In the world of MSPs, best practices and the importance of service team processes are often in the spotlight, but let’s not forget that a sales team also plays a critical role in shaping the ...
In the world of MSPs, best practices and the importance of service team processes are often in the spotlight, but let’s not forget that a sales team also plays a critical role in shaping the company’s growth. At BrightGauge, we urge our MSP customers to first set the right standard for their sales team. That means encouraging your sales team to commit to strategies that promote long-term growth over short-term sales, by shifting their sales mindset toward lead nurturing. While it may sound like a huge undertaking, the secret is to have a sales processes that promotes these strategies. Let’s take a look at 5 of the sales best practices that we promote here at BrightGauge: Create colleagues One of the biggest mistakes that MSP sales teams make is focusing too much on closing the sale. That’s right. Sales are great, but building a mutually beneficial business relationship with prospects will yield better results in the end. According to a study by Marketing Donut, 20% of all clients will take 12 months or more to close the deal. Companies focused on short-term sales miss those opportunities. To foster long-term relationships, there are a few things that MSP owners should instruct their sales reps to focus on. First, focus on providing value. Whether they buy your services or not, a constant stream of value from your business helps to shape their impression. Face-to-face interaction is also important. In a world where B2B businesses connect online from across the globe, you’ll have to make face-time a priority. Emails are effective, but can only go so far. In long-distance business relationships, a video chat through Skype can go a long ways toward building a connection. Encourage your sales reps to engage in “servant sales” strategies. These strategies place priority on building trust and adding value, rather than focusing on making the sale. According to a Forrester Research report, companies that nurture leads make more 50% sales, while spending 33% less than companies that do not. Encourage your sales team to pursue relationships that may not pay off immediately, but show future promise. Establish a timeline Developing a positive relationship with a client requires that you not apply too much pressure. Pressuring the prospect to commit too quickly can ruin relationships and sour their opinion of your brand. Avoid this by encouraging sales reps to allow the prospect to dictate the timeline for the sale. This helps them feel at ease by putting them in the driver’s seat. Once you have a timeline for the ideal sale established, continue delivering value. Instruct your sales reps to regularly send relevant content. A DemandGen Report study found that 95.2% of B2B buyers preferred providers that used content to help them navigate the buying process. Stick to a process Just because an MSP commits to a longer sales approach, doesn’t mean that it needs to be without a process. Having a defined process creates repetition, allowing your sales reps to improve their pitch with each new prospect. For long-term sales engagements, a 5-7 step system can be immensely helpful to your sales teams. Of course, every engagement with a prospect is different. There must be wiggle room, but having that outline handy helps keep your team focused. Here’s an example of a system similar to the one we use here at BrightGauge, but customized for use by MSPs: Send Email(s). An email is an excellent, low-pressure way to gauge interest and introduce yourself. A few back-and-forth emails can be a great way to start building a relationship. Gauge Interest. Use a series of emails to learn about their company and gauge their need and interest. Follow-Up Phone Call. Once you’ve confirmed their interest, schedule a follow-up phone call. According to The Marketing Donut, only 2% of sales close during the first meeting, and the average sales process requires 5 follow-up calls to close the deal. Free Network Assessment Offer. A free offer is a great way to add value, build trust, and establish that your company is a good fit. Whether or not they become a client, you’ve provided them with valuable insights. Follow-Up Video Call or In-Person Meeting. Cement your relationship with the prospect. A face-to-face discussion is a great way to build a deeper connection, even if they aren’t interested in committing right away. Convey value A sales rep’s main goal should be to provide and convey value in all stages of the sales process. Taking the time to find relevant, valuable content helps to build a connection over time. Make that value clear to the prospect. When you send them content or speak about strategies on the phone, don’t be afraid to spell out exactly how it will help them. Connect the value you deliver to real business cases that the prospect understands. Aim to problem-solve The most important component of any engagement with a new prospect is ensuring that your services can solve their problem. An Impact Communications study found that 70% of B2B buyers make purchases to solve specific problems. A client that signs up for a service that they don’t truly need won’t be a client for long. In some ways, the relationship isn’t different than the one between a doctor and patient. A doctor wouldn’t prescribe headache medicine for a runny nose. If they did, they wouldn’t be that patient’s doctor for long. MSPs need to identify the best fit for their service to deliver exceptional value to clients. Evaluating their needs and ensuring that your services solve their problems will take time. Often, it isn't possible without accepting a longer sales process. Allowing your sales reps to take a long-term approach is empowering for both parties and will result in more meaningful business relationships. Learn more about long-term sales processes Interested in learning more about long-term sales processes that lead to high-value clients? Check out our Director of Sales, Larry Garcia, on Episode 2 of The BrightGauge Podcast, talking about The BrightGauge Sales Process.
The beginning of the year is a very anxious time of year at BrightGauge. For us, Q4 is our biggest quarter of the year and the Sales team hustles until the end of the year leaving no stone unturned. So when the calendar changes, we are still coming off the “high” of Q4 and the year end rush. But now the page has turned on the prior year, the high fives have been doled out and the champagne has been poured... it’s time to focus on this year. The entire sales team gets very anxious when we start planning the new year wondering “how’s my compensation changing” or “what’s my new quota going to be”. By the second week of January I sit with the Sales Team and we lay out the quota for the year. Like clockwork I can see them in their heads calculating all the work they have to do for the year which seems like a daunting task. But like I tell our Sales Team: “Don’t sweat the annual goal, focus on the daily & weekly hustle” At the end of the day, Sales is a numbers game. Although the percentages may be different based on how good you are, it's still a game of getting as many non-customers as possible into your funnel and then working them through the funnel to customer status. When we told Stephen his quota had almost doubled to $80,000 after last year doing $45,000 he had a minor panic attack. But then we took the annual goal and broke it down into daily & weekly goals. Here’s how our annual Sales formula works: $80,000 - total new business Stephen needs to book in 2017 $64,000 - total revenue from new customers (80%) $16,000 - total revenue from upgrades of existing customers (20%) $250 - Average Sales Price $75 - Average Upgrade Amount 256 - Number of Signups Required ($64,000 / $250) 213 - Number of Upgrades Required ($16,000 / $75) 512 - Number of Opportunities Required (256 deals @ 50% closure rate) At the end of the calculations, we translate that $80,000 quota into the following: 10 Opportunities Opened Per Week 7 Demos Completed Per Week 40 Conversations Per Week And instead of worrying about the $80,000 all Stephen has to do is worry about what he needs to get done today and this week. And to always remember: “Don’t sweat the annual goal, focus on the daily & weekly hustle” Now that we have his targets for each week, we use our BrightGauge Scorecards to monitor his progress each week. This allows him and the entire team to see if he’s on track or off track for a given week and course correct as necessary. The more green the better! And this also has the added psychological benefit of taking a monster quota goal and breaking it down into bite size chunks that are easier for Stephen to focus on. To learn more about scorecards and how to help your team monitor weekly progress towards their KPIs, please visit our BrightGauge Scorecards Overview.
Sometimes a dashboard just won’t do! Our customers spend a lot of time building out dashboards and customizing it to get the data they need exactly the way they want it. If you’re like me, I love using our dashboards for viewing my data because they are up around the office which makes it easy to see, plus they are updating in real time. However, every once in awhile I want to send a dashboard to someone who doesn’t have a log in or doesn’t want to have to log in. This happened recently with our Board of Directors when we set up a new dashboard for them to monitor how BrightGauge is doing. We noticed they might go a few days or even a week without logging in. Now we can take that dashboard and simply convert it from a dashboard to a report with 1 click of a button. This saves all the time of having to build a report from scratch! All you have to do is click the “More” drop down menu on a dashboard and you will see the option to “Convert to Report”. Here is a quick overview of the process to convert a dashboard to report in just seconds: This is a great example of a small yet very impactful feature that our awesome Product Team is constantly working on. If you have any other ideas for new features that you think will be a great fit, please email them to support@brightgauge.com and label it “Feature Request” in the title so it gets properly routed.
In case you missed it, we’ve made some major investments in our Customer Success Team over the past few months and I wanted to share why and how this team is here to serve you! Growing a Customer Success Team First of all, we have added a few new faces to our Customer Success Team to help handle the demand of our growing customer base. The team is now made up of 4 Customer Success Rockstars whose only mission in (work) life is to deliver “over-the-top” support to customers and ensure that we are exceeding all of your expectations. You will work with this team from the moment you sign up as they are responsible for Onboarding and Training. They are also responsible for any Data Customization needs you might have during your onboarding or any other time the need arises. Their fourth area of responsibility is Application Support making them your one stop shop for all your BrightGauge questions. What has Changed by Creating a New Team? We collapsed the Support, Data, Onboarding and Training teams all into one, which will be known as our Customer Success Team going forward. We realized that the line between Support and Data Customization was starting to blur and it was becoming too difficult to distinguish between the two. Additionally, when the Support Team was on a call and the customer needed some training, did we have to change teams? We realized the work and role they were playing might change but the person and their mission did not, so why make them separate teams? What Does a Customer Success Team Mean for You? It means a more integrated and simplified experience when working with our team. From the moment you sign up through the life of our partnership, you’ll be working with this team who is here to help and support you in any way we can. To learn how having a Customer Success Team can impact your growth check out our webinar: How Investing in Customer Success Drove our MSP Growth. Customer Success Starts with Onboarding Here’s a snapshot of the Onboarding Dashboard our team uses to monitor the progress of our customers getting started with us. The gauges listed above are: < 20 HS Divided by Total Subscriptions: We have a custom Health Score algorithm we use to monitor the health of our customers that ranks from 0 to 100. We keep track of the percentage of customers with a score of 20 and under to make sure we are monitoring our “unengaged customers”. Our goal is to keep that below 8%. Average Health Score: This takes the average across all of our customers of the Health Score I mentioned above. Our goal is to continually push that number up and this quarter we are targeting to get the number over 75. Stay tuned for updates on that. Churn TW: Number of customers that have canceled their account with us this week. (Six...ouch!) New Signups Not Connected: The most important first step for any new customer is to connect their data to our system. Therefore we keep a running list of the customers not connected. OnBoarding Tickets By Status: We have 5 stages in our Onboarding process and this pie chart helps us identify where the majority of the customers are. Not Connected: This is simply a Number Gauge of the “New Signups Not Connected” mentioned above. Count of Open Onboarding Tickets: The total number of Onboarding tickets our team is currently working on. Customer Success Includes Support Here’s a snapshot of the Support Dashboard our team uses to monitor the progress of our ongoing customer support. The gauges listed above are: Average Response Today: The team tracks their response time each day to ensure we’re getting back to our customers in a timely fashion. Average Resolution Today: We also track the total time it takes for us to complete each of our tickets to make sure we are closing tickets out quickly. Avg CSAT: This allows us to see the customer satisfaction for our given week. We aim to be 100%, but aren’t always perfect. Tickets Solved This Week Leaderboard: For a little healthy competition we track who’s closing the most tickets and it’s also a great way to see if someone is falling behind. Tickets By Type: This pie chart gives us a snapshot of the tickets currently open and what type of tickets they are. As we shared here, we recently updated our ticket types to give us better visibility into the trends of our requests. Customer Success is Held Accountable The team not only manages their regular KPIs via our Dashboards but also leverages our Scorecards to track unique KPIs that allow us to see trends over time. As you can see in the example above, Kristian (known to us as Client Call Connoisseur) tracks the number of Knowledge Base articles he updates. That’s an area he’s responsible for and each week he has to check in with the number of documents he has updated. Jessica, aka Flipper of Desks, is our main triage person and we expect her to close more than ⅔ of the tickets we receive. So we track her performance over time. And finally, Rick (aka Player of Games and Most Things Data) has a lot on his plate with Training Calls so we track how many he has each week and also check his other two main tasks of creating gauges for customers and solving tickets. How Can You Apply This in Your Business? Customer Success played a huge role in the growth of our MSP and continues to play a major role in our BrightGauge growth. If you’re not focused on Customer Success, you are missing out on an opportunity to turn up your growth. It’s important that all of your teams have a set of standard KPIs that you’re tracking and sharing in real time monitor their performance. Dashboards can easily identify when you are off track. Holding your team accountable via a scorecard allows everyone to see how they are performing over time and for you to identify trends that need to be addressed. To learn more about using a Customer Success Team to impact your growth check out our webinar: How Investing in Customer Success Drove our MSP Growth.
This is a question that comes up every so often, and many times from frustrated customers that want to speak with our team NOW. I put together this brief video to help address the question. The short answer is no we do not have a phone number where you can call our support team. It’s not that we don’t like to talk on the phone with customers, in fact it's the opposite because we spend a lot of time on the phone with customers. The reality is we don’t have the infrastructure to set up a call center that is standing by waiting for your call to come in. The moment we introduce a call center then we need to have it properly staffed so there are no long wait times and with a team that size, supporting customers spread across 5 continents in 15 different time zones, it becomes cost prohibitive. So no, you can’t call our support team right now BUT there are easier ways to get in touch. How to Get in Touch with BrightGauge Support The easiest and most popular way our customers reach out to us is by emailing support@brightgauge.com which automatically opens up a ticket within our system for our team to triage. The beauty of using email is that you can enter as much detail as possible (links, screenshots, etc) which makes our turnaround time significantly faster. What About Response Times? We work very hard to make sure when our customers do reach out with a question we are quick to respond. As a matter of fact I’m very proud to say that our response time is under 10 minutes and our average resolution time is 12 to 13 hours. Considering the scope of issues we deal with from simple password resets to bug fixes that take days/weeks these numbers are pretty impressive. And if you don’t believe me, based on Zendesk which is our help desk system, the average B2B software provider responds within 24 hours. 24 hours for a response...that’s just CRAZY. Give our Support Team a Shot The next time you have a question about BrightGauge reach out to our Customer Success Team and watch how quickly and efficiently they handle your request. Our team is here waiting to help you! Still skeptical about how it all works? Learn more about how our team leverages videos in our support process to help resolve your problems in the most efficient way possible.
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Today we are excited to share our latest integration partner, Xero: Xero is one of the leading cloud-based accounting software solutions that connects people with the right numbers anytime, anywhere, on any device. And with our new integration you can take that information to the next level by having all of your powerful Xero data published directly into BrightGauge. How Our Customers Are Using Xero + BrightGauge To Drive Their Business Publishing your financial KPIs to any of your BrightGauge dashboards allows you to introduce the financial component into your team’s decision making process. Having these metrics at your fingertips instead of having to toggle back and forth with another system is a huge time saver. Sharing your KPIs via our Internal Reporting helps empower your team with the information they need to get their job done. For those that share the responsibility of collections, you can now see in one quick snapshot who the top offenders are and who you need to follow up with: By leveraging our Scorecard feature you can bring all your financial metrics into one screenshot and more easily hold your team accountable for their performance. Below you can see a customer tracking several financial KPIs so they can see any trends over time: Sample Gauges from Xero Trailing Performance - Quickly and easily track how your company has been performing over the prior month, quarter or year. This provides important insights into where your company is trending and heading going forward. Service Gross Margin - We are all in the services business and therefore people are our biggest line item on our financial statements. Understanding how efficiently they are performing can dramatically improve your company’s profitability. In a quick glance you can see a trend of how your team is performing. What Our Customers are Saying: "With the BrightGauge and Xero integration, we get a snapshot of our business performance in an instant. From the daily reports to real-time dashboards, it has been quick from the get-go and the support has been fantastic. We should have done this a long time ago!" - James Munro, Partner | GCITS Technology To learn more about how Xero and BrightGauge can help drive your business forward please visit:
Happy New Year! I’ve been “living in 2017” for the past 2 weeks (professionally speaking) and it's great to finally have everyone here! Let me explain… Our 2017 planning started a long time ago and based on my estimate has taken us 80+ hours to get us to where we are today which includes: A well thought out financial budget with solid projections A well grounded assumption based sales projection and quota for the sales team A thoughtful marketing plan to support the sales projections A detailed game plan of the resource investments we plan to make this year A high level product game plan with themes for the coming year A summarized version of all these plans delivered to our Leadership Team All of these documents we’ll be discussing in our full day offsite with our Leadership Team today. Download a free copy of the Offsite Objectives and Agenda that our team is using in today's meeting. So as we enter 2017 Brian and I are very excited to get back into execution mode and out of planning mode. The planning is behind us and but here’s how we got to where we are today: How we made initial financial projections It all started back in August when I shared with Brian our first version of our financial projections for 2017 based on where we were then and what we thought the rest of the year was going to look like. The reason we like to start this early is because putting together financial projections is very time consuming and late summer is our slowest time of the year so we have the time to have this type of conversation. Plus starting that early allows us to really think through what we want to accomplish in the coming year. We put together 2 versions of our financial projections, (1) huge growth and huge investment year which is our high end projection and (2) conservative growth and minimal investment which is our lower end projection. From these two projections we found ourselves somewhere in the middle on our expected projections. Once we finalize that step, we tabled the conversation until the end of Q4 because it was time to get back to work. At the end of the year, we fine tune the projections based on how we performed in Q4 and based on our further discussions about what we want the year to look like. We also spend some time discussing “what if things go wrong” so we know what levers we can pull in the event we have a down year and need to course correct. With our financial projections pretty much wrapped up we are just waiting for year end, then it’s time to turn our attention to our expenses. Then we created a resource game plan Although we are a product company, people make up over ⅔ of our expenses in any given year which means that we start our expense review around our resources and specifically what investments we want to make in the new year. After some deep discussions Brian and I agreed that after having such a huge investment year (growing our team by 64%) in resource it was time to slow down and wait to see the full impact of our resources in 2017. The reality is that adding people to your team is a very expensive process, not only in money of salary and possible recruiting fees but also the time to recruit, interview and then onboard. So with our renewed reduction in resource investments in 2017 that helped another big piece of our projections puzzle. As we headed into the Christmas holiday we had an idea of our revenue projections and our expenses (⅔ of which is resource related). Next, we determined sales projections based on historical performance Once we had our Financial Projections and our Resource Game Plan it was time to start working on our Sales Projections and what it would take to achieve our financial projections. This is a tricky process because of how it will motivate the sales team. If we put the quotas too low it might be too costly if you have accelerators built in. And on the flipside if you put the quotas too high you risk demoralizing the team and them not ever achieving their goals. We use a “historical plus” approach for our sales quota meaning we look at the historical performance of each sales rep and then make “appropriate adjustments” based on grounded assumptions. For example, our Director of Sales now has more people to manage which means we can’t assume he’ll be as productive as he was last year without neglecting his team. Additionally, last year we had a sales rep that started in March but didn’t really finish his onboarding and start selling until June. So we took his 2016 performance from June to Dec and annualized it, then added 10% because we assume he’ll be more efficient in year two. Therefore by “appropriate adjustments” we don’t mean just increasing their quota by XX% just because of last year’s performance. We have seen that at other companies and it can be totally demoralizing. We want the sales team hungry to close as many of the RIGHT deals as possible as SOON as possible. And we don’t want them worried about quota or timing of deals. After that, we selected complimentary marketing investments Now that we had the Sales projections done the next natural question is where are the deals going to come from. We used a historical pattern matching approach for this, meaning we looked at the Deal Sources for the prior year and then updated them for 2017 with some grounded assumptions. For example, our leads from Inbound via our Demo Requests we assumed will have a similar performance in 2017 as there isn’t any material impact to our approach to inbound. There’s no need to increase the expectation if nothing from an investment standpoint has changed. For the areas we saw gaps and needed to come up with Leads we listed our investments we plan to make in order to meet the demand. For example, we are increasing our investments in conferences this coming year to help drive more leads and deals through the pipeline. By this point we have a solid financial projection, we know what investments we plan to make to our team, we know what our sales team needs to achieve via quotas and how marketing is going to support them with the right leads. Now it’s time to fill in the last piece of the puzzle which is our Product Plan. Last, we tied it all together with a product plan The Product Plan is put together by our Head of Product, Brian, where he assesses all the plans we’ve outlined above and then puts together a high level plan for what the Product Team needs to deliver in order for us to hit our goals. In the “product world” it's very difficult to plan too far in advance and most of the best software companies don’t even attempt to try. However, with the information provided above Brian is able to start formulating themes that his team will want to tackle. For example, with our reduction in resource investments and wanting to drive more efficiency with our current team, Brian is looking at projects we can do to help streamline our internal operations. We are a product company so the Product Team’s input into this process because we can’t do this without them. The only thing left is to share with our leadership team There are a lot of details that go into putting this plan together and it's an iterative process, meaning as one part of the plan changes it might impact other parts. Once Brian and I feel comfortable with the plan we share with our Leadership Team. Then during our offsite we get everyone's input on the plans and make any necessary adjustments. It's important that we sync up with the Leadership Team and get on the same page so when we present to the company the following Monday we have ironed out all the details. This allows us to align our Goals for 2017 with our Leadership Team and then ultimately with our entire company. Then we get busy executing… Happy Planning as you kick off the New Year! Our Leadership team is at our Offsite Meeting today where we are discussing all of these topics. For a copy of the agenda & objectives we will cover please download here:
Last week I shared about the main driver of our 60%+ growth in 2016 which you can check out here. After the post, we got a lot of questions about the specifics of our Data Driven approach to growth so we decided to sneak in one more webinar before the end of the year and share all of our secrets. During the webinar I’ll share the specific things we did to drive our growth and they all tie back to a data driven approach. Goals - We kicked off the year with a rigorous approach to setting and working towards our goals. This approach allowed us to sync the entire team with our company goals and then break down the goals for individuals to be able to contribute. Accountability - The main driver for our new Scorecards Feature was our need to help hold our team accountable for hitting their goals. Using scorecards was the only way for each team member to “own a number” that impacts our growth and to be able to visualize how they are performing over time. Cadence - The regular cadence of our weekly meetings where we reviewed our KPIs (from our Scorecards) and progress on our Goals was the game changer and really drove the accountability home. We’ll share what our meeting frequency is and how we structure our meetings. Getting Your Team Involved - We’ll also talk about how we got each of our team members involved, from the Co-Founders, down to the newest employee. This was not easy and took some time to perfect but we found the right formula that works for us and we think the same formula can work for any small to medium business. There’s a lot more we will cover but these are just some of the main highlights with the purpose of giving you practical takeaways that you can implement in your business immediately. If you missed the live webinar, you can still access the free, recorded version...
QuickBooks Online (sometimes abbreviated as QBO) is a cloud-based accounting software for SMBs. QBO offers the ability to track income and expenses, create estimates and invoices, manage and pay bills, and more. We’re thrilled to be able to make it easier than ever for you to access and analyze your QBO data! Launching this new integration all started with one comment on our blog: Then, another: Before long, you were asking us often about a QuickBooks Online integration. We heard you loud and clear. Now, we are excited to present our brand new QuickBooks Online integration! Our QBO integration gives you the ability to visualize and track your financial metrics in real time. You no longer need to wait for your P&L (Profit and Loss) at the end of the month. When combined with any of our other integrations, you’re provided with a single view of the metrics you need to run your business. You no longer need to log into each data source and spend hours creating and updating a spreadsheet. Sample QuickBooks Online Dashboard and Gauges One of our favorite QuickBooks Online metrics breaks down your YTD revenue by type. This enables you to see trends in the type of revenue you’re making. Another great QBO metric to track is your Service Margin Percentage. This helps you understand trending performance and will help you increase your profit margins. Sales Cost as a Percentage of Revenue/Gross Margin is perfect for performing Sales expense analysis. This metric gives you the ability to understand how sales will fit into your cost structure. You can also track your revenue using whichever time frame you choose! Our sample QuickBooks Online dashboard breaks down revenue by quarter and year, but with BrightGauge, you have the ability to watch it monthly or even daily!
Our Customer Spotlight webinar series features BrightGauge power users sharing the tips and insights that have helped them grow and manage their business each day. In this session, we take a look at how to better manage productivity of one of the most important resources for an MSP: the Service Team. In “Managing Productivity of a Service Team”, we’re joined by Karl Fulljames, VP of Operations at Nucleus Networks for a closer look at the specific reports, metrics, and management approaches that he uses when it comes to leading his Service Team operations. Karl shares Service Team management and leadership best practices, with topics including: Managing Service Team productivity Using data to improve Operations How to use a Dispatcher ticket close process Holding the team accountable with transparency Top metrics your team uses and much more! If you missed the live webinar, you can still access the full recording and slide deck here:
Many of our integration partners have had their own dashboard and reporting solutions (we call them integration solutions) for a couple of years now, and while we’ve discussed how they’ve impacted us before, we’ve not really talked about how their solutions differ from our software. Let’s start by discussing the integration solutions: Integration Solutions First off, these are usually free - which is a major benefit. You can try them at no additional cost to you, and receive some benefits from the data. But, as the saying goes: “you get what you pay for”. Users of integration solutions tend to face the following challenges: Limited customization Poor naming schemes Clunky Slow refresh rate And more That’s not to say that integration solutions are bad, they are usually pretty decent, but since they are offered at no additional cost, there is often little incentive for time and resources to be dedicated to improving them. That’s where BrightGauge comes in: BrightGauge Dashboards and Reports Before we begin to dive into the specifics, it’s important to note that BrightGauge doesn’t compete with the integration solutions and instead compliments them. Our integration partners have so many priorities that they don’t have the time to build a better dashboard and reporting solution. We fill in that gap by putting 100% of our time and resources into developing data solutions that save you time, save you money, and help grow your business. Everything Under One Roof One of the most apparent benefits to using BrightGauge is the ability to see all of your important data in one place. Integration solutions will only provide the data from their platform, but BrightGauge has 14 integration partners and is constantly adding to that list. You can easily monitor your financial, service, and operations data in one place. Data Source Mashup and Calculated Metrics Dataset Mashups are a combination of two or more datasets into a single gauge. This gauge can then be displayed on one of our dashboards or reports and provides extra value over traditional gauges because of the ability to gain insight from your data more efficiently. Example metrics that use data source mashup are tech utilization, member scorecards, and advanced hours actual by member. Calculated Metrics, another one of BrightGauge’s most powerful features, allows you to get more from your data by taking two metrics and using basic math to see data you wouldn’t be able to easily identify otherwise. This includes metrics like ticket kill rate. % of 1 touch resolved tickets today, and more. Calculated Metrics makes it easier than ever to manage your data Dashboard Templates BrightGauge offers dashboard templates for each of our integration partners. This allows you to get valuable insight from your data as quickly as possible! In fact, we often hear that getting started with BrightGauge is quicker than the time it takes to get insight from your data in integration solutions. Click here to see our many dashboard templates. 150+ Prebuilt Gauges What good is a customizable dashboard if you can’t easily customize the dashboard? This is where many of the integration solutions are weakest. With BrightGauge you’ve got 150+ prebuilt gauges so that you can easily create custom dashboards and reports in a matter of minutes. Customer Service and Data Customization Team on Standby When you need something extra, such as help on a specific project, BrightGauge provides free customer service along with a data customization team. From troubleshooting data discrepancies to creating a custom gauge, you can count on us to be there. Which Solution is Right for You? It may seem like a difficult choice, but choosing the right dashboard and reporting solution is easy when you follow these 2 simple steps: Since integration solutions are free, we recommend that you give them a try. Get a good feel for how they can benefit you, what is possible and where they may fail to meet your needs. Go ahead and request a free BrightGauge one on one demo - the demo usually only takes 20 minutes of your time and will help you see whether BrightGauge is right for you. After trying both the integration solution and having your one on one BrightGauge demo, you’ll be able to decide which solution will help save you time, save money, and grow your business.
