Summary: Many MSPs buy tools and watch them collect dust. The software gets set up once, technicians ignore it, and managers go back to chasing updates through email. TopLeft's onboarding is different because it focuses on building daily habits, not just teaching features. This post covers what onboarding really means for MSPs, why it matters for getting actual adoption, and the 10 specific ways TopLeft's approach delivers better results than competitors who just hand you login credentials and wish you luck.
You've bought software before, so you know the drill.
Someone from the vendor schedules a 60-minute demo where they walk through every menu and feature. You nodded politely, and they sent you some documentation. However, the next thing you know is that they disappear into thin air.
Two months later? Nobody on your team is using it.
This is not onboarding. It’s a product tour, and generally people will not stick with it.
Real onboarding for MSP tools means getting your technicians to actually change how they work every single day, not just in theory but in practice. It means your service managers run their team from visual boards instead of spreadsheets, and that your coordinators stop managing dispatch through MS Teams messages because they've found a better way.
When onboarding works, your team is using the software every day within weeks. When it fails, the tool sits unused and the budget is already spent.
The difference isn’t the features. It’s whether the vendor helps your team change how work happens rather than simply selling you the tool and hoping for the best
You’re not alone if you’re tired of buying software that ends up unused. Industry research consistently shows that many B2B SaaS customers abandon setup when getting started feels slow or confusing, and many users stop using tools altogether because they never learn how to use them properly. This is not because the software is bad, but because no one took the time to guide them.
For MSPs specifically, the stakes are even higher because your entire operation depends on people actually doing the work.
Your technicians are already juggling tickets in ConnectWise, Autotask, or HaloPSA while handling escalations and constant firefighting. Asking them to adopt another tool without clearly showing how it makes their day easier naturally leads to resistance. And honestly, that reaction is fair.
Your service managers are just as stretched. They track work through status meetings, email threads, and direct messages because that is what keeps things moving. Showing them a Kanban board without teaching them how it replaces those meetings does not change behavior. They stick with what they know. It works, but inefficiently, and it eventually wears everyone down.
Here's why proper onboarding matters:
Time to value shrinks dramatically. Steve Psaradellis saw project efficiency improve 58% after proper TopLeft implementation. His team moved from "negative efficiency to positive 58% efficiency. So, we finish projects now with an average of 1/3 time left over!"
Adoption becomes the norm, not the exception. Scott Taylor's team transformed their entire workflow. As he describes it: "We totally did a revamp of our tickets statuses, work types, all those kinds of things. We built out our Kanban board structure, trained the guys on the pull style ticket assignment versus dispatch, and the results began to speak for themselves over time. Our ticket count began dropping. We went from weeks to months old tickets to just a few days."
Support costs drop. Chase Effler's team "transitioned from ConnectWise Manage to TopLeft for better ticket management. And we have improved SLA adherence from 60% to 90% within six months. Our employee utilization has improved as well from 30% to 75%, our target is 80% and we are almost there."
Without solid onboarding, you're just buying expensive software that makes your team resent change. With it, you're building new habits that improve how work gets done every single day.
Most MSP software vendors hand you documentation and disappear. TopLeft's onboarding is structured around actually changing how your team works and is tailored to fit your team’s specific size and needs. Here's what makes it different.
TopLeft connects directly to your PSA on day one. We build boards using your actual tickets, your real projects, and your current team structure.
Te’neyl Hagman Simpson from Morgan Birgé explains
“I got the license late in the afternoon. Our CTO set up the connection within an hour, and by the next morning we already had boards built and tickets flowing into them using TopLeft.”
TopLeft teaches your team when to pull work, how to run 15-minute huddles, and why limiting work in progress actually matters. Features don't change behavior, but instead habits do.
A 5 person MSP and a 50 person MSP need different approaches. TopLeft offers multiple paths tailored to your MSP’s needs and size from Immediate Access to Guided Implementation.
TopLeft offers weekly Accelerator coaching where you work through real problems with MSP experts. Matthew Kaufman from KaufmanIT shares: "It's weird that this is the exact same data in a new visual form, but suddenly everybody knows which tickets should have been closed. We closed almost 300 old or finished tickets out of 450 in a week."
TopLeft’s implementation specialists help MSPs identify gaps like missing statuses and workflow bottlenecks. If a PSA has 47 ticket statuses that no one uses consistently, Kanban alone won’t magically fix that.
That said, we typically advise teams to start by visualizing their current work as it is, even if it’s messy and the statuses aren’t perfect. Once work is visible, we clean up and optimize the underlying PSA configuration incrementally and in parallel, instead of trying to redesign everything upfront.
Your service and/or project managers aren't just learning TopLeft. They're learning to stop micromanaging. Chase Effler explains: "I no longer have to discuss hey you should have been working on this ticket but instead you're working on this one. They know what they need to be working on and they're working on it effectively."
TopLeft helps you mandate it as the new standard for managing work. Optional tools don't get adopted, period.
TopLeft actively looks at how your team is using the product during onboarding. If usage drops or key actions are not happening, we reach out right away to understand what is blocking adoption and fix it. Addressing those issues in the first few weeks prevents the software from quietly going unused months later.
Craig Anderson from Machado: “When I joined Machado, we had 40–50 projects in flight, smart people working hard, and very little visibility into what was moving. I knew something had to change.
TopLeft gave us a way to make work visible, focus the team, and drive adoption of an Agile mindset without ripping out our PSA. Within a few months, we cut active initiatives in half, increased throughput, and established a higher baseline for project revenue with the same team.
As an internal champion, having that visibility and structure made it much easier to lead the change and get real results.”
Those internal wins didn’t just improve delivery at Machado. However, in this webinar, he became a credible advocate who confidently shared and spread these best practices with other MSPs.
TopLeft schedules regular monthly check ins to reinforce practices. During the period of 3-6 months is when teams are most likely to slip back to old patterns.
Here’s what usually happens when MSPs buy workflow tools without proper implementation.
Week one feels promising.
Week two brings setup friction and confusion.
By week three, resistance sets in.
Six months later, the tool is barely used, and the search for “something better” starts again.
That cycle isn’t because your team hates change. It’s because changing daily habits takes more than a feature walkthrough and a few documentation links.
Most MSPs do not need more documentation or another demo that gets forgotten. They need real onboarding that helps their team change how work gets done day to day and makes those new habits stick.
That’s what TopLeft’s onboarding is designed to do.
From day one, we build boards using your real data and focus on daily habits instead of features. The setup is tailored to your MSP’s size and structure, with hands-on coaching when bottlenecks appear.
We fix PSA issues that block visual management, train managers to lead work differently, and set clear expectations, so adoption is not optional. Throughout onboarding, we track usage, course-correct early, and help build internal champions. After launching, we follow up to make sure the new way of working actually sticks.
This is why MSPs like Steve, Scott, Te’neyl, Chase, and dozens of others use TopLeft every day and see real improvements in visibility, accountability, and flow.
The alternative is familiar. Software that sits unused while work continues to be managed through meetings, emails, and guesswork. The very problems you were trying to solve in the first place.
As Judi Baker from Seitel Systems puts it “I would absolutely recommend TopLeft because it helps us be better at our jobs. Using it gives us visibility into what needs to be done next. Tickets do not slip through the cracks nearly as often as they did before.”
If you are serious about improving how your MSP manages tickets and projects, proper onboarding is not optional. It is the difference between real change and wasted investment.