Blog Logo-2.svg

The BrightGauge Blog

Eric Dosal

ConnectWise API Enhancement of SLA Reporting Coming Soon

Great news for all of our ConnectWise API customers! ConnectWise is making huge enhancements to their API as part of their 2014.1 release. Below is a complete list of the enhancements and in ...
Great news for all of our ConnectWise API customers! ConnectWise is making huge enhancements to their API as part of their 2014.1 release. Below is a complete list of the enhancements and in particular we wanted to mention the “New Service Report fields” which will include SLA information. Last Update field added to all applicable reporting views. Last Update UTC fields ared added where available. Updated By field added to all applicable reports. Display date fields in ISO format and time zone field included. New Service Report fields: Ticket Age, Severity, Impact and SLA fields. New Company Report fields: Date entered, Date acquired, Delivery method.. New Contact Report fields: Territory. New Expense Report fields: Payment method. New Product Report fields: Picking and shipping fields. New Agreement Report fields: Billing cycle, Billing amount, Agreement start date, Parent agreement rec_ID and name. New Service Board Report fields: Service board rec_ID. New Company Address fields: Expense reimbursement field, Default shipping, Default billing, Default mailing. New Marketing Campaign fields: Marketing ROI view, Count of emails sent, Status field name, Inactive column. Several of our top 10 most popular gauges are SLA related and up until this release we were unable to offer that information to our ConnectWise API customers. But now we’ll be able to add default gauges around Average Time to Response, Average Time to Resolution Plan, and Average Time to Resolution. We’ll be making these fields available through BrightGauge default datasets once they are released from the ConnectWise API.
request-a-brightgauge-demo

Most Popular Daily Metric: Tickets In New Status

Currently Open Tickets In New Status shows all your current open tickets that have not been touched by your team. This is a key metric to be monitoring regularly to make sure your team is responding in a timely manner. Additionally, it’s a great indicator if something big has happened at a customer site if multiple people are reporting the same issue. And with our new dashboard release you can have this metric up on your wall and let the entire team monitor the gauge. As with all of our gauges, the important thing is not only to understand the number but also what is driving the data. Click on the gauge itself and it will bring up the detailed data for you to do a deep dive: To learn more about how tracking a daily metric like this can help improve your profitability, check out the webinar we hosted on Best Practices of Working and Tracking Time In Real Time presented by MSP Coach Manuel Palachuk

Subscribe to get the latest content delivered to your inbox

Executive Client Facing Report Template

BrightGauge began as a Client Facing Tool and over the past two years has transformed to a complete business analytics platform offering both client facing reporting as well as internal reporting of metrics and KPIs. Below is Part I of a II part series of the most popular gauges used in an Executive Client Facing Report from our Connectwise and AutoTask partners. Typically these reports are delivered to the clients on a monthly basis to show the value you are bringing as an MSP. Support Ticket Summary - Waiting on Client Our Support Ticket Summary (STS) module is one of our most popular modules because it allows you to filter down the ticket information you want to show. Our most popular configuration of the STS is filtering down the ticket to Currently Open with the status of “Waiting on Client.” (Disclaimer: Waiting on Client is the name we had for the status of any ticket we were waiting on action from the customer, other customers have this as “Waiting on Customer” or “On Hold.” The gauge can be adjusted to the status of your choosing.) Tickets Opened Last Month & Tickets Closed Last Month Number of tickets opened last month gives your client an understanding of all the hard work your team is doing for their network. We recommend combining this with the number of tickets closed last month in order for you to show the value you are bringing to the table and how you are keeping up with the volume. Average Time to Acknowledgement Trailing 30 Days The average time to acknowledgement shows the average amount of time before a request that is submitted gets reviewed and acknowledged. For those that share SLA information or are looking to start, this is the perfect gauge to begin with. The metric allows you to show how quickly your team is responding to their requests. Typical SLA response times are 5 to 10 minutes with some lagging to 15 to 20 minutes. Most Active Users - 30 Days This gauge allows you to show your customer the top ticket openers which tends to be the “noisiest end users.” Now if you have a particular end user that is your filter to open tickets or your RMM tool automatically creates tickets for automated work they might throw off your numbers. Don’t worry, you can filter out those from being included in the gauge if you would like. Open vs Closed Trailing 30 Days Very similar to the double headline gauge above, the Open vs Closed is a great visual to show the work your team is doing on a monthly basis in comparison to the tickets being opened by your clients. Tickets Opened By Type - 30 Days This gauge starts to bring a deeper level of business intelligence to the conversation with your client. A first level dive into what types of tickets are being opened over the past time period. Trends can start emerging from this gauge that help upsell an opportunity, or identify items out of scope that are billable, or identify areas that need to be addressed on a global scale (i.e. repeated Microsoft Office issues may be resolved with training). These are just a handful of the 60+ default gauges we offer out of the box that happen to be the most popular in customer base. If you have any others you recommend we would love to hear about them. Please share in the comments. To learn more about Client Reporting, download our free guide filled with all the insights you need to know:

Free Webinar on the 10 Lessons Learned From Selling Our MSP

Last month we published an eBook titled 10 Lessons Learned From Selling Our MSP and given the overwhelming response and questions we received, we decided to host a free webinar to discuss the topic in more detail. The webinar is intended to be for anyone that is considering a potential transaction of selling or buying a MSP (and at whatever stage you are in). Whether you are in the middle of a negotiation, thinking about going to market or it’s only on your long term list of things to consider. This is a "can’t miss session" where we’ll share real life experiences of the entire process. During the webinar, we’ll cover specifics on the entire experience, like: How and why the decision was made to sell the MSP What the process was to get approval internally How we went to market to find the best buyers What the due diligence process was like and how we prepared for it Making the decision to accept the offer Announcing the transaction to the team, vendors, clients Managing through the integration and transition In order to accommodate our global community, we will be hosting two separate webinars to allow for live Q&A. There are limits on the spaces available so we ask that you RSVP by clicking on the link below for the date/time that works best for you. Tues, Oct 15th @ 7:15pm EDT or Wed, Oct 16th @ 10:00am EDT

10 Lessons Learned From Selling Our MSP

Last year, we sold our Compuquip Managed Services Practice to All Covered, a division of Konica Minolta. Many lessons were learned over the 6 months of due diligence and then 12 months of integration and transition. Done successfully an acquisition can provide a win-win-win for all parties involved including the seller to achieve a liquidity event, the buyer to expand or launch their presence in the business, and for the teams to have new opportunities. Now that the transaction is completed we took some time to reflect on the experience and document some of the key lessons learned throughout the entire process. This is not a theoretical eBook; this is based on our experience in the recent transaction. Download the 10 Lessons Learned from Selling Our MSP where we share specific real life lessons learned during our last transaction. Specifically we provide insight into: - How to best prepare for a potential acquisition before it’s even on the radar - Several important resources to consider before sharing your information - What to expect in every stage of the sale process from start to finish Click the image or Get eBook here >

70+ Metrics for MSPs

Key metrics and accompanying formulas to help MSPs skyrocket growth and success!

Get your KPIs

MSP KPI Metrics: Daily Operations Report

One of our most popular requests from our community is about what type of metrics other MSPs are using and how are they using those metrics. So in an effort to share some of that knowledge, we are going to start a series of blog posts specifically dedicated to the topic. Focusing on the operational performance of your business is a key responsibility of anyone in Management, especially in Service Management. What metrics should you and your team be looking at on a daily basis to help you get a “pulse” of the business? Below is a sample of the most popular Daily Metrics our customers use in their Daily OPS Report: To learn more about how tracking a daily metrics like this can help improve your profitability check out the free webinar we hosted on Best Practices of Working and Tracking Time In Real Time presented by MSP Coach Manuel Palachuk:

MSP Key Performance Indicator: EBITDA Margin

We are all in business to take care of our customers but of course we also want to turn a profit. Measuring that profitability can be done in a variety of ways but the one we used to depend on was to measure our EBITDA margin. EBITDA is an acronym for Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization. EBITDA gives an indication of the current operational profitability of the business. The calculations would be as follows: EBITDA = Net Profit + Interest + Taxes + Depreciation + Amortization & EBITDA / Total Revenue = EBITDA Margin Wikipedia has a great summary for this definition: It is intended to allow a comparison of profitability between different companies, by canceling the effects of interest payments from different forms of financing (by ignoring interest payments), political jurisdictions (by ignoring tax), collections of assets (by ignoring depreciation of assets), and different takeover histories (by ignoring amortization often stemming from goodwill). EBITDA also happens to be a popular metric when discussing valuation in an acquisition. Many companies use this as a metric to base the actual valuation; for example, Company ABC was acquired for 8 times EBITDA. Meaning that the acquiring company paid 8x the EBITDA Company ABC produced. When we first started measuring our EBITDA Margin at Compuquip, we were trending in the mid single digits (i.e. 4% - 6% range). That’s when we started to take a hard look at our P&L and trying to drive that number into double digits. The best in class for MSPs had EBITDA margin above 15% and some would be 25%. Our goal was to work our way to 10% and then eventually to 15%. The important thing was we began the measurement of the metric and by understanding that as we grew; we needed to keep our costs in control. That helped us work our way up to 12% EBITDA over an 18 month period. This blog is part of our Internal Metrics That Matter For MSPs blog series that you can download here: Download White Paper

Pricing Your Managed Services Contract

How do you come up with your monthly price for your contracts? Do you follow a specific formula? Do you share that with your customers? At Compuquip, we had a variety of ways to calculate pricing which I’ll share. We tried to triangulate the price using a variety of data points. And I must tell you that it’s important to factor in all of them because you could get insight from one of the questions that will dramatically change your price point. Standard Pricing What do you typically charge per end user? Or what is your goal? Typically, we shoot for $100/end user and when we could, we went for $125. However our ARPU (average revenue per user) typically was in the $75 - $80 range. Cost To Deliver It’s important to know your cost to deliver the service. What is your current burn rate for delivering services? I always wanted to know the cost to add on an additional end user to help me factor in my incremental margin but I never got to that. So I had to do a “back of the envelop calculation”, figuring what the direct cost to support would be. Do they need a dedicated resource onsite? If so add that. How many calls do you think you’ll have to take, what is your cost per call? A fail safe is what is your typical service margin and use that as the cost. Current Cost What is the prospect currently paying for services? If they are using another Managed Services provider its relatively easy to get an understanding of what they are spending. Just be careful to read the current scope carefully because they may not be getting everything they need included, hence why they are looking for another provider. If they have an in house team then you’ll want to factor in all the costs associated with those folks. You can take some of the direct costs I lists here on our Service Gross Margin blog post. Cost To Do This on Their Own Internally All companies at some point consider bringing IT in house, typically because they’ve been burned by an outsourced provider. So we used to always have that as a barometer. Typically, it required to hire a full time person which was going to be at least $35K plus benefits and overhead. What Will They Pay for the Service? This is a question I ALWAYS asked my prospects. You’ll learn so much by the answer. If they are cheap with IT then you’ll get a low number, or if they want to be ball busters and negotiate, they’ll throw out a low number and you have another data point to factor. If they have been burned lately then they might be willing to pay extra for it. Next time you have a contract to price, try this and put the numbers on the whiteboard. In my experience, the price points are typically within 20% - 25% of each other which helps triangulate the final price or at least get you a starting point. How do you price your contracts? Let us know.

MSP Key Performance Indicator: Service Team W2 Ratio

Another great metric that is similar to Service Gross Margin is Service Team W2 (salary) Ratio. The formula for this is: Service Team W2 Ratio = Services Revenue / W2 Expense Of Services Team Services Revenue is the total services dollars delivered by your team and W2 Expense Of Services Team is the total compensation of that Services Team. (note: The term "W2" comes from the federal tax form issued by employers which states how much an employee was paid in a year) 2.0x ratio translates to 50% Gross Margin and 2.5x ratio translates to 60% gross margin. Our goal was always to break 2.0x with some of the most efficient firms pushing 2.5x - 3.0x. At Compuquip, we typically hovered between 1.7x - 2.0x most of the time which makes sense given that our historical services gross margin was less than 50%. One point to note is that typically this metric did not factor in the additional direct cost of your service team. That wouldn’t change the numbers drastically but I always liked to see fully loaded costs to truly understand my margin. However, given how easy it is to calculate we often found ourselves using this metric in our monthly review meetings. Metrics like this and Services Gross Margin are great indicators on how efficient your team is performing. As I’ve said before, the important thing is to start measuring the metrics that matter to you and then take action to improve the metric performance and ultimately improve your business. This blog is part of our Internal Metrics That Matter For MSPs blog series that you can download here: Download White Paper

MSP Key Performance Indicators: Trending Revenue By Category

This is one of my favorite metrics to measure. The number on it’s own doesn’t tell you much, however, it is a great trending indicator. At Compuquip, we were all about converting our legacy clients to Managed Services, the magic MRR. So we monitored this on a regular basis to track our progress. We broke it down into 4 categories: Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) Anything that we billed for a fixed scope, on a monthly basis, based on a long term contract was considered MRR. This is probably more broad than other companies might categorize it but to be honest, it was a pain to break it out even further. We sold our services as a single monthly “all you can eat” fee. So if a customer signed up we would consider it MRR. Even if it meant staffing was included (more on that another time). Professional Services Revenue Any other services that wasn’t a monthly contract fell into our Professional Services bucket. That meant any project revenue, fixed fee or not, T&M work, pre-billed work, non-contractual staffing, etc. (This tended to be the most difficult to predict and plan for but we eventually found our baseline) Hardware & Software (aka Procurement) Anything that we “marked up and resold” from a 3rd party manufacturer that was not monthly recurring would land in this bucket. Typical margin was in the 15.0% - 16.5% range. I’m sure we could have charged more but our process was to charge a 20% gross margin as the default and anything that went below 15% required Management approval. Some of the larger deals, above $100,000, tended to bring down the average. Sales people were paid on the spread so the more they charged the more they made. Other Revenue Everything else fell to this category. All the the 3rd party referral fees, shipping and handling, rebates, etc. I know some companies would bundle shipping & handling into Hardware/Software but I wanted a true picture of the revenue for that line item. Plus, Other Revenue was compensated differently. an example of tracking Revenue by Category in BrightGauge Everyone seems to track financial statements a little different and it wasn’t until we became part of HTG Peer Groups that we standardized based on the template provided by Service Leadership. I believe the key is to develop the metrics you want to measure. Start with the baseline to see how you’re performing and then as you take action to adjust your business, monitor the progress. This isn’t rocket science, but without knowing where you’re starting from it’s very difficult to know how you’re performing. Revenue By Category is a great metric to help understand which direction the ship is going. To put it in perspective, at Compuquip we historically had a revenue split that looked like: Managed Services (MRR) - 40% Professional Services - 20% Hardware/Software - 38% Other Revenue - 2% This blog is part of our Internal Metrics That Matter For MSPs blog series; you can download the free white paper here:

MSP Key Performance Indicators: Past Due Invoices

As an MSP, we work so hard to deliver a quality service to our clients and nothing would irritate me more than past due invoices. Cash is the lifeblood of any business and having aging receivables can put a serious crunch on cash flow. This metric is simple; easy to pull from most systems and highly recommended reviewing it weekly. But this is one metric that it’s more important what you do AFTER you review than just staring at the metric each week. a sample BrightGauge report for tracking Accounts Receivable Aging Detail A few obvious ways to address this proactively was collecting in advance or ACH but in the event those won’t work for you, here are a few things we did to monitor and address Past Due Invoices: Credit Applications – We had a policy that any new clients would have to fill out a credit application form ahead of time for us to check their credit worthiness. But in reality we rarely did that. Sales people were so excited about closing a deal that the credit process would get skipped. And let’s be honest, as a manager when someone had a signed contract but no credit application you tend to look the other way and approve the contract. Who wouldn’t? Accounting Team Follow Up – We had 1 individual that was dedicated to following up on all of our receivables on a regular basis. I realize not everyone can have a dedicated person, in that case make it a priority to whomever does the “Accounting Function” within your team. Someone should be responsible for the status of all the invoices and making sure they have been received by the client and are in the approval process. If anything is off the normal process it should be brought to Management’s attention. Tie Commission To Collections – This was a brilliant move my father did very early on at Compuquip. If any receivable was paid after 90 days you lost your commission as a sales rep. (To clarify, I didn’t like the rule as a sales rep but loved it as a manager). It naturally turned the sales folks into mini-credit officers. Not that we wanted them focusing on credit but we wanted them to at least consider it given that their compensation was ultimately tied to it. Set A Process To Review Regularly – In every sales meeting we always had an agenda item for “AR Past Dues” which we reviewed all invoices over 60 days based on a report someone in Accounting would prepare for us. Each sales rep received a complete report of all their client outstanding invoices and they had to come prepared with an explanation on how they planned to resolve the issue. Like any area of your business, it’s a matter of setting a process to measure the metric to help drive action within your organization and eventually improve the metric. This blog is part of our Internal Metrics That Matter For MSPs blog series; you can download the white paper here.

Our Latest Content

// Siteimprove tracking