The BrightGauge Blog

Since kicking off the year we haven’t talked a lot about new feature updates, but that doesn’t mean our team was slowing down the work on bringing them to life. You asked for them and we listened… and we’re excited to launch 2 big improvements (mentioned often on our Feature Request board) that will make your BrightGauge experience better every day: Export Gauge Data to CSV Let’s say you’re working remotely one day and notice a gauge that you want to get some more information on. You need to share the data with your teammates in order to ask them for that extra info. This happened to me recently when I was looking at the gauge to show our list of customers for one specific RMM integration. Before, there was no easy way to share this list - I would have to ask my team to log in and look at the gauge, or maybe try to screenshot the data list as best as possible. Neither of those is a great option, plus there would be nowhere for my crew to log any notes. The good news here is that with our new exporting feature, all I had to do is hit the “CSV” button and my list was immediately emailed to me. I quickly opened the file in a spreadsheet and shared with those who needed to review the list and get back to me. Adding notes was easy and within 15 minutes the whole thing was done and I had the information I was looking for. Any list gauge or table gauge can be downloaded with no limits on the amount of rows downloadable. Export Drilldown Data to CSV Building on our new downloading capability, we also gave users the option to download any drilldown data to a CSV. This is a great option for those times when you have a long list of data to sort through. Let’s say you have a machine count gauge with 250 machines and you need to sort and analyze that data. Using the CSV download feature to then transfer the gauge data to a spreadsheet makes it incredibly easy for a granular analysis. use the “CSV” link in the right corner and your download will start Stay tuned for more delightful features, as we call them, coming soon and are sure to make your BrightGauge experience better every day!

If you keep up regularly with our blog, you know all about the new series we’ve kicked off to help our community get to know the people behind the product here at BrightGauge. Through lists of our favorite things, we’re letting each team member tell us as much or as little about the topic at hand for each post. So far we’ve talked about our favorite movies and our hometowns, so now let’s dive into our favorite places to wine and dine: David: My favourite place to get food from is actually a take-out Chinese restaurant called Hong Kong Chinese. It's deep in the Kendall suburb of Miami and as much as I live near Downtown I haven't found Chinese food that's anywhere near as good or for as low a price. Kristian: As cliché as this sounds, my favorite place to eat is in my very own home. Growing up in a hispanic household with your grandmother and a father who used to be a chef, kind of spoils you. Yes there are a countless number of awesome restaurants here in South Florida (which I love to indulge in, don’t get me wrong), but none of the food compares to a good ol' home cooked meal. Adam: All of South Florida? Wow. That is a large area. One of the great things about South Florida is the wide variety of Latin American and Caribbean food. Great Haitian food in Little Haiti, the ceviche at Peruvian restaurants, the cafecitos everywhere, and new food trucks coming up every weekend all contribute to an endless tasting course. I'm not sure I can definitively say there is one place that is my favorite. Perhaps because pho is hard to find down here I do enjoy a little place called Pho Thang near Palmetto Bay in Miami. It's not fancy and the service isn't amazing, but the pho is very delicious and the prices aren't crazy. Stephen: My favorite place to eat in South florida has to be Shibui - best sushi in Miami for the price. Orlando: Versailles. Great cuban food. Reasonable prices. Real "Miami" experience. a team celebration at Versailles Francisco: Hillstone's in Coral Gables. I have yet to go to a place where everything I have ever tried on their menu is as delicious as the next item. Never exited the restaurant with a bad experience and always with a happy mood and full stomach. Larry: Burger Bob's. One of the last greasy spoons left in Miami. Rick: Uh, POC Buffet & Sushi... Obviously. Fantastic Sushi, all you can eat, right below the BrightGauge headquarters?! Oh, and a premium Zagat rating. Haters need to learn to appreciate. (Eating House, definitely Eating House). Editor’s note: The story behind Rick’s response is that we all give him a hard time about the “all-you-can-eat” sushi buffet that sits in the lobby level of our office building. While the Yelp reviews do give the restaurant 4 stars, most of us have tried the restaurant and the easiest way to explain it would be the old line about “you get what you pay for”. Rick has been known to fly solo at POC because he can’t seem to convince anyone else on our team to join him there. Eric: Christy's in Coral Gables. My father, brother and I have a monthly "Dosal Boys Lunch" on Fridays where we get to catch up so it has a special meaning to me. Steve: Well whenever I pick lunch for a work event it's always Swine. The brisket and pork are amazing and I love the pickled onions. A close second is Mellow Mushroom in South Miami. That's my wife and I's new date spot. Great variety of funky pizza and good beer selection. lunch at Swine... the lights say "Run Pig Run" Amanda: Wow, it’s hard to pick just one! Coming from a small town with mostly chain restaurants, the variety that we have in South Florida is so awesome and trying out new restaurants is one of my favorite hobbies. I’ll have to name a few of them: For pizza, there’s a tiny place in Fort Lauderdale called Luigi’s Coal Oven Pizza - the owner is originally from Naples (Italy, not the gulf coast of Florida) and he does true works of delicious art. In Coral Gables, there’s a fantastic Caribbean restaurant called Ortanique that I always enjoy. I could go on for ages, but the list is getting long so I’ll cap it off with DaDa in Delray Beach - the restaurant is a historic home and property that also focuses on a rotating artwork collection. Pretty cool vibe and always tasty food, but it’s their drink menu that I really love. Their signature item is the mojito, and they have an entire menu of different flavors made with fresh fruit puree and Hawaiian sugar cane sticks. Delicious! Ryan: Living next to the ocean for the first time in my life, I am taking advantage of the great seafood. I love eating at Divino Ceviche in Miami because of their namesake dish... the ceviche! I also enjoy The Local and Swine in Coral Gables because they serve modern/southern fare that reminds me of Tennessee. Brian: Hillstone. Coral Gables. Amazing food, awesome service, great location, and they serve the best wine experience by the glass. Always fresh, perfect temp, and affordable. Randall: Shiver's Barbecue. Homestead. I love me some good ribs. Have you been to the South Florida area? If so, tell us about your favorite restaurants so we can check them out!

[Case Study] Sometimes in life, you don’t initially realize when things could be even better than they already are. At first glance, the grass is green on your side of the fence. The team at PriorityOne Group used to be in this scenario… their grass was green when it came to the dashboard and reporting solution they had in place and they actually liked the product very much. But at a closer glance, there were some brown patches to be found here and there. As Jason Romer, Director of Technical Services, looks back on his days of using that first software solution he remembers that he wished for faster support response times and more guidance on what the software could do. Additionally, the gauges and dashboards in those days were very time intensive to manipulate - and with a growing business he didn’t have any time to spare. The Change It was the IT Nation conference in November 2015 that gave Jason a glimpse into how green the grass could be for PriorityOne. He had just left the booth of his dashboard solution at that time, when he came across the BrightGauge booth. As he tells the story, “I spoke to the BrightGauge team and they showed me the types of gauges and reports they had. The a-ha moment was when they said they would set it up for us and showed us the Quickbooks datasets – as soon as we saw that, it was a wrap.” Besides the Quickbooks integration, Jason was also keen on the ease of use and data manipulation that he knew would result in rich reports for his clients. But it was the BrightGauge team that truly sealed the deal. Jason concludes that “the people sell the product” and we certainly agree that our people are one of our best assets! Getting Started with BrightGauge Looking at the BrightGauge implementation and onboarding process, Jason states that it was “incredibly easy”. It all started with a Data Customization chat with our team so that he could explain what PriorityOne wanted and the parameters of how they use their data sources. Jason goes on to explain that the onboarding process and the people at BrightGauge are the most positive experiences in his time as a customer. “We were hand-held from the beginning, which from my point of view trying to run a MSP of our size and not having the time to get into the weeds on all this stuff is HUGE! The BrightGauge team did and is still doing the work for us so that we can focus on using the tools.” When it comes to the software differences Jason confides “there are many positive differences just in terms of user experience, look and feel, types of data that is available and the reporting aspect, but it’s the people that make BrightGauge different and stand out. Even when the team got slammed with work around the holidays, they were upfront about it, setting expectations with me the entire way. It was a breath of fresh air in a world where everyone seems unable to tell the client what’s really going on.” Recommending BrightGauge The effect of changing their Business Intelligence platform showed quickly for the team at PriorityOne, as they were soon able to benefit from the results of leveraging BrightGauge. Jason explains that now he and his team “see everything” from A/R at a glance or even noticing when their engineers are getting too busy… and that visibility also allows them to work on other aspects of their business. Jason minces no words as he explains to the MSP community “If you don’t have a dashboard system you have no idea what you are missing, seriously, because you have no visibility on what you are missing. I recommend BrightGauge over other solutions because of the hands on approach the staff takes, the elegance of the dashboards, the ease of use and manipulation, and the quality of the reports.”

It’s probably safe to say that throughout history, plenty of great ideas, inventions, and achievements were stumbled upon rather than being planned out. Sure, a lot of people may also be chasing a dream and have a specific route in mind along with a checklist to get them there. In this specific case, the Support Team at BrightGauge found themselves in the former category when it came to ramping up their efforts on customized videos almost a year ago. Our team had dabbled in support videos here and there, but prior to a year ago they were occasional at best - usually saved for a really complicated ticket that couldn’t be explained by a written response. Then Kristian joined our growing crew. As the main Support guru on our team, we left Kristian with the responsibility of making sure our support time continued to be world-class and that our customers were happy with the help we provide. We didn’t really set many guidelines about how he should achieve that task… this was his project to own. Kristian was up and running in no time, and hearing him recording quick videos became a common practice. As the months flew by and the videos kept multiplying, the happy customer responses just kept rolling in. In fact, we have a Slack channel dedicated to sharing Customer Feedback, and after a while we knew we had definitely written a new chapter in the BrightGauge history book. as shared in Slack: a note from a customer in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada When we asked Kristian about how the videos came to be such a big focus for him, the answer was simple: “I personally am a visual learner and I believe most other people are too. So if I have the ability to show someone how to do something, I’ll take that route. I also think it’s not only easier for me to record a quick video vs. typing a long explanation, but I think it’s also easier for the customer to watch a short video.” Like the example above, if you’ve had the pleasure of receiving a customized support video clip from Kristian or anyone else on our team, then there’s a huge chance that you were incredibly excited about it, probably sent us a love note, and also wanted to know more about how you could implement the same idea on your team: another example of the great notes we’ve received about our support videos We’re always excited to give our customers the answer when they ask, but since there are plenty of other companies out there who could benefit from better service and support we decided to share our secret with the world - Droplr is the tool behind our customized video success. (side note: Droplr does more than just videos and our team uses it in some manner every day at BrightGauge HQ.) The custom videos have become such a key part of our support method that we now ask job candidates to send us “how to” recordings as part of the interview process for our Customer Support Specialist opening! Videos are here to stay and since seeing is believing, here’s a sample video recently sent to a BrightGauge customer: When you give customized videos a shot, please share your experience with us... we think you'll love it!

As we recently explained in a blog about our team’s favorite movies, we’re taking some time in 2016 to showcase a little more in-depth info about the people behind the product at BrightGauge. So we’re putting together several lists about our favorite things and sharing them with our community. Question # 2 asked our team about their original hometown and what it was like growing up there: Randall: Coral Gables. A nice, green oasis in a bustling city (Miami). Central to everything and plenty to do. welcome to “The City Beautiful” Brian: Miami - great city to be from due to the multi-cultures that all converge together throughout my entire life. It was unique to be from a city that is all about "materialistic" things but also is built on hard work from immigrants who believe so much in family and in small business. Miami at dusk Ryan: Columbia, Maury County, Tennessee, USA The self-proclaimed Mule Capitol of the World, C-Town had a population of about 30,000 people when I grew up there. Most worked at the GM automotive factory, farmed, or commuted an hour to Nashville for their job. I lived a typical small-town life in the exurbs, spending lots of time outside, playing soccer, and creating things for fun (building treehouses, designing objects, making studio art). Living in a small town made me want to live in a large city, just because there was so much going on all the time. Once old enough to drive, I spent time driving to Nashville on the weekends. Eventually I moved to a giant city -- Miami, FL! downtown Columbia Steve: I was born in Long Island, NY but grew up in Miami, West Kendall more specifically. Our neighborhood was great and I had an awesome group of friends that I met there and we are still close to this day. Always had big family parties and caused a lot of havoc with my cousins. And it was great to be able to take a 20 minute drive and be at the beach. Miami’s sun and surf view Eric: Miami / Coral Gables. I'm a local guy and grew up here in town. I did live in Boston for 4 years and New York City for 2 years but I love Miami and being close to family. the famous Venetian Pool, Coral Gables Rick: Long Island, New York! Hard to beat a 30 minute train ride into the city, a beach around every corner, and a slice at the quintessential pizza spot in Huntington followed by a night out with friends. Never a dull moment. the sign says it all... Amanda: Concord, North Carolina… “Where Racing Lives” Concord is a suburb about 30 minutes outside of Charlotte, but its claim to fame is being home of the Charlotte Motor Speedway. NASCAR is a really big deal in the area. As a child, I lived even further outside the city in a fairly rural area where there was quite a bit of farmland and I always knew the same kids for most of my younger years. Charlotte wasn’t really on the map for big business relocations until probably the mid to late 90’s; after that things seemed to explode with tons of new people moving in and the suburbs multiplied quickly. While it’s nice to go back to Concord and visit my family now, and find some good ol’ Southern Hospitality, my trips there are short. I much prefer living in South Florida and I don’t think I could ever get tired of palm trees, the awesome weather and always having plenty of things to do! historic downtown Concord Francisco: Caracas, Venezuela. (Vista Alegre) The fondest memories I've had with friends took place there in a very modest neighborhood that was always beaming with life at every street. As a kid, I was always on the street with my friends playing any game that popped into our heads. Walking from place to place, eating fresh bread from the local bakery, and enjoying our youths is all I can remember when I think back to my home town. a panoramic view of Vista Alegre, Caracas Larry: Miami. Great cosmopolitan city to be raised in. Unlike anywhere else in the world. First world city with third world culture. Calle Ocho (8th Street) in Miami’s famous Little Havana neighborhood Orlando: I grew up in Miami. It was great. There is something to be said about playing outside year round. South Pointe Park, Miami Beach David: Kingston, Jamaica. Occasional trips to the beach, a few weekend runs to the touristy parts of the country for a getaway, good local eats, warm climate, some hurricanes which are fun to be in once you're safe. Luckily none were terribly damaging/serious. Kingston’s skyline Adam: Miami, born and raised. Growing up I always felt the need to go see other places and never really considered Miami a special place. I never lived on the beach, never went clubbing, and my Spanish isn't great so it was a bit like being a foreigner sometimes. After a bit of traveling I do see the appeal to this city, especially for people that want to get out of the snow. The summers can get brutally humid, but the rest of the year makes up for it. As for the Hispanic/Caribbean culture, I definitely appreciate it a lot more after leaving and having food cravings. Having a car has always been essential and growing up I thought if I moved more central it wouldn't be needed, but it seems one will always need a car in Miami. the annual SOBE (South Beach) Wine & Food Festival Kristian: I’m a born and raised Miami boy that has endured excessive humidity, no winters, and crappy drivers all his life. Ok, I may be exaggerating a bit, but anyone who has lived (or at least visited Miami) knows what I’m referring to. In all honesty, I wouldn’t trade growing up and living in Miami for anything. Miami is a huge Melting Pot of cultures and this can be seen through its people, which are constantly expressing their heritage. Whether it is through food in restaurants, music/dance in clubs, or simply just being themselves and practicing their ways/customs. Apart from the cultural diversity, I also love Miami’s awesome activities, beaches, and nightlife. There’s is always something to do. Being “bored” in Miami, truly isn't an option. LIV, one of Miami’s famous clubs It’s safe to say we have a lot of locals in the BrightGauge office, but everyone still brings their own unique background to our group! The Miami area is truly one of the best places we can think of to find a huge variety of people from all over the world and we look forward to seeing where our future teammates are from.

[Case Study] In a time when measurables mean everything to a rapidly-growing business, the team at Origin IT found themselves looking for a more comprehensive data solution. Back in 2013, they were using one dashboard solution in their service area and for all the other areas of their business they were extracting data directly from SQL which was a manual process. While they managed to make the most out of wrangling their data sources, what they were originally looking for at that time were good-looking, external, client-facing reports. Adopting BrightGauge When Origin first launched BrightGauge as their data solution, they had an employee base of about 45 people and kept their focus solely on client reporting for a short time. However, the Executive team at Origin realized that rapid growth opportunities were on the horizon and they needed to assign a team member to focus the majority of their energy on managing data across their entire business. As Head of Services, Matt Treacy, explains he “didn’t have the time or knowledge with SQL” that would drive the type of customization the business was looking for. The team found their solution in hiring an Operations Analyst, Georgia Anderson, for the growing MSP. As Matt explains, the adoption process was a quick one for the large team because they instantly realized how much was possible with BrightGauge, how quickly Georgia could pull it all together, and how their data ended up in a neat presentation using both reports and dashboards. The Results: How 7 Key Business Areas Incorporated Dashboards to Help Drive Their Success In the last 3 years since becoming a BrightGauge customer, Origin IT has grown from 45 people to 125, and Matt tells us that they leveraged their data to support their massive growth because “data drives each department to understand what’s going on in their area”. Plus, the availability of data has opened the floodgates to wanting even more information at their fingertips. While the partnership began with a focus on pulling ConnectWise data for external reports, they now have automated reports and custom dashboards for individuals, teams, the management team and even their board of directors. Finance: Where Origin previously had a custom SQL report with daily financials, there is now a live dashboard to show financials from across the business. Sales: This group keeps an eye on the near future using an automated monthly rolling forecast based on new opportunities and probability of closure. Service: For this team, additional data sources such as the phone system are imported via Dropbox to ensure that reports and dashboards reflect a true 360-degree view of Origin’s business operations. Projects: For Project teams, there are daily updates on the amount being billed, the amount outstanding, and more. Account Managers: In this group, each person has their own personal dashboards that show their sales activity, as well as dashboards for specific clients. Customer Satisfaction: CSAT scores also end up on the big-screen TVs found in nearly every room of Origin’s spacious new office. The Board: When the time comes for Board meetings, dashboards are leveraged again to quickly and easily show the data that used to require a more time consuming process involving SQL and Excel spreadsheets. As Georgia explains, the beauty of creating all of these custom reports and dashboards is the time savings she sees: “once they are created, they are set for good”. Recommending BrightGauge As Matt tells us, “looking back about 8 months ago, when the owner of the business asked us for a report, it would take a week or two to create. Now it’s done by the end of the day or the next morning. Everyone knows they can ask for anything now. Before it was ‘no, can’t do that’. The process is now streamlined and easy.”

[Case Study] Netrix IT runs on Traction EOS and this business model requires a scorecard to be reported on weekly from each department of the company to ensure everyone is on track to meet weekly, quarterly, and year end goals. Although they had an operations strategy in place, they lacked an efficient way to extract the data they needed to help track their team’s progress. Netrix’s Director of Technology, Nick Olerud, needed a solution that would manage the data but also help easily share the data with his entire team for them to know how they were performing. Looking for a Solution Before they became a BrightGauge customer, Netrix knew they had a wealth of information in their Tigerpaw PSA along with their other internal systems that would help them manage their business. The challenge was they were spending a lot of time compiling the necessary reports from various systems. With no centralized data solution in place, Nick was manually pulling data from Tigerpaw and other data sources, then spending up to 4 hours each week creating the team’s scorecard alone - time that he didn’t have to spare, especially when you consider Netrix IT’s rapid pace of growth. Once the team at Netrix had seen BrightGauge in action, they were excited and ready to dive in immediately. Their demo, signup, and deployment took less than 48 hours from start to finish: “Setup time is minimal and the building of gauges and reports is very intuitive.” Using BrightGauge When Netrix signed up as a BrightGauge customer, they immediately began seeing results when it came to making sense of their data. For the management team, leveraging reports and dashboards made it easy to gain critical business insights. But there was also a greater push when it came to the entire team’s performance and accountability. In fact, after deploying BrightGauge Nick could see the results immediately: “within the first week, I could see the team really rally around the dashboard and begin to take pride in the level of service they provide”. the Netrix team and their TAC dashboard Netrix has a very competitive team and the transparency that stems from using the BrightGauge dashboards helps to drive the team’s efforts to the right task at the right time. Displaying Open Service Order [ticket] Counts and SLA numbers (daily and weekly) helps them set the tone for the day and allows them to know when they need to pull in more resources. As Nick describes it, “BrightGauge is really the heartbeat monitor of our Technical Assistance Center. We use it to monitor the response time, workload, and ensure our clients receive the support they expect.” And now when it comes to those weekly scorecard updates, the report is automated and gets delivered to Nick’s inbox every Monday: “The amount of time it saves me while keeping our technical team on task is unmeasurable and completely priceless.” Recommending BrightGauge Businesses don’t run on ‘feel’, instead you need facts and numbers, which BrightGauge brings to the table, explains Nick. He goes on to say “The product is amazing and the people at BrightGauge are top notch. I believe in having a solid relationship with my vendors and clients. I had the opportunity to meet Eric and Larry at the most recent TigerPaw conference and it was a blast to collaborate with them and share success stories.”

In the recent months, we’ve seen our MSP Consulting service become more popular as word gets out about the expert advice offered by our co-Founder and CEO, Eric Dosal. With many years of experience in managing his family-owned MSP in the South Florida market, Eric always shares the specific processes and procedures that he used every day to help grow his business. One of the hot topics that comes up during these consulting sessions is how to structure contracts, specifically for a long-term basis. Eric decided to share his advice here in a quick video so that he could give specific examples of the steps he took to ensure the best contract results. The topics covered: why we always used fixed fee contracts contract requirements specific contract verbiage how to guarantee annual contract increases the impact of annual increases

At BrightGauge, we’re constantly in touch with our customers and our community about all things related to operating a successful MSP business. Through one-on-one customer calls and even through our ongoing Educational Webinar Series we have discussed a ton of hot topics such as Sales best practices, driving growth through Customer Success initiatives, the KPIs that all MSPs should be tracking, and so on. But when we talk to customers about their marketing plans, we typically sense that folks feel overwhelmed even thinking about the topic and where to begin. But that’s just it! While marketing may be perceived as difficult to manage, expensive, and confusing to track when it comes to ROI, we know differently from our own experience. So we recently decided to host a webinar that would help show just how easy and effective a few simple marketing steps can be. The ideas we shared were the same ideas that helped our co-Founder and CEO, Eric Dosal, grow his MSP 10x in 5 years. Some of the conversation highlights: Understand how potential customers make their buying decisions Simple technique for increasing referrals No-cost solutions that will make customer communications a breeze The best type of events to host and so much more! The webinar recording is now available for on-demand viewing; join the conversation and get ready to take your marketing efforts to the next level in 2016 and beyond!

Everyone realizes the correlation between dashboards and data management, but how do dashboards help with team management? We recently invited Nick Olerud, Director of Technology at Netrix IT, to join us for a conversation about the results his team has seen since implementing dashboards. With dashboards come a huge amount of transparency… and as a result, MSPs gain a crystal clear view of which processes and procedures are working well and which ones need to be improved. Nick talks to us about how Netrix leveraged dashboards and the resulting transparency to increase SLA compliance, help hold each teammate accountable, and manage their Sales funnel. Then Nick’s discussion with BrightGauge co-Founder, Eric Dosal, works its way into all the details of positioning and balancing co-managed IT deals, plus an inside look at the Traction EOS system for operating a small business. Driving Better Team Behavior with Dashboards: Episode Highlights Nick’s Introduction (0:59) Comparing the amount of time spent on the team vs. time spent with clients (4:56) Turning away customers that don’t fit: how Netrix got to this point and the red flags they look for (6:07) Why Netrix charges for an assessment with no contingency to sign up (8:13) Driving better team behavior and increasing SLA compliance with dashboards (11:32) How the Netrix team adopted dashboards and transparency (14:48) Using dashboards in the Sales Process (16:16) Dashboards vs. Reports: handling client communication (17:41) Positioning Co-Managed IT deals: how to structure them and what type of clients to go after (19:07) Finding the right balance with a co-managed IT team (21:24) Why an assessment is necessary before a co-managed agreement is made (23:37) Pricing: full-managed vs. co-managed (26:00) All about Traction EOS: What is it? How is Netrix using it? What success has the team seen? (28:54) Getting started with traction EOS: where to begin and how to implement (36:32) Parting advice and how to get in touch with Nick (39:26) Want to find out more about The BrightGauge Podcast? Check out all the episodes here.