The BrightGauge Blog

Meet the latest member of the Growth team, Allison Corin! Join us in learning more about Allison and what brought her to BrightGauge... The early days Like most other members of the team, Allison grew up in Miami. After attending Miami Killian High School, Allison headed North to attend Syracuse University where she majored in History and Public Relations. Following graduation in 2004, Allison worked in retail for Abercrombie & Fitch throughout South Florida, helping them launch new locations nationwide as well. While she excelled at her position, she wanted to take advantage of her degree with her next spot. Building on her management experience in retail, she secured an Account Executive position with PPR Communications, a boutique PR firm in South Florida. She was able to manage a diverse profile of clients including: resorts, architecture firms, and corporate leadership development programs. Over the next couple of years, Allison parlayed this work into Account Executive and Coordinator roles at several stops including: Valley Forge Fabrics and Enterprise. Joining BrightGauge It wasn’t until her position as a Talent Acquisition Coordinator at Ranger Technical Resources that she realized how much she loved the software industry and wanted to find a position within the technology space. Allison’s work as a recruiter introduced her to the BrightGauge team. During a local Miami tech event, she met several members of the BrightGauge team and they discussed an opportunity to join. As Allison tells it, the rest was history. She was taken with everything about BrightGauge during the interview process. The fun, yet focused atmosphere as well as the genuine people, was everything she was seeking for her next big move. As the newest member of the Growth Team, Allison is excited to learn more about the BrightGauge app and how it helps customers improve their business. Just for Fun Outside of the office, Allison loves spending time with her family and friends. She loves animals, and frequently volunteers with animal related causes in Miami. Similar to others at BrightGauge, Allison is an avid supporter of Miami sports teams. Of course, she keeps up with Syracuse sports as well. Allison is always active; she enjoys swimming and long runs in South Miami. When looking to slow things down, she passes the time with reading and writing. A lifelong goal is to author some young adult books. Join us in welcoming Allison to the BrightGauge Team!

There’s a lot to BrightGauge. While some customers may request more features, most are looking for more shortcuts; a simpler experience. With that in mind, this week we’re focusing on an oft-underutilized time saver: Dashboard Filters. As a fairly new user myself, I’m constantly discovering new capabilities within our app. When I was familiarizing myself with how everything worked, I found myself returning to the question of when was best to use a Dashboard filter versus creating a new gauge. Dashboard Filters These come in handy when you're looking to modify multiple gauges across your dashboard to see previous trends or get client specific. Dashboard filters are applied when you want to quickly toggle to another date range or view stats for a specific team member or client without having to build a specific gauge for them. Most used Dashboard Filters Filter by agent OR client -- This is used when you want to view a set of gauges with an individual client or team member in mind. Instead of making a specific dashboard for each employee or customer, use this is as a shortcut to view a team member's support stats or how many resources a client is pulling from your company. Toggling between date ranges -- Compare project and ticket statistics like kill rate, churn rate, and anything else you'd like to compare across this month, last month, and with some datasets, within the last 120 days. How to set up Dashboard Filters To apply a filter to a dashboard, you can either update an existing dashboard or clone a dashboard. When you create a dashboard filter, it's specific to that individual dashboard(unless you choose to clone one with existing filters in place). Most filters are created for sharing one dashboard with multiple clients. If you're monitoring the same gauges for multiple clients, then this is a must for you! To do this, clone the dashboard you'd like to share, then apply a filter to make the gauges shown specific to that client. Rename the dashboard, and you're ready to give that customer Viewer access to that dashboard. When adding a filter you're prompted to select which fields you'd like to apply it to. *Note that any field selected, its corresponding dataset will also have the filter applied ie. all gauges associated with that dataset on that dashboard will also have the filter applied to them. If you want to only apply a filter to one or two gauges, and they're linked to a dataset that's tied to even more gauges within that dashboard, then create a new gauge or modify an existing one. Tip: looking for an easy way to tell if your dashboard filters are on? Just look for the green triangle in the upper-right-hand-corner of each gauge! Gauge Building So you've found that while your dashboard filter is helpful, it covers a little too much. As mentioned in the previous section, once you apply a filter to one gauge, any other gauge there belonging to the same dataset will also be filtered. For this instance, it's best to create or modify an existing gauge. It's important to note modifying an existing gauge leads it to appear differently across any report, dashboard, or goal list where it's in use. First check the Usage panel in the gauge builder to see which dashboards and reports are already using it. Your best bet is to just copy the gauge, change its name, and then update your filters from there. Saving it as a new one will avoid overriding one of the defaults or existing gauges that may be in use by another teammate. Using a Dashboard Filter with a Gauge that's Filtered It's a BrightGauge tongue twister! Really, I don't want you to miss all of the cool details that have gone into making your BrightGauge so customizable. The main tip here is even with a gauge filter in place, any dashboard filter applied will override any gauge filters. If you'd like to learn more about best practices in setting up your dashboards, reach out to our Customer Success team. Featured image credit: Tony Babel

Staying on top of success requires a little bit of luck and a lot of goal setting. Mainly though, it comes down to picking the right metrics to track. For this podcast episode our guest, Craig Pollack, CEO of FPA Inc. shares how he has come to build his company with a few Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) and a lot of focus on great customer care. Top episode takeways: How Craig got his start -- FPA was born The difference between the word client and customer Their top goals as a company: building out sales and marketing The balance between focusing on the numbers and customer care Service dollars generated is one of their driving metrics Wildly Importants Goals (WIGs for short) & Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAGs) _____________ Transcript: Brian: Hey Craig, welcome to the podcast. Craig: Hey how’s it going? Brian: Not too bad, not too bad. I know this is actually my second time hosting a podcast, and I was very excited to pick a familiar voice on the other end since we met last September in your offices. So how have things been going since then and the New Year? Craig: Things are great. Things are actually really good out here. We’re busy. Lots of stuff going on where we’re planning for a physical move. We are actually moving our offices this weekend. We’ve got a lot of fun stuff lined up, it’s all good. Brian: Can you imagine? That’s awesome! What’s the reason for the move? Craig: Oh technically the lease is up, and so really the big thing is we’re moving to a place that’s going to be a little bit culturally different that we’re looking forward to so it’s going to be a little more hip. The environments cool, and the actual layout of the office is going to be a little bit more conducive to collaboration, and more working together as a team so I’m really excited about that. Brian: That’s awesome. I thought you guys were in a pretty hip area, to begin with, so that’s how much I know LA. Why not give the listeners a background on FPA Technology Services: the company you founded. Craig: Sure okay. So the short elevator speech sort of is I started the company in 1991 so I’ve been doing this for quite a while. So about 27 years now I founded it with myself, and my partner. Originally my background is in Software Development so my Degree is in Computer Science. It started way back when we were working with accounting systems and accounting packages as a Developer programming them, modifying them, customizing them and implementing them. So really we started out with the software side of things and initially we did three things, we did Accounting System Implementations, we did Custom Programming and Web Development, and then we did Network Infrastructure you know the underlying systems to manage, and run the software applications. So fast forward, we grew at our largest point where there was around forty of us, and then around 2009 I split with my partner, sold off the accounting side and I kept the Custom Development and Network Infrastructure side. So right now we’re about 25 staff, and we since shut down the Custom Development and primarily focus on Network Infrastructure, Cloud Infrastructure, and PCIO Security, that sort of stuff. Brian: What was the reason for shutting down the Custom Software Development, and kind of focusing on the Infrastructure services side? Craig: Yeah, well you know the reality is you know that they are two different completely sort of businesses right, and we actually had a couple of applications out there nationally that were selling and supporting pretty specific applications, but they are out there nonetheless. But it’s just a completely sort of business in terms of R&D and development, and support of a Software Application versus a trusted advisor consultative sort of engagement and you know the business structure. It’s just two different pipes and we couldn’t really see this as more of the future for us, and what our focus has always been really around client relationships you know. In terms of our business again the quick elevator speech is we're a boutique sort of firm where we act as an outsourced IT Department for small to midsize businesses, it’s pretty much what everybody who is an IT Service Provider says. So what’s different about us is really is we are very-very service focused, and we always have been we are really about the client relationships. One of our pet peeves is the difference between using the word client and using the word customer. We’ve always kind of preached that clients are people that you have a relationship with, customers are people you sell stuff to, and we’re really about the relationship you know in a quick synopsis. We like to say we’re a Nordstrom in a sea of Walmarts. Brian: That’s right, that’s right. Craig: People say we’re more expensive than the other guys. If that’s the worst thing that they can say about us, I’m okay with that so we have to deliver on that. Brian: So I remember taking down that notice as a unique way of saying, and describing the difference between you and the other folks when we met in person there. So of the 25 people then what’s the breakdown of the team engineers, clients relationship people? How does that break down? Craig: Yeah so we have like I said we’re very service focused so other than myself, and my Marketing Assistant we really don’t have a Sales and Marketing side of the house, it’s just us. That’s two, we have in terms of HR and Accounting, and you know C-level administrative side we have 4 people so that’s 6 so that leaves about 18 or 19 service delivery folks. So between Engineers, NOC, Dispatch, Triage, and what we call Technical Account Managers we don’t really have Non-Technical Account Managers or Sales staff. So again we’re very much focused on the service delivery side of things. Brian: So the Technical Account Managers or TAMS we used to call them at Compuquip in the old days are they selling the product as well? And they were the ones they were closing an upgrade or are they actually an hourly rate of billable resource or both? Craig: I’d say it’s a combination of both but really they are Account Managers, but they’re not sales focused, they’re more solution focused, but they are the guys who are closing the deals. Their responsibility is existing clients, managing them keeping them, making them happy, and providing whatever solutions they need to have. And then we’ve got the delivery mechanisms behind that to go deliver. Brian: Yeah they’re the trusted folks. As if they have the staff, the team of staff I would say hey we recommend XYZ upgrade because we need it, and they have that technical know-how and the client relationship to be able to work the best solution for them that’s the dream. So does that mean most of your revenue or most of your businesses is recurring at least some MFP Contracts or is it projects one-offs as well? Craig: Well there’s a combination, but we’re right now probably I think we’re close to 2/3 or 66%, but somewhere 65-70% of our total revenue is recurring. Brian: I remember again going back to my old days we had about the same split, but then the other 20% more was within the same existing customer base, and 20% was random projects is that kind of how you guys see or are the other 40% all one time projects? Craig: No it’s actually all. I’d say it all existing clients whether it's project, out of scope additional T&M other sorts of things. We don’t really do one-off projects who aren’t already existing clients. Brian: That’s awesome that’s the dream for most of you know the MSP’s out there, but even to this day, there are folks that are transitioning that can’t say no that type of thing so that’s awesome that you’re able to do that. Craig: Yes it was definitely a transition period you know going from 0-2/3 and getting strong enough and confident enough to know when to say no. Brian: Does that and I know that couple years ago you actually switched to ConnectWise you used to have a custom homegrown. Looking back, when was the transition when you said alright we’re going to go down this pure services play? Was that at that 2009 mark when you got rid of Custom App Development or did you then do projects? Okay, I’m switching to services okay I think we need ConnectWise. What was that 2009 to now transition like? Craig: Right, so you know 2008-2009 was the quote on quote great recession. We definitely felt it up until 2009, 100% of our revenue was time and materials based and obviously some product and gross margin and what have you. None of our services were contracted, it was all just time, and material based. So I knew that we had to change in 2007-2008 in 2009 that’s when quote on quote Manage Services was really being a big push in the channel, and I really saw that as we got a transition out of this to get some stability around our revenue flow. And so that’s when we really started down the Manage Services vein and slowly but surely grew it at the same time we were running our own Custom Program that we wrote, and we didn’t transition to ConnectWise we didn’t transition to a non-custom application R&M Application PSA Application until June 2016. So a year and a half it’s almost two years but… Brian: What was the reason, the final push to make you do it? Just tired of maintaining? Craig: It actually worked really well, but I knew that there were some big issues with it. I knew that we were going to have an upgrade. I knew it was written in an old legacy language I mean it ran great, but it was a thick client, and they were limitations to it. And they were limitations to it in terms of what we could ultimately do with it. I mean it was good, but if I wanted to make all these things happen that I wanted to make happen with, and look at a Custom System. It was integrated with Outlook, it was integrated with our web portal, we had it was integrated with our dashboards, it was pretty cool they were a lot of stuff we had with it. We missed the boat on selling it 15 years ago when we should have. I knew that said I knew that we wanted to have these other functionalities added to it- it was going to be pretty expensive, and we want to continue doing things the way we did it or do we want to do things based on best practices and force ourselves rather than forcing the software to do what we do wrong to force ourselves to be more industry standard. And that was really the driver to move to ConnectWise, the ecosystem it was obviously a pretty strong product, and had strengths and weaknesses with things that ours didn’t have. But the ecosystem, and obviously BrightGauge, was a big piece of that. What are these other things that we could hold onto that we currently don’t have that would be really easy to add? And we knew we’re going to be developed in the future, and future-proof ourselves. Brian: Yeah and how was the transition? Craig: It was actually pretty good. I think that we ran into some snags, but it was a pretty hard cut off transition so come June 1st it was we’re diving in new times going in here we’re not running parallel you know our staff I’ve got to say they really took it upon themselves, and really embrace the new system. Brian: That’s awesome Craig: It was difficult but it has they embraced it, and we made it work not without a couple of hiccups and kinks here and there but you know we’re… Brian: I can just imagine the history within the old system that it’s just a huge move so it’s impressive you guys pulled it off without saying man I wanted to pull my hair out all the time I’m sure they’re a few moments that was like that. Craig: There are definitely times we went through a couple of different consultants, and a couple of different people from ConnectWise you know because we were software guys I mean we really push it. I mean a year and a half into it we’re told we were at like a 6 or 7-year maturity I mean we’re using a lot of it. Brian: Yeah that’s awesome, and you guys were the same way with us I can definitely see that being true like you said having the software mindset to begin with you said that a bunch that ConnectWise community we used to use it at Compuquip. I always felt that the ecosystem was one of its biggest if not the biggest strength that it has including and now they just bought HTG which is crazy including that ecosystem the partner in the community you joined HTG right since moving to ConnectWise? Craig: Yeah we did actually we’ve been in a little over a year we started last year last January so yeah. Brian: You’d be surprised how many people that we’ve talked to and therefore listeners are not a part of peer group what’s your take so far in the last year that you’ve been there? What’s the takeaway or you know maybe anything for people who have not joined, and thought about it? Craig: Well we were actually in another peer group beforehand a peer group called Vistage I would say Vistage is a little bit higher end in terms of they’ve got companies from our size to a hundred million dollar company. So you’re learning a lot of different things which is some stuff is really cool, and some stuff is not applicable, and that’s kind of why we moved to HTG to really have something that was just dialled inapplicable to us we’re going to sit in a room with 10 other people who own IT Service Companies from different parts of the country not competing so we can really peel back the onion, and compare notes how do you do this? How do you do that? What do you find successful with? What are you having problems with? It’s great I mean it’s really solid in terms of the benefits that it can add so if you have the time, and you’re at the right size to really be thinking about your business and how to grow it. Being in HTG is really worthwhile I definitely would consider that… Brian: Yeah HTG we have a lot of their customer base we have a lot of shared partner base, but it seems that when you say that size that you’re growing your business it seems that BrightGauge has this parallel target market if you will. That’s like okay you’re mature enough or big enough to have the time to look at things in a different way a little bit further back you have enough people that you need to manage it with data instead of being able to walk around and talk to everyone so there’s definitely size component. I know they have a group that is geared towards 10 and underemployed something like that there’s some other smaller group but that’s true about the size. So I know what you can’t divulge what you tell your HTG brothers in that closed room with the 12 of you in the last 12 months or the last 3 months you know what are the challenges that you are seeing that FPA is facing or the industry? What are you talking about what you think is allowed to be shared I should say? Craig: Yeah you know I think it’s the standard sort of stuff that most of our brothers are running into a lot of it is particular things like hey how are you guys? What’s your onboarding process for new staff? What is your hiring process for new staff? How are you accessing their capabilities? Or what are you doing to retain staff? Craig: I think the big question is always about sales and marketing and what are you guys doing and seeing in your markets? And the thing is to some degree we have a lot of similar issues, and it’s really good to process it and in other situations, they’re completely different. Brian: What’s an example? Craig: Well my sales and marketing mean in Los Angeles the ticket market is it going to be different than somebody in Montana if you market is a population of 500,000 and you were in your city or your greater Metropolitan area. I have 500,000 businesses here it’s just different I have 250 competitors so it’s different, and not that everything’s different just the pieces are different. Brian: So take me going down that thread there on the sales side so you’re doing what I would call the rainmaker sale right? You’re like a partner at a law firm you go in you can commit the firm price, everything builds a relationship, you’re the professional the ultimate professional because you’re the founder what are you looking to do? Or what the…that you're tossing your head and talking to folks is that to continue down that route? Or are you thinking of some other players on the whole gross side or on the sales and marketing side? Craig: Yeah I know that’s a great question I mean for us personally we’re at the place where we are now focusing on sales and marketing, and building up that side of the business. So up until this point you’re right I’ve been the rainmaker, and I’m the only one running point we did have a salesperson we tried that for a year and a half or so it was very poor performance it didn’t work out to get back over myself so my goal, my aspiration is to build up the sales and marketing function. So, I believe that first, and foremost we got up the marketing going to create the lead generation to be able to have salesmen generating closure obviously so the first step is building that marketing fund, and getting those leads going and hiring basically replacing myself so historically I’ve been the sales and marketing guys. So I’m replacing myself with Rian my Marketing Assistant, and developing that side of the business and the long-term goal hopefully within a year is to replace myself on the sales side of things. So that’s in a very simplistic big picture sort of way that’s my goal that’s what we’re trying to do obviously there’s a lot of tasks and things in between now and then to make that happen. Brian: What’s the marketing activities you started working on I mean you have Rian on board have you started working on what those marketing activities are going to be and started trialing everything out or just at the early stages of it? Craig: Yeah no we actually have a pretty well defined Marketing Plan now we rebuilt our website we went live with that in November that’s based on Hubspot so everything that we’re doing is very in-bound focused. So if you know anything about inbound marketing activities Hubspot’s kind of the key for that so doing a lot of that doing a lot of sort of other activities around events, and what you learn on webinars with knowledge transfers a lot of the quote on quote difficult sort of things. It’s just really ramping up the activity level and it’s the noise level around that it’s a numbers game right so it’s the more activity that we have or what we’re going to generate out of that. Yeah I’m always curious because the MSP’s the sales cycle is longer we sell $300 a month on contracts MSP sells 3,000 so it just naturally feels like it does get longer but you still have to have that engine and people that we talk to do both they say I got to merge with another company. So that I can have that other rainmaker sales person to grow this thing better than I can grow myself or the route of letting me make sure the marketing activities let me hire the salesperson to help at least identify the deals. But ultimately you end up probably being involved in almost every closure for at least a couple of years just to close the end of it. Brian: From your perspective with 18 or 19 service people that must be pretty well organized what another thing in the company that is top of mind for you that you are working on? I know you had a sales marketing hat on through what’s the other priorities that you’re working on right now? Craig: Right, well I think as a company our two WIGS if you’re familiar with 4X Book Wildly Important Goals number 1- is to build out the sales and marketing side number 2- is to leverage our Service Delivery Foundation that we’ve built up, and again that’s oversimplifying it in one bullet point. But it’s really the concept of really building up a culture of accountability with KPI’s and really defining what those KPI’s are obviously using some systems to manage and track those, and increase the visibility around them. So we’ve been building up a number of different areas organizationally, and redefining what our service delivery mechanism needs to be built up a level of Mid-level Management to run our service desks, at some promotions, and some shifts over the end of Q4 and getting a really well-oiled for 2018. And, so now we’re actually going through the Performance Planning, and definition right now of what we want to be done in 2018 and what’s that going to look like for everybody so we’re really excited about that side of things so not to pitch BrightGauge, but we’re a huge piece of that in our move one of the big deals is where all the TV’s going to go like with all our dashboards. Brian: Yeah and I appreciate you guys were impressively data-driven when we got there, and we met you guys last September so it was definitely very cool to see. I couldn’t believe it with a team of 18-19 engineers you’re just now putting in that foundational managerial level to kind of scale up so before things were kind of growing, and everyone knew kind of where they were in the different teams and all that stuff what was the driver to kind of formalize that thing? Things got too chaotic? Craig: It wasn’t so much the chaos as it was we could feel pain in the quality of service we were delivering so we knew we had tried a couple different changes we tried hiring somebody from outside, and bringing them into to be like a Service Manager where that didn’t quite work out. You know our COO right now was kind of managing people, but it wasn’t he was being pulled in several different directions so looking back it feels like a very natural progression to get it to where we’re at but it was definitely a number of hiccups, and speed bumps to get to this place at this point it was really organic and good. Brian: That’s awesome yeah you guys seem to run a pretty at least from the few conversations we’ve had a very calm company in the sense of letting the organic side of things play out, and the other things are and I’m not plugging BrightGauge, but I have to since I’ll have to get a tattoo one day of the company. But the very data-driven like I saw you guys there how does that play into your specific management style, and Kyle’s too? How do you see data playing in FPA’s growth so far and in the future? Craig: Yeah I mean that’s an interesting question that’s a great question, and I think for some people it’s difficult for some people because what I mean by difficult is I think a lot of people live in the black, and white either you’re a numbers guy or you care about people you can’t be both. It’s like how can you manage by the numbers, and care? And, you can’t you just use the numbers to help you make decisions you still have to make decisions’ and you have to make them in the confines of how’s this going to affect people? How do you deliver it? How do you manage? How do you drive? How do you help develop talent? How do you mentor? So I think for us it’s critical that we balance both sides of equation both the numbers and the people side so at the same time it’s like numbers don’t lie numbers are what they are and so you can use numbers to help you make a point you can use numbers to help you get to a certain end game it’s one thing to say hey we need to improve quality. It’s another thing to say well our Smile Back Numbers are 85% the industry average is 93% so it’s pretty clear we’re not as good as the industry average or inversely our Smile Back Numbers are 98% and the industry average is 93% were doing a better job than the industry average. But without those numbers it’s just a gut feeling, and you don’t really have like the visibility, and the transparency look at what are the levers that you can move or change to get better quality what are those things whether it’s resolution time, or client happiness, or whatever it is what do they say if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. Brian: Yeah sorry to interject but philosophically you and I aligned in the sense of it's not black, and white like we are Data Company ourselves and we managed very closely all of our numbers, but it’s not the whole story. Context is critical just so the data helps so do you have an example and if I put you on the spot by saying no don’t worry about it but do you have an example when that came into play? Where you had the numbers saying this but contextually it was throwing you off from the outcome or decision made? If I stumped you don’t worry about it I don’t think I come up with a bit more on my own either. Craig: Yeah, that’s a great question I mean I can think of different things that are more related to like ConnectWise not to plug ConnectWise but one of the things that we never knew we had buckets of hours for certain agreements, but we never charged people overages out of scope is pretty clear but overages we would know because we did not have the mechanism to track that. As soon as we go to ConnectWise all of a sudden hey look here’s our overages it’s pretty clear we’re going to start charging clients overages now the question is yeah the numbers are black and white but how do we manage that relationship? And how do we manage that new sort of twist to clients who they agree to this and now they’re going to get charged for it? Or we don’t want to alienate them and push them away and make them feel like it’s all about the numbers. So we had to kind of balance that and take those numbers and go in some cases we’re going to charge for it, and in some cases we’re not we’re going to have a conversation with the client to explain it to figure it out. I think that might be an example of where the numbers said one thing, but our human nature and our relationship with our clients we had to balance that. Brian: It reminds me of an example that people always ask us not us but I hear it often where it’s just like hey can you tell me this number that tells you which client is the worst something like that numbers can tell you a big piece of it there’s a gut feel to it there’s contact there’s the relationship that’s so much more to it so. It’s very-very true just to think of the number theme you showed it to me when I was there, but give me a sense of the dashboard and the numbers you look at now that you care about on a day to day basis I know you have a bunch but what’s the one that first comes to mind? Craig: Well the one that first comes to mind is I hate this because we’re not a sales company but the first thing that comes to mind what are our service dollars generated? So service dollars generated is pretty much the driver for Project Revenue which is like a month or two into the future we generate $50,000 in service fees this month in the next month or two we’re going to execute on that. So we have certain goals, and objectives in terms of what our months numbers are or what our individual numbers are, and we have a dashboard for all of that so we know I mean right now I can look at it and I’m looking up at it on the TV in my office right now here are my Closed Service Dollars, here are my Closed Produce Gross Margins, here’s my Closed MRR all that for the month. And, here’s what opened by Technical Account Manager here’s what our activity numbers are I know everything that’s going on right now. Brian: That’s in your personal office? Craig: That’s in my personal office Brian: That’s awesome you brought up the wigs which I have never heard of and I am supposed to be the goal expert here what was it? The wild something goals? Craig: Wildly Important Goals Brian: Wildly Important Goals I’ve heard of Rocks I’ve heard of the BHAG’s so there’s a difference so you had those… Craig: I was talking to our marketing company this morning from our weekly marketing call and they were like we’re getting really familiar with all your acronyms we know what MSSP is we know what MSP is, but what is this BHAG? Don't we know what that is? Brian: Exactly what is it Big Hairy Audacious Goal? Craig: There you go yeah Brian: So you said you had those two for the year you had mentioned you were sending weekly notes out to the company when we met in September does that tie in like hey weekly this is where we’re at with against X goal? Was towards the WIG of the year? Or the BHAG of the year? Or how does that work? Because I think it was pretty clever or pretty interesting. Craig: So every Monday morning I send out an email hopefully people read it, but every Monday morning I sent out an email to everybody and it depends on the week and what’s going on. It covers recent wins it covers kudos from clients you know different sorts of things that are going on at the same time I also sprinkle it in with how are we doing on some of our most important KPI’s? So just to give everybody a sense of where we’re at with certain KPI’s so it’s not specifically hey it’s a numbers think it’s all about the numbers but it’s more here’s the general sense thing but also the numbers are really important here are some markers and give you a sense of what’s going on and where we’re at against our goals. Brian: You did that weekly do you guys then get together monthly or anything like that to talk about these things as well? Or is the weekly email kind of keeps everyone aligned, and in sync? Craig: No we also have a monthly staff meeting so every month we go through the performance of pretty much in three different areas and the company as a whole so how our service delivery is doing what their KPI’s are and there’s 3-5 of those maybe 3-4 of those how our Account Managers, our Technical Account Managers you know client management are doing how sales and marketing is doing, and then how the company as a whole is doing. So we go through that every month yeah… Brian: So, I feel like you guys have a very dialed in way of running the company at least a feel, for one thing, need to evolve and change what are you looking at again as much as you can divulge? You’ve been doing this for a long time what’s the horizon through your goal that you’re kind of peaking at or talking to other people to get them excited about? What you plan for FPA? Craig: Yeah so I think we’re really excited by just where we’re at structurally, and our big push for sales and marketing, and what’s going to happen with that so that’s going to leverage us and allow us to leverage things and get us to another level. There’s the organic side and then there’s the non-organic side the organic side is probably just getting new clients and increasing sales to existing clients one of our huge KDI’s that’s really critical for us is our Total Expense Ratio to Monthly Recurring Revenue, and our goal is to get that to be 100% right now we’re in the high 70’s so right now that means our recurring revenue is covering 75-77% of our expenses. Yet 100% in everything else is icing so that’s one of our big KPI’s that we’re measuring, and I’ve got a dashboard up here where I can see it every month and see what to do, and so there is the inorganic stuff that we’re doing or the organic stuff that we’re doing, and the inorganic is the next 2 years I’d like to be a position where we can buy somebody and grow inorganically at the same time. So I’m trying to hedge my bets and do both of those things again I think we have such a solid foundation from a service delivery perspective that I think bolting some other companies especially if they are good rainmakers, and not as good at service delivery I think that would be a very natural sort of symbiosis to make that happen. Brian: Yeah I can see that we’ll wrap up here I guess I have one more question, and then you can share where people can reach out to you when they have questions who are you trying to emulate admire? Who’s the North Star if you will for you personally when you’re working as an FPA or even just life in general? Craig: That’s a great question so I don’t know how telling that is obviously they are people right now out there in the world doing what they do the Gary Vaynerchucks, Tony Robbins, they are really cool motivational sort of guys really cool stuff. I mean Gary V had some really good insight, but I’d say I’m very much sort of a competitive very much into sports so I would say that I try to at least to in my head model myself after someone like Magic Johnson or Wayne Gretzky I’m really about the pass. They are people who are scorers and they are people who are passers. And I’m really about you know passing if I can make somebody better around me that’s kind of what I get off on if I can develop talent around me that’s really exciting for me so. Brian: That’s interesting. Craig: That’s what I’m hoping to build FPA into what we like to say is that we’re modelled after a learning or a teaching hospital it’s like we really want people to grow and develop and get better I kind of say that FPA is like a pyramid scheme, but it’s not a scheme it’s like let’s develop our talent, and grow, and bring people in, and grow them. It’s kind of what I’m looking at. Brian: I’m sure we said that you were a pass guy I thought you said past meaning the 80’s Johnson and Gretzky are both big 80’s guys. Craig: There’s that too I’m kind of dating myself no one passes anymore right? Brian: No that’s true those are very good examples of the sports analogy I can see that especially resonating in why you built up a good foundation is that resonating with the team you have? That you care about them, therefore, you care about the company and the clients which it all kind of lets itself grow so that’s awesome with the fact that you can kind of know that about yourself is a huge help as well. So if some work at times we do get some follow up questions that I may have done a poor job of asking where can people reach out? And we don't want to put your email address on the website, but what’s a good way to get connected with you? Craig: Yeah I mean LinkedIn is probably the easiest way to find me, Craig Pollack at FPA Technology Services, or email you that’s cool. Brian: Yeah okay I’ll pass that along thanks Craig for doing this by the way I’m a huge fan not only what you’re doing on the BrightGauge side of course I loved, but also in the way how you methodically grow in the company and sticking around for this long. It is extremely hard to be around for as long you have so it’s a credit to you that’s awesome very motivating for even someone in my position who’s only been around for 6-7 years so thanks for coming on this podcast. Craig: I think that’s a thank you I appreciate that I think that was a polite way of saying I’m really old, but that’s okay. Brian: No we’re big into longevity here we want BrightGauge to be can I say as old as you guys no I won’t say it but anyway. Craig: No worries it’s all good no I appreciate everything that you’ve done BrightGauge is awesome you know like it’s so I don’t know if I can say critical, but key to our business and how we run it I mean not to suck up but it’s on my dashboard it’s on my TV screen every day no question. Brian: Yeah no we will keep at it that’s what motivates us so alright Craig thank you so much appreciate it. Craig: Cool no problem thank you.

Having offered Connectwise Automate On-Premise to our customers for a while now, we’re excited to share that we’ve launched Connectwise Automate Cloud to serve all of your remote monitoring and management report and dashboard needs. Formerly known as Labtech, Connectwise Automate Cloud is an RMM tool aimed at helping MSP and ITSP companies eliminate technician defficiencies, and be proactive before the next system issue comes up. How CW Automate Cloud Works With CW Automate Cloud, companies can track and manage IT assets from a single location. Covering your devices, servers, and networks, CW Automate Cloud provides agentless, remote coverage of all your desktop and server management plus inventory needs. The difference between Cloud and On-Premise When comparing both Connectwise Automate connection options, the main difference lies in where it's hosted and in the data you're able to pull out. Cloud-based means it is hosted on the vendor's servers and accessed through the browser. On-premise means it is installed locally, on your own computers and servers. While Cloud may be easier to work with, it may come at the price of less access to data. On the flipside, On-Premise can be a bit more cumbersome, taking more time to set up. While the choice is up to you, we've found most customers to try out both before deciding on sticking with one for the longterm. When comparing both options, here's which datasets you can work with between CW Automate Cloud and BrightGauge: Disk Statistics— This dataset looks at disk information for each disk inside a machine, including removable disks. Machine Statistics— This dataset is a full listing of machines with various statistics, pulling in data from as far back as 120 days. Machine Statistics Lite— This dataset is a full listing of machines with some fields removed to allow for faster syncs. How CW Automate Cloud pairs up with BrightGauge With BrightGauge and Connectwise Automate Cloud, you can feel confident about the information you share with your customers. We've created a ready-to-go template report for you to begin visualizing your data with or mashup with other datasources to show the whole picture. To keep an eye on the health of your devices, put up real-time dashboards across your office. Skip running through the extra unnecessary data and get right to the KPIs that require constant attention for your workstations and servers. To pair CW Automate Cloud with BrightGauge, visit your BrightGauge and select to add an additional datasource. To learn more about how to get set up, read the support documentation here. Need some help in getting setup? Reach out to our support team.

Being data-driven isn't simply about gathering data. Most importantly, it's choosing the right KPIs to measure and becoming data-informed to take action. Last week, BrightGauge hosted our 4th Data Driven Workshop. It covered getting the most out of BrightGauge's top features, the basics of SQL, some extreme gauge building, and one-on-one sessions where attendees got hands-on training from one of our data experts. Plus there were lots of croquetas and cafecito. As a first time attendee myself, it was great to have some of our customers in our offices (plus a couple of newcomers) and to see firsthand how everyone uses BrightGauge a little differently. Plus, I learned a few new tricks to help me BrightGauge like a pro. To recap my experience, I'd like to share some of the top things I learned in each of our workshop sessions. By the end, you'll get why this workshop is a must for those wanting to build their BrightGauge foundation and become more data-driven. Setting Goals for Your Business This was the most asked about portion of our workshop. For a great overview of how BrightGauge Goals work, watch this video. The Basics of SQL Easy to learn, hard to master. The gist of it comes in understanding SELECT, FROM, and WHERE. SELECT allows you to select specific fields within tables that you want to represent within your Query. FROM helps you pinpoint exactly which tables will be referenced for the fields you are pulling. WHERE sets specific filters in place. These filters then allow you to limit the data that is pulled in. More on this soon! Gauge Building The key is to not start from scratch if you don't have to. BrightGauge has put a lot of time into building out-of-the-box template gauges, dashboards, and reports for you to begin visualizing your data instantly. When considering creating a new gauge, first check to see what's available. If you’re looking for a time entry gauge, start searching by time or something similar and then try to modify it rather than create a new one. For example, search by "time this week" and apply a filter to modify it. Extreme Gauge Building This is best left to the experts 🤓 Always reach out to our support team for any gauges you'd like built. While we put a lot of pride into the work that goes into making our app great, the true stars behind making BrightGauge work for you is our support team. Any question you may have, any gauge you'd like to have built, our support team of data experts is always standing by to help. Other Top Tips From The Workshop Choosing the right dataset to work with is key I came across this quite a bit when I spent a week working in our support queue. A lot of tickets that claimed missing data were attributed to the use of the wrong dataset. This is especially common with our "Statistics Last X Amount of Days" and "Statistics Lite" datasets. You choose the Lite dataset for working with information that's more time sensitive, and that comes with faster sync times. If you're not sure what's included in your dataset, look at the right hand column in the gauge builder and click on the dataset name. Doing so will pull up a drilldown of all fields that come with that dataset. Understanding dashboard sync frequency Datasets sync at midnight or once a gauge in that dataset is loaded up in a dashboard. If you already viewed that gauge or dataset, leave, and come back to it in an hour, the data will remain the same. The only way this changes is if you have a scheduled report. All gauges in that report will refresh 10 minutes before it goes out. Keep in mind that if one gauge refreshes, the whole dataset that it's a part of syncs up as well. Mashup datasources in Reports Since our customers could use any combination of datasources, we don't try to guess what mashup of these you'd like in a report. So while none of our templates offer a preset mashup of options, this isn't impossible. If you need help putting yours together, our support team would be happy to help. Report scheduling If your workday ends at 5, schedule your daily or weekly report to go out an hour later. Otherwise, using this example, it will only sync up until 4, the hour before the report is set to go out. See where all of your gauges are in use We've built a nifty usage tab into your gauge builder to show where the gauge you're viewing is in use. This is especially helpful for when you're looking to modify or delete a gauge you think is no longer needed. Why is this important? Once a gauge has been edited, it's applied across all instances where that gauge is in use. So if you're not going to look at the usage tab first, your safest bet is to just copy & make a new gauge, then modify from there. Interested in receiving more information on the next workshop? Visit here to learn more and signup.

Cool new feature launched just now. The ability to link filters across multiple gauges for easier editing of multiple gauges at once. Here’s how it works: When you have a filter on a gauge, you’ll be able to convert that filter to become a “Linked Filter” by clicking on the plus icon. When you click on the plus icon, you’ll be prompted to give the linked filter a name and which gauges (or gauge layer) you want to apply it to. Once you press create, the linked filter will be added to all the gauges you selected! And your filter will change a different color (blue). You can click on the edit icon to launch that same modal to change the name and edit which gauges it's on. Once you have a Linked Filter created, on any new gauge (or gauge layer) that has that dataset, you’ll be able to add the Linked Filter. And on any gauge you change the filter or filter value, it will update all the gauges using that gauge. Couple of important rules to note: A gauge must be saved with the filter you want to turn into a Linked Filter. If you change the filter value without saving a gauge of a linked filter, the filter will not update on other gauges. Essentially meaning if you change the value of the filter of a Linked Gauge, other gauges won’t get updated until the gauge is saved. If you remove a Linked Filter from a gauge, you can always re-add it. You can delete a Linked Filter from the edit modal. This would remove the filter from all the gauges its on. For more information on gauge-building best practices, visit our help desk or reach out to our support team for additional help.

In 2018, we’re looking to quadruple the amount of integrations and datasources we release. Just over a month into the year and we’re already making great progress towards this goal. Today we’re excited to announce the launch of one of our newest integrations: LogicMonitor! An all-in-one performance network monitoring tool, LogicMonitor leverages your alerts and datacenter infrastructure to keep your devices in check. How LogicMonitor works Getting their start in 2007, LogicMonitor has since grown to serve thousands of SaaS companies with their hosted monitoring services. They cover storage, servers, networks, applications, virtualization, and cloud. From a single platform, users are equipped with a comprehensive, built-in monitoring and alerts center. How LogicMonitor pairs up with BrightGauge With LogicMonitor data in your BrightGauge, you can track all of your device alerts, statistics, and SDTs from one place. Work with one or all three of the BrightGauge built LogicMonitor datasets to scale your real-time device intelligence. Working with BrightGauge’s Dashboards and Reports, you get to choose which data is most important to you. Use one of our out-of-the-box dashboards or cut through all of your data to the metrics that are most timely for your business. BrightGauge offers ready-to-go gauges so you can begin viewing your device and website statuses instantly. Some of the prebuilt gauges cover: Upcoming server downtime events Devices Not Updated in 14 Days Server Downtime Next 24 Hours Average HTTP Response Time by Group CPU Busy Percentage by Group For a full list of prebuilt device statistics and alerts gauges, view the Gauges section in your BrightGauge account and sort by Datasource. The Reports drilldown While the majority of the integrations we partner with already come with their own reports and dashboards, they often don’t take into account the other tools you're using to manage your business. With BrightGauge, you can pair all of your datasources and customers data into one seamlessly branded, easy to use report. Use our prebuilt LogicMonitor report or package together the information you want to share with one or many clients, save, and set it to automatically get sent out to specific clients at the duration of your choice. How to set it up The setup is simple. Visit your BrightGauge and select to add an additional datasource. From there, it’s just a matter of inputting your credentials and your Logic Monitor API Key. To learn more about how to get set up, read the support documentation here. Run out of datasources or need some help in getting started? Reach out to our data experts.

When you're setting business goals, whether it is an individual goal or a team-based goal, it is important for every goal to have an owner. This person is ultimately responsible for monitoring goal progress and delivering positive outcomes. A lack of goal ownership can quickly lead to problems, particularly within teams. Without someone there to organize and manage the completion of the goal, it’s easy for team members to start pointing fingers. Ultimately, this disarray harms your chances of a successful outcome. Aside from this, there are a few important reasons why every goal you create should have an owner assigned to it. Create Accountability & Facilitate Motivation When you assign a goal to a team as a whole, the ultimate success or failure to achieve the goal lies with the entire team. Assigning an owner doesn’t remove the rest of the team from that accountability, but it does place accountability squarely on the owner’s shoulders. This ensures that at least one person within the group stays focused on the goal, even while working on other tasks. It gives them extra motivation to focus on the goal and stay on top of it during long-term projects. Make Delegation Simple When you assign a goal to a team without a leader, it’s easy to see delegation become an issue. A quick conversation about who will handle which tasks can quickly devolve into an argument that can endanger the success of the project and harm cohesion in other areas of the business. Having a goal owner to delegate and manage not only ensures they have clear authority in goal-related discussions, it also gives your team a higher chance of a positive outcome. During any long-term project, disagreements are almost certain to arise. Having a goal owner in place will keep things on track. Give the Goal Owner the Opportunity to Step Up Attaching a goal to a specific owner can be a great way to gauge their readiness for leadership. In fact, most teams will have multiple goals, resulting in multiple sub-teams working on different long-term projects. Each of those projects will require their own individual owners to oversee the team. Are they able to delegate tasks and monitor progress? Can they motivate their team? Were they successful? Looking at their leadership along the way can say more about the viability of the goal owner to take on more down the road. Missing the mark on goals can happen though. How they deal with it is the key to their long-term success. Goal Ownership is Critical to Successful Outcomes Leadership is important at all levels of an organization. A company needs a CEO and leadership team to set the agenda and course-correct when required. Departments need leaders to delegate tasks and oversee the bigger picture. Start assigning ownership to goals and the leaders will rise to the top. To learn more about how to get started, download the full whitepaper on setting business goals here.

It’s easy to declare goals for yourself: make more money, improve team chemistry, or become a thought leader. We can all make declarations. However, it’s hard to tell which goals are actually the right ones to tackle. Outside of your immediate desire to get better at something, there are many things that take up your focus and time to improve. Most goals fall under the mentality of “I have always wanted to [insert goal].” Unfortunately, it never quite works the way you plan. You start out with a clear focus and then get distracted. Convert gauges into goals The beautiful thing about data is you don’t have to make these decisions alone. The data speaks for itself. It’s up to you then to decide which areas to focus on first to move the needle. Luckily, your Brightgauge dashboards and reports are a great starting point for helping to determine where to go next. No need to try to measure something new, work with what’s already in front of you. With Brightgauge, you’ve got a finger on the pulse of your everyday business activities. Which consultant is out at different jobsites today? How much MRR should be making it through the door? Which support team member is taking on the highest volume of tickets? These are just a few of the many metrics you follow to determine how much your business is thriving. So while you may be tempted to try something new, the best place to start is by setting goals based on the KPIs you’re already tracking. Just review your most active internal dashboards and start creating goals from gauges. How to set them up To convert a gauge, go to your Brightgauge goals management section and choose between a Process or an Outcome goal. An Outcome goal is something you’re working towards achieving over time, rather than just tracking when something is complete a weekly basis. Whereas a Process goal covers the steps or actions you must take to help you attain a larger outcome goal. You can always use our Goal Inspriation tool too. The goals shown there are common choices other MSPs tend to track as well. Some examples include: project hours, cash in bank, and bring down resolutions times. Pick a goal and set a threshold you want to meet over that period of time. Since you already have a specific gauge in mind, you can draft your goal from scratch. Select whether you want to track an outcome or progress goal. Type the name of the gauge you wish to track into the first step for creating that goal. Set a target goal number to work towards. Assign the goal to yourself or another team member. Add a description with a clear objective. *Keep in mind that goals can only be based off of number or progress gauges. KPIs to Track First Want more account upgrades? Have your Sales (or even your Success team) examine previous account upgrade and downgrade trends, then set a realistic goal for the quarter to hit that mark. Even if you find yourself getting off track along the way, you’ll see the trend and be able to adjust. One of our favorite gauges to track is our Kill Rate. This combines the measurement for number of open support tickets versus number of closed tickets in a given time period. With this one number, you’re able to see where your service backlog stands and understand what may be stopping more tickets from being answered — aside from always needing more hands on deck! As fans of transparency, we like to eat our own dog food. We use goals to make sure we’re keeping on track each and every week. There’s no need to make a goal up. Your time is limited and BrightGauge helps you get those lost hours back. For more help, reach out to our data experts to turn your KPIs and gauges into actionable goals.

Every year starts the same. We take a hard look at the previous year’s numbers and which processes could use improvement. It’s in this last year though that we’ve started to do something different. While what we build continues to be at the top of our list, how we build software has changed. We’ve taken the approach of breaking tasks up even more to improve the way we work together. As a result, our development process has sped up a bit too. With a 13-person product team, we’re close to finding that sweet spot of setting development end goal dates, and actually sticking to them. Here’s what we’re doing different: No Formal Roadmap We continue with no formal roadmaps (same as 2017). Every time I attach a date to a feature, it ends up biting me in the butt later on. The reality is, there's so much we want to do and not enough time to make it all happen. Priorities shift. New information becomes available and other more pressing things often pop up in between. This isn’t just a small software company problem or BrightGauge problem either, this is across the board in building software. Switching to 6 Week Cycles As a software development team we have been working in an “agile” format since 2013. In 2018, we’re following a new format based on a software company we really admire, Basecamp. The gist of the 6 week cycle is that agile is too short of an iteration (2 weeks) to get meaningful work done and 12 week feature themes (that we used in 2017) are too long to get something focused and shipped as we expected from the start. 6 weeks is a good middle ground where we can focus on just a few items and get something sizeable out the door in that time frame. At the end of each cycle we meet to figure out what the next cycle will mostly cover. Until then, we’re all heads down working on the current cycle, not thinking too much about what comes next. One Big Batch Project, Multiple Small Projects at same time With the move to 6 week cycles, a group of 2-3 people will work on one large feature at a time, while another group of the same size will work on multiple small projects. This way we can keep going, gaining easy wins towards improving the app while covering ground, working on harder and larger problems to solve. Splitting Out the Integration Team Randall has been our lone wolf but now he will be in a wolf pack. We’ve hired more resources to focus just on integrations, carving out a full-time team to make this their sole responsibility. These resources are data centric. They know SQL, how to code against APIs, and are excited to further get to know you, our customers. Dedicated SIPP Effort (Security, Infrastructure, Performance, Productivity) Always something in our peripheral, SIPP will take more of a front seat this year. With a larger team to dedicate time and effort to the app’s infrastructure, you’ll notice some great performance improvements over the next year. Faster load times for the win! All of these changes have us really pumped! Like anything else, it’s a work in progress. Our focus remains the same though, build the best service we can for our customers. From there, we hope that translates to helping you improve too. We’d be happy to discuss these areas of focus more. For anyone who’d like to learn more, please feel free to reach out anytime! Join us for our webinar on Thursday, February 8th to learn more about what we're cooking up for this year.