BetterTracker Greets Betty and Bob
The expense tracking solution for MSPs plans to use a pair of new AI tools to turn a system of record on spending data into a system of action too.
N-able likes the sound of combining data gravity with AI automation in one platform, as do ConnectWise, Kaseya, and many others. Would it surprise you to learn BetterTracker is headed there as well?
Before I explain where the company’s going, though, let’s review where it’s been. BetterTracker’s solution has its roots in a system called NaviStack that helped MSPs inventory all of the software they use or sell. Over time through integrations with a subscriber’s Microsoft tenants, banks, and credit cards the system also began revealing what they were paying for all that software. Later still, BetterTracker let MSPs monitor all of their spending using those same integrations.
Providing that service involved accumulating a lot of information from what’s now approaching 7,000 MSPs. BetterTracker’s latest feature, Betty AI, is how the company begins converting that data from a helpful data store into a real-time intelligence resource too.
Currently in beta testing with selected partners and due to reach everyone else late next month, Betty lets users get AI-powered answers to spend-related questions via natural language prompting. For example, notes CEO Kevin Lancaster (pictured), MSPs have long yearned to know not just what they’re paying for tools but what they should be paying.
“Now we have a big enough volume of transactional data where we can tell you that pretty straight up,” he says. “We can give you ranges on what you should be paying for certain products in certain categories based on your size and endpoints and revenue and what have you.”
By end of year, MSPs who use BetterTracker’s customer-facing functionality to enhance strategic relevance will be able to ask similar questions about end users.
“What should I be selling them next? Where are they overleveraged? How can I help them optimize their technology stack?” Lancaster says.
In time, though, he continues, the system will move past answering questions about spending to calling out issues like unused subscriptions, overlapping tools, contract anomalies, and approaching renewal dates unprompted.
“Betty will basically be your business adviser,” Lancaster says. “It will turn into a very proactive, ongoing, business optimization platform.”
Useful stuff for a system of record, according to Lancaster, but not a complete realization of Betty’s potential.
“The holy grail in all of this is how do you turn it into a system of action,” he says.
And the answer is by going a step beyond identifying money-saving suggestions to actually implementing them automatically. “If you can do that and create some predictability to it, you can start squeezing out two, three, four, five, ten points of margin,” Lancaster says.
BetterTracker has similar functionality coming for vendors. The system already helps them use partner reviews and spending data to benchmark themselves against competitors, Lancaster notes. Betty’s forthcoming companion Bob will add AI-powered analysis to those insights.
“We’ll help vendors understand, based on anonymized aggregate data, how they should be pricing and what their true ICP looks like,” Lancaster says. Crucially, he adds, and in a departure from how most vendors handle pricing and targeting today, Bob’s suggestions won’t be speculative.
“Everybody’s making assumptions and we can show them real, factual, real-time data,” Lancaster says. “It’s pretty eye-opening.”