How SPK Leverages Exalate to Streamline its MSP Operations

Client:
Integration:

Jira - Jira

SPK and Associates is a leading women-owned engineering and IT Services company that serves product and software development teams.

Working as an MSP for more than 21 years, SPK has helped its customers harness technology to optimize engineering processes. Their services have helped businesses build, test, and release products faster and more effectively. 

Their core expertise covers four functional areas:

  • Product Lifecycle Management (PLM, PDM, QMS, MCAD, ECAD);
  • Software Lifecycle Management (ALM, DevOps);
  • Cloud for Engineering (Infrastructure, Security);
  • Data Engineering and Analytics.

We spoke with Carlos Almeida, the VP of Engineering at SPK and Associates to understand how he helped their customers overcome miscommunication & inefficiencies when using platforms such as Jira software, JSM, and more.

We’ll look closely at a specific customer, mysherpas, and the pivotal role Exalate played in optimizing their workflows. 

While working with mysherpas, SPK realized the potential of offering Exalate integration services to their other customers. They soon became Exalate partners and are currently active in the Atlassian ecosystem offering Jira integrations for multiple use cases. 

Challenges with Mysherpas

SPK and Associates offered DevOps-managed services to mysherpas where both organizations used separate Jira instances. 

SPK needed to track only specific tickets from mysherpas. 

However, the manual process of checking tickets across instances was time-consuming and error-prone. This led to missed tickets and inefficiencies.

Why SPK Chose Exalate for Jira Sync

Carlos explored various Jira to Jira integration tools and chose Exalate due to its advanced scripting capabilities, which allowed customized data mappings. During their PoC, SPK also used Exalate’s Visual and Script Modes to automate ticket syncing and streamline workflows.

Once they were satisfied with the results, they moved to implement the use case for mysherpas. 

I looked at a few Exalate competitors and some of them were 'Whizzy week, pretty simple, left and right mappings' But you're 'limited with them. And then, I looked at Exalate's scripting side and realized how powerful it is.

CARLOS ALMEIDA,

VP OF ENGINEERING at SPK AND ASSOCIATES

The Mysherpas Use Case

SPK implemented a unidirectional Jira integration where tickets from mysherpas automatically synced to SPK’s Jira. This setup allowed both companies to work within their own environments while maintaining synchronized issue tracking. 

Key features included:

  • Automatic Triggers: Tickets synced based on selected fields and actions.
  • Custom Mapping: SPK configured data fields and updated triggers to suit mysherpas’ needs.
Overall, Exalate made the setup with myserpas simple, and once it was set up neither companies had any issues.

CARLOS ALMEIDA,

VP OF ENGINEERING at SPK AND ASSOCIATES

Mysherpa Results

SPK’s engineers saved approximately 5 hours weekly and eliminated missed tickets with this integration. 

Recognizing the power of a robust integration solution like Exalate, SPK saw mysherpas’ implementation as a catalyst for scaling its usage across their broader client base.

Here’s how it went! 

As I got deeper into the integration, I'd say, about 80% was very intuitive. For the remaining 20% for my special use case and conditional logic, I went through the docs and I did reach out to support.

CARLOS ALMEIDA,

VP OF ENGINEERING at SPK AND ASSOCIATES

Understanding Challenges in an MSP Arrangement

SPK and Associates identified two recurring challenges in their MSP engagements.

One was the traditional software development lifecycle challenge where they worked with multiple vendors who had sophisticated solutions like ALMs, PLMs, etc. They specifically looked for data transformation and integration. 

In such cases, both SPK and their customers didn’t want to fully open up their respective platforms to each other. 

Exalate is a really good solution and the product impressed me because I had the fine-grained ability to manipulate directions, nuance field behaviors, programmatically do things. The more got into it, the more could do. I'm still learning.

CARLOS ALMEIDA,

VP OF ENGINEERING at SPK AND ASSOCIATES

Another challenge was in the outsourced help desk services. 

Often other companies have their own internal Jira help desk. In such cases, when SPK had to maintain customer tickets within its own Jira instance, it created problems, especially since the ticket volume was huge. 

Having to hop over into every customer environment to pick up their tickets was becoming error-prone, costly, and time-consuming. 

Traditionally, all this was done manually via meetings. The customer would either send SPK the ticket information and they’d create the tickets themselves or they would email them directly to the SPK service desk. Their agent would then take it from there. Not very efficient! Plus, tickets were slipping through the cracks. 

The MSP Use Cases

Outsourced Software Development

For the product development services, SPK usually synced agile properties. 

In outsourced software development, customer backlog and dev items went into an equivalent mapping in the dev project on SPK’s Jira. 

Here, the ticket volume was lower but the mindset was different than help desk integration. 

They had to check which tickets were coming in from the sprint, track their velocity, which ones were pushed into the backlog, and much more. 

They also captured the sprint the ticket belonged in, product effort estimation, epics (in time), etc in their own Jira instance. 

Exalata's team was very responsive. I ask a technical question and I get something back pretty quick.

CARLOS ALMEIDA,

VP OF ENGINEERING at SPK AND ASSOCIATES

Help Desk Integration

Then there was the help desk mapping and integration, where all the ITIL metrics mattered. 

For instance, Jira Service Management (JSM) has workflows that have to do more with SLAs, escalations, visibility, alerting, etc. 

Integrating the customers’ JSM with SPK’s internal helpdesk meant mapping and syncing due dates, priorities, and SLAs one by one through resolution. 

Hence, the measures included: 

  • Response times
  • Ticket volumes
  • SLA and escalation workflows
"There's no more like 'Oh, you created a ticket at your end, but we didn't see the ticket at our end.'

CARLOS ALMEIDA,

VP OF ENGINEERING at SPK AND ASSOCIATES

Scaling Exalate for MSP Arrangements

They looked back on their challenges and use cases and realized a pattern. 

Most use cases needed an integration solution to pass data back and forth between SPK and its customers’ instances. 
The model Carlos pushes at SPK and Associates is to provide Exalate integration services via a dedicated channel for each new customer.

We appreciate Exalate as our partners and as a tool.

CARLOS ALMEIDA,

VP OF ENGINEERING at SPK AND ASSOCIATES

Exalate allows SPK to continue working in their own Jira instance while the customer creates tickets in their JSM or Jira software project. All the relevant tickets are automatically pushed into SPKs Jira. Fields going back and forth can also be fine-tuned to specific customer needs.  

Exalate operates in the background, allowing SPK engineers and their customers to focus on what matters most.

Results

SPK experienced the following benefits:

  • Enhanced ability to stay up-to-date with customer information and manage every incoming issue.
  • Increased visibility, trust, and transparency with its customers, ensuring no missed SLAs, deadlines, or tickets.
  • Saved each SPK engineer 5 hours a week working with mysherpas, with continued time savings for every new customer.

Future

Carlos and his team at SPK are fully committed to Atlassian’s ecosystem of vendors and actively seek opportunities to help them leverage Exalate to optimize their workflows.