The BrightGauge Blog

Our team is thrilled to announce Calculated Metrics, one of the most-requested features on our list! Our new Calculated Metrics feature allows you to create calculations based on individual numbers (layers) you create. To start, we are focusing the 4 basic formula operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The most popular operator is division, in order to create ratio gauges. Ratio gauges provide a tremendous amount of insight and an added level of information because there is context to the metric. For example, we hinted at this release in a recent blog post about our new favorite gauge called the Kill Rate. But here are a few more examples... If your team closed 38 Tickets with 1 touch (meaning on the first interaction with the client) is that good or bad? That information is much more valuable when you compare it to the total number of tickets closed. For this example let’s assume it was 100 tickets closed for the day. With our calculated metrics you take the total Number of Tickets Resolved in First Touch (Layer 1) divided by Total Number of Tickets Resolved during the same time period (Layer 2) and get: Another of our favorites from our QuickBooks integration is calculating your Service Gross Margin. In order to see your Service Gross Margin you need to pull your Total Services Revenue (layer 1) and subtract your Services Cost of Goods Sold (layer 2) which then leaves you with your Services Gross Margin: Tickets per Endpoint is a great indication of which customers make the most ‘noise’. The beauty of this metric is that it not only factors in the total number of tickets and endpoints but it also creates a ratio between the two which helps normalize the data. So you may have a client with 100 tickets per month but 1000 endpoints and then another client with 50 tickets per month but 50 endpoints. By looking at the ticket number you might think the lower volume is better but when compared to the endpoints it becomes obvious it’s not. So what are you waiting for? Learn more about our Calculated Metrics plan here and let us know if you have questions!

Is Monday the busiest day of the week for your service team? What time should you staff up your service team for peak volume of tickets? During those peak times, where are these requests coming from? These are just some of the questions that we can now easily answer with two of our brand new default gauges of Tickets By Day of Week and Tickets By Hour of Day which we discuss in more detail below. With a quick glance you can see the trend of tickets being created on a daily basis. Although Mondays may seem like the busiest day, you can see from the gauge above that Wednesday is the peak day and Friday also happens to be a high volume day. By adding the additional dimension of the Ticket Source to this gauge you can get much more visibility into where the tickets are coming from each day. The natural next question after being able to see the tickets per day is “when are they coming in throughout the day?” From the example above you can see that there tends to be a gradual increase in the morning until the main peak just before lunch. For the remainder of the day it bounces up and down until a significant drop in volume after hours. Having this information, you are able to properly staff your response team for those peak hours. For example, during the 11am (pre-lunch) rush it might be best to have an extra resource or two log into the ticketing system and help the volume. Of course if you don’t need to see the Ticket Sources throughout the day you can quickly remove them from the gauge, but given the valuable insights it provides we have included it in our defaults. Have you started using these new gauges yet? Share with us how your team has improved operations based on the data found in Tickets by Day of Week and Tickets Opened by Hour!

As a CEO of a software business with customers all over the world, one of our biggest lead sources are conferences or trade shows. They also happen to be one of the most expensive channels for marketing with shows costing $5,000 - $20,000 to sponsor plus the expenses to travel, ship gear and the time out of the office. I overhead one vendor at the last conference I attended say he thinks we’re in a “conference bubble” as the pricing is getting so high it’s almost cost prohibitive. That may be true but here’s how I like to look at conferences and the ROI: 1 - Marketing Opportunity - There is no doubt that having conversations with prospective customers is of tremendous value. The investment in the conference is worth the marketing if you can have enough conversations that turn into customers. So how do you figure out if it’s a good investment? Keep reading... 2 - Visit with Customers - Because our customers are all across the globe it’s too costly for us to get together face to face with each of them. We’ve hosted Meetups in different cities like London last year and this year, Miami earlier this year, and New York before that and it’s been beneficial. So any time our customers come together in one place (usually for a conference) it’s a phenomenal opportunity to see them face to face. 3 - Churn Prevention - Inevitability during a conference we’ll speak with a handful of customers that are not 100% happy or are dormant customers not really using our software. Once we identify those customers, we immediately want to make sure we get them in contact with our team and back on track. I really respect those that are upfront and say they aren’t happy, because they typically give us an opportunity to make things right. 4 - Hear About Market Trends - I love the opportunity to have multiple conversations with customers and learn what’s top of mind for them. What’s keeping them up at night and is there anything I can do to help with it? This is a great driver for our educational webinar series and how we came up with the last two on How Customer Success Drove Our MSP Growth and Best Practices of Client Reporting. 5 - Show Off New Features / Integrations - It brings me great joy to meet customers face to face at our booth and show off the new stuff we have recently released. That always jump starts a conversation and gives us an opportunity to make sure they are happy with BrightGauge. 6 - Hit the Road with my Team - The BrightGauge Team always has a good time on the road. Usually it’s me on the road with my road warrior partner (and Director of Sales) Larry Garcia and after a dozen conferences we have the process down and know how to make the most of our time together. From the list above, only #1 and maybe #3 can mathematically impact a ROI calculation. For the others, they are “soft benefits” and if I had to reproduce the customer contact by flying to each city it’s a no brainer to sponsor conferences. So it’s not a simple question to answer about whether conferences are “worth it”. However, I want explain how the actual financial formula we use works in case it can be a resource for you... Marketing ROI for Conferences For SaaS companies reading this that are interested in learning about the ROI of conferences, you’re going to need the following input numbers: Sign Ups from Conference - You need a way to associate a sign up to someone you met/closed at the conference. This could be manual or you could use a unique coupon code. Average Sale Price (ASP) - When you take your monthly revenue and divide it by the number of customers you have, that is your ASP or sometimes you’ll see it as ARPU which stands for Average Revenue Per Unit. Churn Rate - This has many ways to be calculated but it’s basically the percentage of customers that are leaving you every month. The easiest way to calculate is to take the number of Customers that canceled during the month and divide by the number of Customers you had at the beginning of the month. Gross Margin - Revenue minus your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). Life Time Value - The formula for this includes your ASP divided by your Churn Rate multiplied times your Gross Margin % or ASP / Churn Rate x Gross Margin % = LTV Conference Expense - The total expenses for the conference which includes the sponsorship and all expenses at the conference (hotel, travel, meals & entertainment, booth gear, etc). For this exercise, this is also your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) LTV to CAC Ratio Target - SaaS best practices say your LTV should be at least 3x greater than CAC (which translate to a 33% CAC). However, at BrightGauge we target 5x to try and keep CAC 20% of our LTV. From here, the formula to calculate your ROI is simple: So to identify how many sign ups you need at a conference, you can use this basic formula: Let’s put this into practice with actual numbers of: 5 = LTV to CAC Ratio $8,000 = Conference Expenses $4,000 = LTV That's it! Now you're able to determine if those conferences make sense from a numbers perspective.

We recently announced that with our largest team to date in place at BrightGauge headquarters, we will be upgrading our office space to accommodate our growing crew. With 12 employees and more coming soon, our current 1400 sq ft space is pinched to say the least. Since our team is an incredibly close group, we wanted to continue making sure that they enjoy the space where they spend the majority of their working time, and with that in mind Brian and I went on the hunt for a new home that fits our space needs and our culture. Let me back up for a minute and explain how we got to where we are today. The prior two office leases we had signed were 1 year terms. The first lease was 1 year because we wanted to confirm the idea of being based in Coral Gables so we didn’t want to commit long term. Then our current lease was signed for 1 year because we weren’t sure how much space we would need as we grew. We were focused on getting our migration done and building our product so we didn’t want to lock ourselves in long term until we were sure. However, now as our lease was coming due we took some time to plan things out and factor in where we were going and how many people we were going to need to get there. We love Coral Gables so with a definite location in mind and a team nearly doubled in size, we knew what square footage we needed for the next few years. So we went to work on finding the right space for us. As we started our search we took inventory of the buildings that had between 2,200 and 2,600 sq ft available for 3 year lease. We love our current building so when we heard there were several spots available we decided to focus there. And low and behold the suite right next door to us is available and fits everything we need. Now that we had the space, we brought in the expert Gigi Alvarez to help us design the space and we are excited to share what she came up with! Open Office Layout We have decided to make the new office pretty much wide open except for 1 office and 1 conference room, both with glass doors to still give a transparent feel. Our culture is one focused on being a team and being open with each other so it’s critical to have the walls down (physically and metaphorically). So the new office space will allow us all to collaborate more and be able listen and share information faster. Growth Team Our Growth Team will all sit together which ensures that our Marketing, Sales, Customer Success and Data Customization Teams are within earshot of each other and are able to co-produce projects together. Having the team close by makes it easy for those quick conversations and everyone is listening to customer conversations so people can pitch in when necessary. Product Team The Product Team needs to sit very close to one another because they are constantly working on projects together. So we wanted to have a design that would maximize the ease to share but not have people sitting on top of each other. The other cool thing about the Product Team area is that they are now sitting right by the window. In the current space they are off in the dark (usually with the lights off, by choice) but now they’ll have a nice dose of regular sunlight to brighten up their day. Collaboration Area The most anticipated part of the office is by far the collaboration area. This is where we are getting the most input from the team on what to do with the space. From a business standpoint this is where we will get together for our Rambo Pizza meetings and group sync sessions. Because we so often partner up across teams it’s important to have a shared space where we can work together. Additionally it serves as a great spot for us to kick back and relax after a long week or to celebrate a big customer victory. Stay tuned, as we’re really excited to share more as our new HQ comes together!

When it comes to providing client reporting based on the information from your RMM tool (Kaseya, LabTech, MaxFocus, or N-Able) there are countless options. The first step is to identify who your target recipient of the report is, and then work backwards to the type of information you should include in the report. The typical small to medium business owner or executive may not want all the techie “speeds and feeds” details that typically come out of the template reports provided by the vendor. So just like our research for the perfect PSA report, we set out to build the right template. We used three techniques: (1) analyzed the reports our power users of the client reporting feature are using (2) surveyed our customers (3) leveraged our own experience from our MSP What came of this 2 month long research project are our Client Reporting Templates we have shared with all customers. But it’s important to note that these are a “starting point” to help you get going. From here you can build more customization or make adjustments as you see fit. For our RMM data sources (Kaseya, LabTech, MaxFocus, and N-Able) we focused on just a few simple gauges: Device Counts - You would be surprised how many business owners don’t know the number of devices they have on their network. Many of our customers are still pricing their solution by device count so this allows you to keep the count fresh in their mind. Top 25 Most Installed Applications - Standardization of the applications on your client’s network should be a top priority and more importantly, being specific on the types of applications you do not support. This gauge provides an easy visual to start the conversation about the applications running on the network. Server Patch & Server Antivirus Protection (AV) - Given the world we live in now with security threats popping up every day, ensuring your client’s servers are properly patched and secure with antivirus is a requirement of every MSP out there. With our patch and antivirus gauges it’s easy to see if everything is properly secure. Server Disk Utilization - Understanding the space available on your client’s critical servers is important to ensure that all the servers are running properly. A key disk drive that gets full can bring down the server so keeping your clients updated on the trend is critical. Workstation Patch & Workstation Security (AV) - Keeping your client’s end points properly patched and antivirus updated is a difficult challenge. Unlike Servers that tend to stay put and always on, workstations can be on the road and not connect to the network for days at a time - and when they are connected, they may be powered off during the patch window. Tracking the progress of your client’s patch and antivirus is very important to ensure their network is safe. Workstation Disk Utilization - Space on a workstation is not as critical as servers but it does provide early indications on which workstations may need to be upgraded. This helps to avoid end user downtime and is also a potential upselling opportunity. In summary, with these key gauges you are off to a great start to show your clients: (1) what they have on their network (2) how secure the devices are on their network and (3) identify which devices may need to be upgraded. This summary speaks volume about the value you are providing! To learn more about how you can ensure client happiness and save a ton of time by skipping the manual report process, check out our free webinar:

I’ve written before about two of my favorite gauges being Number of Open Tickets and Closed Tickets in a given time period. You can derive so much information from these simple metrics which I go in depth about here. I’m excited to share that now with our Calculated Metrics release we are able to combine those metrics into a more meaningful gauge that we call the Kill Rate. The formula for the Kill Rate gauge is Tickets Closed divided by Tickets Open over the same time period, usually per day. Anything above 100% means you have killed (completed) more tickets than have been opened. Let’s put this to the test:Scenario #1, it’s Friday and your service team is kicking butt and have a big catch up day of closing 50 tickets when there were 40 tickets opened by your customers. The formula to calculate the kill rate is: In Scenario #2, it’s a Monday and the team is getting flooded with tickets from the weekend so 65 tickets are opened by customers and your team is only able to complete 45 of them. The formula to calculate the kill rate is: The beauty of this metric is one number brings a lot of information and in a quick glance you can see how your Service Team is performing. The goal is always to be reducing your service backlog (closing more tickets than are opened) which means you can target your team to keep the Kill Rate above 100%. It even helps to put an incentive in place if they stay above 100% for a certain number of days in a row, meaning they can go out and celebrate. In the meantime, to learn how you can Improve Your Business with KPIs on Dashboards check out our free white paper:

What service information should I send my clients? How often should I send the reports? These are the two most popular questions we get during the on-boarding process with new customers or when customers are initially setting up our Client Reporting feature. The good news is that we have you covered! We’ve already done the homework on the key information you should be sending your clients by providing you with templates per data source. It’s important that we discuss how we developed these templates. We used three techniques: (1) analyzed the client reporting features of our power users (2) surveyed our customers and (3) leveraged our own experience from our MSP. What came out of this 2-month long research project are our Client Reporting Templates, which we have shared with all customers. But it’s important to note that these are a “starting point” to help you get going. From here you can build more customization or make adjustments as you see fit. For our PSA data sources, Connectwise, Connectwise Hosted, Autotask, and Tigerpaw we focused on just a few simple gauges: Service Summary This shows tickets that are currently open, tickets opened last month, and tickets closed last month. This gauge is a great snapshot into the services details for the prior month. Open vs Closed Tickets This gauge is a perfect visualization into how your team is keeping up with the demands of the client. If there are more tickets open than closed (meaning your service backlog is increasing), then there should be a point of discussion with your client on how you can address this. Service Level Agreement (SLA) If your data source provides SLA information that allows us to document the average time it takes to acknowledge or respond to a ticket, it’s important to share that with your client. This shows that your team is being responsive to their requests which is one of the most important characteristics a client expects of a service provider. Tickets Opened By Type This pie chart shares the type of tickets your client currently has open with you. This gauge provides a wealth of information on what type of work your client is requesting of you. One glance at this gauge tells a story of the different types of support you are providing - and if the support is off, what’s expected based on the contract. This is your opportunity to review with the client and make adjustments. Most Active Users This is one of my favorite gauges to share with clients because it helps immediately identify the “problem users” that may need some extra coaching or training. We all have a few noisy users in our client base who have a tendency to open the majority of the support requests, and this gauge allows you to bring it front and center. In summary, with these 5 key gauges you’re able to show: All the work you have done for the client How you’re responding to their requests Whether your team is keeping up with the volume The type of support you are providing The most active users that you’re spending the most time on This summary speaks volume about the value you’re providing! To learn more about how you can ensure client happiness and save a ton of time by skipping the manual report process, check out our free webinar:

Brian and I have been on this kick of meeting with customers and learning more about why they use BrightGauge and what areas we can improve on. As we started with our larger partners that had been with us for a while, we noticed a trend. All of them were using our Client Reporting and we wanted to understand why. So we asked them for some insight and here’s what they said as to why they send reports to clients on a monthly basis. Turns out there are 4 recurring reasons or themes we have heard in our conversations: 1) Staying Top of Mind With My Clients This was by far the most popular response in that sending your client a report on a regular basis, with meaningful information, they are able to stay top of mind. This is a low impact way to make sure your clients know all the wonderful things you’re doing for them and also that you are regularly keeping an eye on their technology. 2) Showing the Value You Provide This is a big shift in the way traditional MSPs think because many of them are just focused on the speeds and feeds of what they do... not on all the value they bring to their clients. During the conversations we had, it was clear that these partners understand the importance of showing value and more importantly to convey this value in a non-intrusive way. Most of them found that sending a regularly scheduled report with everything accomplished is a huge help in articulating their value. 3) Providing an “Itemized Receipt” for Everything You’ve Done This was a unique one for me, but it made total sense after they explained it. We all have eaten out at a restaurant and at the end of a meal you always get an itemized list of everything you consumed during your meal. The receipt serves as documentation for everything that was provided to you and explains why your bill is the price it is. Same goes for your clients, sending them a report shows all the things they have consumed (or you have done) and reminds them why they have to pay the bill. 4) Historical Records and Documentation Monthly Executive Summary Reports are a great way to document everything happening or what has happened over a given time period. The beauty of reports is they are from a specific point in time which serves as a great source of documentation. Saving this historical information comes in handy to reference in the future and especially in the event of an audit where you need to provide the information upon request. To learn how Client Reporting can make a huge impact on your business, download our free webinar where we share how Client Reporting is a key pillar in the area of Customer Success.

"Why do I pay you every month?" The dreaded question of any service provider. So how do you combat receiving this potential question? According to Harvard Business Review, it can be up to 25 times more expensive to constantly acquire new clients instead of keeping your existing clients on board by ensuring their happiness. And, more than 50% of customers switched service providers in a single year after poor customer service according to Accenture’s Global Consumer Pulse Survey. Sounds like the obvious approach is to make sure you have happy clients. Based on the stats, we decided to spend a few weeks meeting with our fastest growing partners. We uncovered 3 key reasons why they are using BrightGauge to keep their clients happy and engaged. Sharing That You Provide Top Notch Service Become a True Partner, Not Just a Vendor Show Them The Information They Want, When They Want It Sharing That You Provide Top Notch Service At the end of the day we are all in the client Service business and you as a MSP just happen to use technology to provide that client service. Your clients are counting on you to provide the very best support possible and expect you to deliver on what you promised. By sharing with your client all the tasks you have accomplished during the previous month it allows you to highlight the tactical impact you have on their business. Become A True Partner, Not Just a Vendor Technology is at the center of everything we do and as MSPs you provide an incredible service that enables companies to function on a daily basis. Our partners prepare and deliver their client’s reports and use that as an opportunity to have conversations with the decision makers on how their technology is performing. These conversations allow you to “Move Up The Stack” which is one of the key lessons we shared in our Sales Best Practice Webinar. Show Them The Information They Want, When They Want It Your clients are already getting bombarded with emails and status updates from every vendor, partner, software, company they interact with. So a great way to differentiate yourself is to customize the information you are sending your client and the frequency that they receive it. By taking the time to understand what they are looking for and provide them that information when they want it, it will make you stand out above the crowd. To learn how Client Reporting can make a huge impact on your business check out our free webinar where we discussed how Client Reporting is a key pillar in the area of Customer Success.

Today we’re excited to share that BrightGauge has announced 24 new KPIs for our Tigerpaw partners, helping make a great product even better and bringing the integration to a whole new level. We announced our original integration earlier this year with an initial focus on Service Orders and Time Entries data. This included the release of our Tigerpaw Best Practices Dashboard (shown below). But upon further investigation of the Tigerpaw Software and initial feedback from our Tigerpaw Partners we knew we had only scratched the surface of the data they need to run their businesses and decided to dive into Opportunity KPIs, Invoice KPIs, Task KPIs, and Quote KPIs next. Below is a list of all the new KPIs we released including a few screenshots of the most popular ones. To learn more about our integration please visit: Tigerpaw Integration Overview and for our existing customers that want assistance on how to customize these metrics please reach out to our Data Team. Opportunity KPIs Opportunities Closed Last Week Open Opportunities By Type Open Opportunities By Stage (pictured below) Revenue Pipeline Next 30 Days (pictured below) Revenue Opportunities Currently Open By Sales Rep Invoice KPIs Invoices Paid Last 30 Day by Account Invoices Paid - Last 30 Days Outstanding Invoices Count Outstanding Invoices By Account (pictured below) Outstanding Invoices Total Amount Trailing 12 Month Revenue (pictured below) Total Revenue Amount Last Month Outstanding Invoices by Aging Status Top 25 Balances Due by Account (pictured below) Task KPIs Open Tasks (pictured below) Open tasks Past Due (pictured below) Open tasks by Member Open tasks Past Due by Member (pictured below) Open tasks by project Open tasks by opportunity Quote KPIs Open Quotes Open Quotes By Rep Open Quotes By Status Open Quotes By Account