The BrightGauge Blog

During phases of rapid growth, all too often, solid data practices fall by the waste side. However, it is during this time that data-driven process development becomes even more important. Being able to see and track your improvements over time will be paramount to your success. BrightGauge is the perfect companion along any growth journey as it enables you to track process changes and determine whether they were successful or need further revision. Over time, this can lead to a fine tuned system for service delivery excellence. For the June Dashboard of the month, we have featured a Service Delivery Management dashboard inspired by June's user showcase webinar, Continuous Revision as a Recipe for Operational Excellence with Jeremiah Best, the VP of Service Delivery at Aligned Technology Solutions. Aligned Technology Solutions operates nationally, offering managed IT, cybersecurity, compliance & vCIO, cloud solutions, and CMMC certification. They cater to a wide range of industries with a focus on government contractors, nonprofits & associations, health care, and professional services. They have successfully operated in an ever-evolving space because of their adaptability and ability to build strong personal relationships with dedicated experts. These personality traits are reflected back in their approach to data visualization and goal management as showcased through BrightGauge. The Service Delivery Management dashboard features the key metrics shared by Jeremiah Best, used at various stages of their growth. Jeremiah, having 16 years experience across various service delivery roles in the MSP space, shared the importance of having a continuous improvement mindset in order to grow. Over his tenure and with the guidance of consultative coaching by Seal-Level Operations and their IT Nation Evolve peer group, Jeremiah has built and rebuilt their dashboards and goal lists several times to aid in refining their processes to maturity. Service Delivery Management - view here. Here are some featured metrics: Kill Rate % - This gauge is an easy-to-read metric that tells you if the team is closing more tickets than are being opened. If the kill rate is under 100% for prolonged periods of time, there is a good chance that the ticket backlog is becoming unmanageable. Stale, High Time, and "Noisy" Tickets - Across several gauges, these metrics help any service delivery manager quickly view potential problem tickets. This can enable them to step in proactively where needed to decrease resolution time. Actual Vs Billable Hours - Across two gauges, managers can get a quick view of the team's billable and/or client hours in comparison to the actual hours they are working. Many teams shoot for 80% billable. SLA Statistics - These gauges allow you to see what tickets are missing their SLA's and view the overall SLA adherence. This provides a quick view on whether you are overall hitting your response, resolution plan, and resolution time goals. You can also use these to proactively address tickets that fell short of their goals where needed. Utilization - Time management is perhaps the trickiest task for any service delivery manager -- making sure your team is entering all time, on time, and that every resource is equally utilized. These gauges provide a quick glance into what each team member has been doing, plus metrics to determine their billable utilization. Thank you, Jeremiah, for collaborating with us and sharing insights on how your metric tracking practices have played a key part in your journey towards service delivery excellence! Recreate in your BrightGauge Service Delivery Management Dashboard (public view link) Service Delivery Management Dashboard Buildout Key Make sure to visit our library of more report and dashboard templates and please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions!

Kite Technology Group (aka KiteTech) is a U.S. based Managed IT service provider offering consulting, infrastructure management, security and compliance, US-based help desk support, cloud solutions, business continuity, and vCIO services. They package their suite of key IT services into a comprehensive support package specifically designed to proactively manage the unique technology needs of today’s organizations. Also, Kite Technology has earned the CompTIA Security Trustmark+™. This is the highest level of recognition for IT service providers that consistently follow security best practices, demonstrate a commitment to industry recognized security standards, and adhere to prescribed security compliance measures. Over the years, Kite Technology Group has become a trusted technology advisor to more than one hundred organizations across the United States. While Kite Technology Group specializes in serving independent insurance agencies, they also provide IT services to nonprofits, medical offices, legal firms, manufacturers, construction companies, and other professional organizations. A BrightGauge power user In 2021, we met with Daniel Gilbert, the Chief Operating Officer at Kite Technology Group, to spotlight their beautifully designed dashboards, reports, and goal lists. As a result, Daniel co-hosted a user showcase webinar and was featured in our Dashboard of the Month series. After such a pleasant working experience with Kite Technology Group, we wanted to learn more about them and their journey as a BrightGauge partner. So, we once again chatted with Daniel Gilbert to learn more about Kite Technology Group and to see how, over the last 6+ years, BrightGauge has become such a big part of their daily operations and success. Kite Technology Group's Dashboard rebuilt with dummy data. See a buildout key here. . How Kite Technology Group got its start Before forming Kite Technology Group, President Jeff Kite had already been self-employed for a decade. In 1992, Jeff was part owner of a cabling business when he realized he was much more interested in the computer side of IT than the cabling side. In contemplating his next move, Jeff knew he wanted the opportunity to combine his passion of helping people with his technical and networking skills. So, he decided to sell his share of that business and start an IT company. He was fortunate to have a jumpstart on that business because some of his cabling customers became his first IT customers. In 1994, Jeff got his first Insurance Agency customer and when he served them well, they invited him to speak at a local peer group for Insurance Agencies. This began what would eventually become the primary vertical for Kite Technology Group: Independent Insurance Agencies. Jeff operated for a long time but was struggling to mature and grow the business. By early 2004, Jeff started discussing the idea of a partnership with the now CEO, Greg DiDio. On January 1, 2005, Jeff and Greg established their partnership and rebranded the company as Kite Technology Group. After spending 17 years working for a Fortune 500 company, Greg left the comforts of “big business” to bring an “enterprise mentality” to KiteTech. With Greg on board, Jeff was able to focus on building relationships with customers, while Greg was able to build vision and process, allowing the business to steadily grow. During this time, Greg led the transformation of a former “break fix” company into the national full-service IT company that KiteTech is today. This positioned them to provide high-quality proactive services to even more clients. Further, it was by Greg’s wisdom that KiteTech began participating in HTG (now IT Nation Evolve) in February 2011. Having access to like-minded companies allowed KiteTech to learn from the successes and failures of others and to contribute to their peers’ successes as well. Over ten years later, Kite Technology Group is still an active IT Nation Evolve member. Another important turning point in the company happened in 2015 when Kite Technology Group established the Agency Executive Advisory Board. This was a group made up of principals at a handful of their customer locations, all running independent insurance agencies. The goal was to get a group of like-minded business leaders together (like Evolve) and learn what KiteTech could do to transform their company and better serve their needs. Daniel said “going into this process, we thought we would learn about the other aspects of IT we should be offering our clients. Instead, we learned that what our customers wanted most was advisement on how to run their insurance agency business better. We decided that we had an opportunity to build a consulting practice designed to help agency owners and their leaders improve their business operations. In 2016, we hired our first agency consultant, and have continued to deliver and grow ever since.” Between 2005 when Kite Technology Group was officially founded and today, they have grown from about 5 employees to about 40 employees servicing over 100 fully managed IT clients. Becoming a BrightGauge partner Prior to BrightGauge, Daniel said Kite Technology Group used ConnectSmart for several years. However, they found it cumbersome, requiring a heavy application for dashboard design and a dedicated machine for displaying data. That drove them to look for easier-to-use alternatives. After discovering BrightGauge in 2016, Daniel said he immediately realized how intuitive the standard web UI was right out of the box. Daniel stated “it was simple to add the datasources they needed including LabTech (now Automate), QuickBooks, Quosal (now Sell), and ConnectWise Manage. And having all of our data in one product that was easy to adopt was a game changer!” As Kite Technology Group added additional tools, such as SmileBack, and processes like EOS, they were able to continue building out and fine tuning their dashboards, reports, and goal lists through BrightGauge. What BrightGauge has helped Kite Technology Group accomplish Daniel said BrightGauge has been the cornerstone of KiteTech’s business intelligence ever since they first adopted it in 2016. In the beginning, they were only using BrightGauge dashboards to help their teams keep a handle on service metrics, such as number of open tickets, unassigned tickets, and aging tickets. These kinds of metrics are particularly helpful to the dispatchers and arm them with the data they need to assigned or reassigned tickets efficiently. The dashboards also helped KiteTech’s engineers stay on top of tasks, time entries, and helped them to better prioritize their tickets. By utilizing dashboards, team leads also knew where their support was needed and that enabled them to proactively prevent tickets from aging unnecessarily. As a result, Kite Technology Group has been able to drastically improve their SLA adherence metrics. Daniel said once they saw the success they were having in the service team, they started to spread their BrightGauge footprint into other areas of the business like NOC, Sales, Marketing, and Finance. Eventually they started making use of Goal Lists for their weekly EOS check ins, which has been instrumental in helping them achieve their company objectives. Kite Technology Group now uses Goal Lists at all levels of the organization for their EOS scorecards and Rocks. Today, every department of the company has dashboards and goal lists to look at, and every single individual in the company has multiple goals for which they are responsible. This added level of transparency and accountability has propelled Kite Technology Group's growth and has helped them garner happy customers. In fact, Kite Technology Group's 5 star google rating illuminates just how happy their customers are! Connected Datasources: ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, SmileBack, QuickBooks, and OneDrive Top 5 KPIs: Billable Utilization Team-Wide Billable Hours Scheduled Tickets/Hours Billable Labor Revenue Revenue from Opportunities (Won and Expected)

For most Managed Service Providers, sales is the cornerstone of growth. As such, developing a solid sales pipeline for stable recurring profit is paramount. As part of a proactive process for a well-managed sales pipeline, you need good data entry practices and good data visibility. This is where dashboards come in! Creating a sales pipeline dashboard can help you analyze lead quality, sales success rates, and enable you to provide valuable data for reviewing and improving your process. For the May Dashboard of the month, we have featured a Company Sales Pipeline dashboard inspired by May's user showcase webinar, Powerful Dashboards to Grow your Sales Pipeline with D.J. Hanen, the senior director at Five Star Technology Solutions. The Company Sales pipeline dashboard is designed for the sales manager and should be checked weekly or biweekly and used in team meetings. This dashboard can also be cloned and filtered for individual sales representatives so each sales rep can better manage their own pipeline. Company Pipeline - view here. Here are some featured metrics: Deals in the Pipeline - This snapshot gauge can track trends related to how many leads your team is bringing in over time. Sales Funnel - This gauge tracks leads as they move through the customer journey. It usually covers several sales stages that equate to your prospects' awareness, interest, decision-making, and action stages. A healthy pipeline resembles a funnel where a larger amount of qualified leads are at the top portion of that funnel. Past Due and Missing Revenue - This set of gauges is all about keeping good data by managing past due activities and opportunities, and making sure opportunities past the lead stage have an estimated revenue set. Won vs Lost Opportunities - Tracking what percentage of your leads are lost can help you fine tune your lead generation process, better determine your ideal client profile, and help you implement different sales techniques where needed. Company Pipeline Gauges - Across several gauges looking at different time frames, these metrics look at the sales funnel in a more granular way. They include the number of opportunities, the amount of revenue, and the margin in each sales stage. Thank you, D.J., for collaborating with us and sharing insights on your sales process and how you've managed to improve that process to get better sales data overall. Recreate in your BrightGauge Company Sales Pipeline Dashboard (public view link) Company Sales Pipeline Dashboard Buildout Key Make sure to visit our library of more report and dashboard templates and please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions!

The client onboarding process is an opportunity for you to instill trust and confidence in your services to your new clients. Even though a successful onboarding can lay the groundwork for a positive, long-term relationship, many MSPs find themselves struggling with unforeseen mishaps and miscommunications. With such a high stakes moment in your client relationship, you'll want to ensure your business shines by setting up a system that predicts and avoids major pitfalls altogether! One of the best things an MSP can do to set themselves up for success during this critical time is to check, double check, and audit their work. For the April Report of the month, we have featured an onboarding audit report inspired by April's user showcase webinar, Motivating your Teams to Meet Company Objectives with Anne Schoolcraft, President at a Couple of Gurus and a professional EOS implementer. A Couple of Gurus is an award-winning IT services company that helps world-changing organizations with Managed IT services, managed cybersecurity, cloud solutions, IT consulting, and more. And as a professional EOS implementer, Anne helps entrepreneurs get more of what they want from their businesses, by helping them implement a system of simple, practical tools. The onboarding audit report was designed to be run at the tail end of the onboarding period and works as a proactive assessment so your team can double check their work before they've completed the onboarding process. This will help you identify potential problem areas like critical items that your team may have missed and items your customers should address before onboarding is completed. Onboarding Audit - view here. Here are some featured metrics: All Managed Machines - By seeing how many machines are being reported on in your RMM tool, you can cross check what you quoted the client and ensure they are set up to be billed properly. You can also make sure all devices are reported on as configurations in your PSA. Anti Virus protection audit - Allows you to check whether antivirus was successfully enabled on all devices. Configuration Expiration details - Use these metrics to ensure you have the warranty expiration dates for all devices. Next, review the warranties that are expired or are about to expire. These should be prioritized and you can set that discussion to take place before the onboarding process is over. After Hours Access and Software criticality Configuration Q&A - You can set up custom configurations in ConnectWise Manage to ask your clients questions on how you should handle emergency situations and after hour access to their offices. You can also use configurations to help identify the most business critical software for each of your clients. NOC and Security Tickets - Make sure alert tickets are properly configured and reporting to the right board in your PSA. Thank you, Anne, for collaborating with us and sharing your invaluable insight on setting up a simple and practical report to audit the onboarding process! Recreate in your BrightGauge Onboarding Audit Report (public view link) Onboarding Audit Report Buildout Key Make sure to visit our library of more report and dashboard templates and please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions!

A dispatchers job is to maximize the utilization of the service team. In essence, they need to keep resources busy and ensure every ticket that comes in gets scheduled out and attended to properly. When you're juggling all the nuanced differences across teams and agreements while also making sure to check every field entry for accuracy, things can inevitable fall through the cracks. Having a ticket dispatch dashboard in BrightGauge can help your dispatcher easily pick up the missing pieces and "paint tomorrow green." By using a simplistic design and simplifying your service KPIs, you'll help your dispatcher works as efficiently as possible. For the March Dashboard of the month, we have featured a ticket dispatch board inspired by March's user showcase webinar, Simplifying Service KPIs to Support Rapid Growth with Ken Smith, Chief Operating Officer at 2W Technologies. Ticket Dispatch - view here. The ticket dispatch dashboard is broken out into 3 parts. The first section takes a manage to zero or manage to green approach focusing on priority tickets and important ticket fields that can get overlooked like type, agreement, and configuration. The second section focuses on process and scheduling. A text box is used to provide the steps to take for triaging, dispatching, and escalating tickets. Next, information on upcoming schedules, current ticket assignments, hours worked, and information on whose out of the office proves the perfect supplement for ConnectWise Manage's dispatch portal. The last section provides some high-level metrics to help further understand ticket volumes and gauge the utilization of the team. It includes metrics like same-day resolution percentage, average time to resolution, and tickets per endpoint. Thank you, Ken, for collaborating with us and sharing your straightforward technique to building dashboards to improve operational efficiencies! Recreate in your BrightGauge Ticket Dispatch Dashboard (public view link) Ticket Dispatch Dashboard Buildout Key Make sure to visit our library of more report and dashboard templates and please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions!

Many Managed Service Providers (MSPs) offer a variety of services across a wide range of small business clients. This can make for a tricky billing process! One of the biggest pain points with creating a streamlined billing process is figuring out how to efficiently track and review time entries. Although most PSAs provide a built-in time-tracking system for technicians, human and technical errors are inevitable when your billing is complex. To help keep track of important details without having to sift through 100's of time entry records each week, you can create a dashboard to flag potential problems in real time. For the February Dashboard of the month, we have featured a less customized version of the invoice time review dashboard shared during this month's user showcase webinar, Customizing your Data for Improved Service Delivery with Todd Moss, partner and managing director at 24HourTek. The Invoice Time Review dashboard used at 24HourTek contains both metrics and information that assists them with the invoice time review process. Using a heavy amount of text, 24HourTek outlines the various time entry guidelines for all of their different business offerings and creates metrics to look for red flags in their data. Checking this at least weekly has helped to eliminate costly delays and alleviate major headaches for the billing team. While the dashboard of the month version omits the text boxes, you can get a sense of what they are tracking below. Invoice Time Review - view here. Here are some featured metrics: Time review based on agreement types - Across several gauges, you can look at your time entries in a more meaningful way. On this dashboard, the partner is looking at break-fix, fully managed, and block time clients separately. If you have special rules or specific coverages for each, you can use text boxes to document that. This can aid the review process. Member Time Review - Reviewing technicians' time is equally as important as reviewing time during the billing process. Here, the partner is looking at billable utilization, time spent on various work types, late time sheets, and they have created a custom gauge to help determine whether technicians are entering time on time, all the time. Work Type and After Hour reviews - These gauges look for work types that require special care like after hours and non-covered. You can choose to break down all time entries by their work types as well. Further, by looking at time entered after hours, you can look for improperly entered time and ensure work types are set correctly for after hour billing. Thank you, Todd, for collaborating with us and sharing these great metrics! Recreate in your BrightGauge Invoice Time Review Dashboard (public view link) Invoice Time Review Dashboard Buildout Key Make sure to visit our library of more report and dashboard templates and please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions!

Account managers have two main goals: retain clients and grow those opportunities. To assist in meeting those goals, you'll want to know what's going on with every aspect of the clients' experience. From tickets, invoices, and contracts, to proactively pinpointing potential problems, having a dashboard with real-time date is an ideal tool that can provide your team with those accurate up-to-the-minute insights. For the January Dashboard of the month, we have featured the client overview metrics for account managers shared during last month's user showcase webinar, Critical KPIs Owners Track for Client Management with James Cash, the owner and managing director at SuperFast IT. Superfast IT provides IT support in Birmingham, England with their managed IT and cybersecurity service packages. In addition, Superfast IT helps small businesses pass Cyber Essentials accreditation. Their service offerings help business owners focus on their business instead of getting bogged down by day-to-day IT and security issues. Over the years, Superfast IT has become synonymous with industry-leading customer service and fast response times, backed by their many five-star Google review ratings. The Client Management Overview dashboard used at SuperFast IT contains metrics that enables account managers to provide top notch support by arming them with the real time data they need for successful conversations. Client Management Overview Dashboard - view here. Here are some featured metrics: Cross-Sell Opportunities - Using recently invoiced agreement additions, you can determine what service offerings each of your clients are currently paying for. Then, using a simple icon for 'there is a cross-sell opportunity,' your account managers can act proactively to grow business. Agreement Information - This gauge includes some of the key metrics needed to understand client profitability including hours per user, hours per endpoint, recurring margin, and effective rate. Open tickets, tickets with 1+ hour, and recent activity - When checked frequently, account owners can gauge how many currently open or recently opened tickets are too many. This allows them to look into that recent activity quickly and escalate where needed. Thank you, James, for collaborating with us and sharing these great metrics! Recreate in your BrightGauge Client Management Overview Dashboard (public view link) Client Management Overview Dashboard Buildout Key Make sure to visit our library of more report and dashboard templates and please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions!

When it comes to keeping your executive team in the loop on important performance metrics, providing an easy-to-digest view into client profitability is crucial. For the December Dashboard of the month we have featured Client profitability metrics shared during this month's user showcase webinar with Paul Recksiek, the CTO at Solvere One on Simple & Effective Tools for Improving Company Performance. Built for the executive leadership team, this dashboard starts off with some high-level metrics like active and supported contacts, MRR, Hours by work type, and Net Profit. Then, the second half of the dashboard allows for a granular, client by client view into profitability. On one dashboard, it's easy to understand if you're hitting your MRR and Net Profit goals for the year, which customers are worth nurturing further, and where there are opportunities for training, automation or hardware refreshes with clients not meeting the profitability mark. Client Profitability Dashboard - view here. Here are some featured metrics: Seat Prices - If you're using a per-user pricing structure, it's important to keep an eye on each month's fluctuation in users to make sure it aligns with your all-in-seat-price model. This gauge allows you to quickly spot whether or not an agreement needs to be adjusted based on an influx of supported users. MRR Per Hour, otherwise known as the Effective Hourly rate on agreements - MRR per hour compares what you've billed for your agreements against the amount of hours worked for each client. This gauge will quickly show you if you're spending too much time with any one client. Profitability Of Agreements - This gauge illustrates how profitable your agreements are after the fully burden cost of your techs is taken into consideration. The cost for the techs fluctuates based on the amount of work you've done for each client. Thank you, Paul, for collaborating with us and sharing these great metrics! Recreate in your BrightGauge Client Profitability Dashboard (public view link) Client Profitability Dashboard Buildout Key Make sure to visit our library of more report and dashboard templates and please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions!

With setting a standard for team performance meets client satisfaction, SLAs (Service Level Agreements) are the best first stop. For this month's dashboard of the month, we focused on highlighting this great action-forward help desk dashboard featured during November's User Showcase webinar with Daniel Gilbert, the COO at Kite Technology Group: Future-Proofing your Team with Goal Setting. The Help Desk SLA Scorecard is all about SLA's and giving the Help Desk team a tool to properly manage them. Kite Technology uses this dashboard to help the team prioritize tickets based on SLA's. Also, Kite Technologies ties this dashboard back to their executive leadership goals, allowing them to drive accountability and properly measure their success as an organization The Help Desk SLA Scorecard dashboard uses a simple and straight-forward design that is easy for the team to read and follow. They use color thresholds and a "manage to green" approach to help the team prioritize, and each section of the dashboard represents the different SLA stages. Help Desk SLA Scorecard dashboard - view here Dashboard details: In play - The ticket is pending the coinciding SLA action and needs to be acted upon today in order to hit their goals. Missed - The ticket did not hit their SLA goal and are still pending the coinciding action item. In the Goal - This provides some insight on how well they're doing overall with their SLA goals for the day. This section includes how many tickets and what percentage of tickets hit their SLA targets and what their averages are. Thank you, Daniel, for being our partner and collaborating with us! Recreate in your BrightGauge View the dashboard example here. Review how to recreate in your BrightGauge with this buildout key. Make sure to visit our library of more report and dashboard templates and please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions!

When it comes to directing a Professional Services team, staying organized is critical. One effective and productive way to keep a pulse on your team is to consistently track key metrics. This month, we chatted with Craig Howarth, the Director of Professional Services at Nuago, to see how he keeps his team organized. Craig kindly shared his key metrics dashboard, which he uses in his role managing pre-sales, project management, and consulting services team members. Craig utilizes a main Professional Services Key Metrics dashboard for himself, and provides individual dashboards to each of his team leads. Those team leads then customize their dashboards to fit their own specific needs, but all tie back to the main Professional Services Key Metrics dashboard. Professional Services Key Metrics dashboard - view here Here are some of the key metrics Craig and his team are tracking, and some context around why and how these metrics provide valuable insights: Billable hours by Work Role: This 12-week view helps Craig identify trends over time. Using a trend line, he can quickly see how close they are to their target utilization. The team's billable utilization: This gauge plots 3 lines - the team's combined capacity, the team's combined hours, and the team's target utilization (which is 75% of their capacity). Nuago uses an adjusted capacity, removing PTO and holiday time from the equation. This helps them plan and schedule upcoming work and informs hiring decisions. Blended Rates: This helps track different billable rates and includes shared resources. The blend impacts their total revenue and gross margin. Nuago will budget on a blend for the year and then monitor against this gauge. Invoicing Metrics: This provides a near real-time view of what invoices have been sent to the customer, and a total to see how they are tracking against the target for the month. CSAT: An important KPI to gauge performance and a great way to share positive feedback with the team overall. Budget v Actual: Craig has created a calculation for effective utilization, measuring the ability to deliver an engagement against budget. It’s one of the key profit drivers along with utilization, billable rates, and resourcing costs. If their effective utilization metric is over 100%, they came in under budget and vice versa. Having this for open projects as well allows them to spot an issue and take corrective action. Project Costing Summary: Important in measuring true profitability as it takes things like discounting into account. Thank you, Craig, for being our partner and sharing this great dashboard with us! If you want to recreate and customize this dashboard for your team, check out the links below: Professional Services Key Metrics Dashboard (public view link) Professional Services Key Metrics Dashboard Buildout Key Make sure to visit our library of more report and dashboard templates and please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions!