, Rocks in somebody’s notebook, and an L10 agenda that gets rebuilt every Monday morning.
The spreadsheets work until they don’t. They stop working at the point where more than the leadership team needs to see them.
There’s also a margin argument for getting this right. ConnectWise’s Service Leadership Index reported average adjusted MSP EBITDA of 11.1% in Q4, down from 12.2% the previous quarter, with 18% of MSPs reporting a loss — up from 14% (Service Leadership Index). The report attributes much of the pressure to lower project services revenue and lower project team utilization. Project execution is where MSP margin is currently leaking, which makes it a strange thing to manage in a notebook.
Worth noting: the ConnectWise Marketplace itself publishes on why MSPs run on EOS, and makes the same argument about tool fragmentation. The PSA vendor agrees with the premise.
Running EOS alongside ConnectWise, Autotask, or Halo
You are not replacing your PSA. Any EOS platform that implies otherwise has misread the business.
What you want instead is for the accountability layer to sit above the PSA and share data with it, so a number that already exists in one place doesn’t get retyped into the other. Strety works alongside the major PSAs and is listed in the ConnectWise Marketplace — Pendello runs Halo, and the point holds across platforms.
For a lot of MSPs the bigger integration question is Microsoft. If your company lives in Teams, an operating system your techs have to leave Teams to use will lose to the path of least resistance. Parachute Technology, a Microsoft shop, put it directly:
“One of the biggest things about Strety for us is the Microsoft Teams integration, since we are a Microsoft shop.” — Mark Lukehart, Chief Operating Officer, Parachute Technology
The test to apply to any tool in this category is simple. Count how many places a Rock’s status has to be updated for everyone who needs it to see it. If the answer is more than one, you’ve bought yourself a second job.
The Integrator Drivers for an MSP
Beyond the core EOS tools, three things determine whether the operating system reaches past the leadership team. We call them the Integrator Drivers: Projects, Performance, and Engagement. Each one lands differently at an MSP.
Projects. Client onboarding is the recurring project that either scales with you or eats your margin, and it rarely maps to a Rock cleanly — a Rock is a quarterly outcome while onboarding is a repeatable sequence with owners and dates. Connecting the two means a quarterly priority shows the work underneath it rather than a status colour someone picks on Friday. Given what the Service Leadership numbers say about project utilization, this is the driver with the clearest dollar attached.
Performance. Your techs are your product. Quarterly conversations and 1:1s are how you find out that your best L2 is bored eight weeks before they tell a recruiter. Keeping those conversations in the same place as the Scorecard means the manager preparing for a 1:1 can see the numbers that person owns without opening three tabs.
Engagement. Retention is where MSP margin is won and lost, and the research is unambiguous. Gallup’s Q12 meta-analysis, now in its 11th edition, found median differences between top-quartile and bottom-quartile business units of 23% in profitability and 21% in turnover at high-turnover organizations, rising to 51% at low-turnover ones (Gallup). A pulse survey takes five minutes. The conversation it starts at the next L10 is the part that matters.
Where EOS stalls at MSPs
EOS adoption fails at MSPs in three fairly predictable ways.
It stays top-heavy. The leadership team runs a clean L10 for six months and nobody below them can name a company Rock. This is the most common failure and the most fixable — it usually means the tooling was never accessible past the leadership seats. Parachute went from six executives to more than seventy people on the system:
“The ease of use of Strety has allowed us to push it across not only the executive level, but also into the department and individual levels.” — Mark Lukehart, Chief Operating Officer, Parachute Technology
The system gets cherry-picked. L10s without a Scorecard. Rocks with no V/TO behind them. An Accountability Chart drawn once and never revisited. The components lean on each other, and pulling two out leaves you running meetings with better names.
The vocabulary becomes a wall. Rocks, IDS, V/TO, People Analyzer — to a technical team this can land as management jargon invented to describe things they already do. The MSPs that get past this translate the terms into the work in the first month. A Rock is a ninety-day commitment with one owner. An Issue is a problem you’re allowed to say out loud. Explaining it that way costs one meeting and saves a quarter.
Frequently asked questions
What EOS software works best for an MSP that already runs a PSA like ConnectWise?
One that treats the PSA as the system of record for service delivery and handles the accountability layer above it — Rocks, Scorecard, Issues, V/TO, L10s — with an integration between them so numbers don’t get entered twice.
Do I have to replace my PSA to run EOS?
No. Your PSA keeps running tickets, contracts, and billing. EOS software covers the layer above it that a PSA was never designed for.
Does EOS software integrate with Microsoft Teams or Slack?
Yes. Strety has a deep two-way Microsoft Teams integration, which is what brought Parachute in as a Microsoft shop, and it connects to Slack as well.
Can I track Rocks and project execution in the same software?
Yes. Rocks connect to the project work underneath them, so a quarterly priority reflects real progress rather than a manually chosen status.
Why do MSPs adopt EOS in the first place?
Seat clarity, most often. When techs, sales, and delivery all report up through one owner, the Accountability Chart is the first thing that produces relief.
Where does EOS usually stall at an MSP?
Top-heavy adoption. It works at the leadership team and never reaches department or individual level, which is what Parachute avoided by rolling the system out to more than seventy people.
How much does EOS software cost?
Strety averages around $13 per user per month, with a free 30-day trial and no credit card required.
Can software replace an EOS Implementer?
Software runs the system and an Implementer teaches it. Self-implementing works well as a stepping stone, and plenty of MSPs start there and bring in an Implementer as they grow.
Getting started
The PSA keeps its job. The accountability layer gets a home. An integration between them keeps one from becoming data entry for the other. That’s the whole architecture, and it’s less complicated than the spreadsheet arrangement most MSPs are running today.
If you want to test it, run one L10 in Strety with your leadership team before you roll it anywhere else. Ninety minutes, your real Scorecard numbers, your real issues list. You’ll know by the end of the meeting whether the format holds up in your business, and you’ll know well before you’ve asked seventy people to change anything.
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