–-by Kelly Teal, SMB Group Contributing Analyst, and Laurie McCabe, SMB Group Co-founder & Partner
February, longtime software-as-a-service provider LogMeIn made two key moves. First, the company ditched its 20-year-old LogMeIn moniker in favor of its new, “GoTo” brand.
But the announcement goes beyond rebranding. It has streamlined its product portfolio into two main offerings: GoTo Resolve, for IT service management, and GoTo Connect, for unified communications and collaboration. The two solutions share a common underlying application, a unified administrative system, and the company is also converging user experiences across these solutions.
GoTo also introduced a new partner program designed to make it easier for partners to grow their businesses with GoTo solutions.
Why GoTo’s News Matters to SMBs
Small and medium businesses (SMBs) have long been a key market and a large part of LogMeIn’s installed base of over 800,000 companies. With its new brand and portfolio, GoTo is doubling down on its commitment to help SMBs address challenges with more accessible and effective solutions for communication and collaboration, and for IT service management.
SMBs face many obstacles in terms of deploying and managing technology solutions. Security concerns, figuring out which solutions will work best, and integration difficulties top the list, followed by perennial “lack of” issues—including lack of IT expertise, focus and goal setting, budget, and time.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this situation became even more challenging. Remote work suddenly became mainstream, and SMBs had to figure out how to manage a more distributed workforce on the fly. Many adopted a combination of disconnected applications to help them solve the additional communications, collaboration, and service issues that they were suddenly faced with.
This ad hoc approach has helped SMBs to weather the storm. But, it’s also clear that SMBs could gain significant benefits from taking a more integrated approach to communications and collaboration. SMB Group’s SMB Directions for the Future of Work Survey Study indicates that SMBs that have integrated all or most of their collaboration solutions are three times more likely to be very satisfied with the level of integration than SMBs with some or no integration.
In addition, in SMB Group’s Technology Directions for a Changing World Survey Study, SMBs ranked customer service and internal IT support as their first and second most important automation priorities. Here too, hampered by lack of IT resources and budget, many SMBs cobble together different solutions and services—resulting in workflow gaps, incomplete and inaccurate information, and a lot of frustration.
GoTo Connect and GoTo Resolve help address these requirements, among others.
Taking a Look at GoTo Connect
GoTo’s Connect unifies cloud telephony, meetings, messaging, training, and contact center capabilities together into a single solution, complete with embedded security capabilities. It also provides extensive Facebook integrations for better customer communications, and WebChat widgets, which filter website visitor interactions directly into Chat queues. In addition, GoTo Connect includes cloud-contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) capabilities, which the vendor says can be deployed in less than a day.
SMBs can start with one module and add more as necessary. Add-ons, such as additional phone numbers, are also available. Connect comes with a free trial (limited to five users) to give potential customers a solid idea of the functionality. Pricing is tiered based on the number of users, and there’s a freemium version for very small organizations.
Peeking Under the GoTo Resolve Hood
IT service management (ITSM) solution can be a very complex endeavor, but GoTo aims to simplify the process for SMBs with GoTo Resolve.
According to GoTo, Resolve enables IT teams—or even a one-person IT department—to perform remote monitoring and management, ticketing, and real-time support across people, devices, and assets (including billboards, medical devices, and point-of-sale systems). The solution features a new conversational ticketing and toolset, and a zero-trust security architecture that protects endpoints from cyber threats with multi-factor authentication, signature keys, and financial services-grade encryption. GoTo has designed Resolve to be deployed in minutes, not days.
Resolve also offers a free trial, a free service for up to three agents, and basic and standard tiers after that, as well as add-ons such as mobile and camera share.
More Power for Partners
GoTo also unveiled its new Partner Network, which is re-designed to provide its partners with more resources to attract new customers and grow their businesses. The program features a formalized tiering model, support for multiple partner types (MSPs, Resellers, and Distributors), and new benefits and incentives to help partners sell remote support, endpoint management, and UCaaS and CCaaS products to SMBs.
Implications for GoTo
GoTo’s rebranding comes on the heels of strong results: The private company reported $1.3 billion in revenues for 2021, an increase of about 8 percent year-over-over. Its shift to a new name and streamlined, easier to use, and more secure offerings should help GoTo continue to accelerate growth in the SMB market. GoTo’s team has sharpened its brand focus, making it easier for SMBs to understand how its solutions can help solve key communication, collaboration, and IT service problems that they have always faced–and which have been exacerbated by the pandemic. GoTo’s revamped approach should resonate well with SMBs that need to support a fluid, distributed workforce with solutions that are integrated, affordable, secure, and easy to deploy and manage.
Enhancements to GoTo’s partner programs should also help them attract a more varied set of partner types, and make it easier for partners to pursue new growth opportunities.
Implications for SMBs
GoTo’s re-design of Connect and Resolve addresses key collaboration, IT service, and financial issues SMBs face in a digital world. Simplification of the portfolio, combined with ease of use and integration capabilities zero in on key barriers that SMBs often come up against when looking for new solutions. Enhanced security safeguards via zero trust access controls also provide SMBs with peace of mind that they’ll be able to perform remote access and other sensitive tasks safely.
GoTo’s tiered pricing plans are very competitive as well, giving cost-conscious SMBs an affordable way to streamline key communications, collaboration, and IT service processes. GoTo’s model also offers customers the flexibility to incrementally add new functionality as needed, and as time and budgets permit.
Perspective
In the era of remote and hybrid work—and relentless threats to cyber security—SMBs need easy-to-use, secure communication, collaboration, and IT service tools.
SMBs’ lack of IT expertise, budget, and time prevent many from adopting integrated, comprehensive, and secure solutions. As a result, many continue to use disconnected solutions to manage these processes. While this approach can solve some problems, it introduces others, especially when people are working from multiple locations. Communication can get muddled or missed when different applications are siloed, and workarounds can lead to security vulnerabilities and breaches. It’s hard to get everyone on the same page, with the same information, and employees can easily get aggravated and frustrated.
GoTo’s new streamlined, unified approach gives SMBs a new, more accessible route to automate these business-critical functions and focus on growing their businesses.
© SMB Group, 2022
Source: Laurie McCabe’s Blog