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Dashboards, Best Practices   |   Read

Why Every Company Should Monitor Real-Time Financial Metrics

Companies in any industry know the importance of metrics because they play a large part in both their daily interactions with clients, and analyzing their own effectiveness. However, it is surprising ...
Companies in any industry know the importance of metrics because they play a large part in both their daily interactions with clients, and analyzing their own effectiveness. However, it is surprising to see how much room many comapnies have to grow in the monitoring of their own financial metrics. They monitor their operations on a daily basis but wait weeks between checking on the overall financial health of the company. BrightGauge’s interactive dashboard is designed to be an all-in-one solution that will eliminate the data silo. Our system integrates directly with the most popular accounting softwares to ensure that our clients always have up-to-date financial metrics on hand to influence key business decisions. Why you need a real-time view of financial data Having a real-time view of your company’s financial metrics puts you in a position to capitalize. In business, it’s commonplace for companies to evaluate financial metrics well after the period that the metrics cover. Some don’t deep-dive into the numbers until the following quarter. Even profit and loss statements may not be evaluated for weeks after a period ends. Now, there isn’t anything wrong with evaluating quarter-to-quarter metrics. Those comparisons yield valuable data and conclusions on their own. Having that big-picture view is extremely useful. But you shouldn’t forego real-time analysis when you have those numbers readily available. Every day you make decisions that will affect the bottom-line of your business. Understanding how small decisions have a measurable impact on your financial metrics is valuable data in itself. While companies shouldn’t be too reactionary, keeping tabs on important metrics as they shift can help businesses to avoid issues that otherwise might take months to notice. By scheduling weekly analysis of your financial metrics, you'll keep your fingers on the pulse of your business. You’ll know what is working and what isn’t well before you dig into your profit and loss statements. Understanding trends in your financial data Like any important business metric, financial data will trend as changes are made. Delaying analysis makes it nearly impossible to catch and correct negative trends before they balloon into serious issues. Keeping a close eye on your financial data can help you to spot trends early and take action to mitigate or continue the trend. At BrightGauge, we’ve included features that make reviewing financial metrics simple for any business. Let’s take a look at an example of what our clients see when they login to their dashboard and sift through their financial metrics: In this example, we are looking at the Total YTD revenue for an example company. Clients are able to customize and filter or sift through the pre-loaded metrics. You won’t have to run time-consuming database crawls or ask your team to generate reports. All vital financial metrics are available directly in your BrightGauge dashboard. You can load up reports with a few mouse clicks and keep an eye on trends as they develop. Retrospective analysis is useful but can be supplemented with a more hands-on approach. Real-time monitoring improves decision-making, while comparing performance monthly can highlight areas of improvement or confirm current strategies are working. Keeping a close eye on these metrics after changes allows businesses to react to the data. This results in a swifter, more beneficial decision-making processes. Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business Cash flow is arguably the most important metric for any business. It provides the stability and flexibility that allows businesses to grow. Having a healthy cash flow allows your company to invest in new projects, prepare for disasters, and capitalize on opportunities. Most business owners know this. Why then, do so many businesses fail in accounts receivable management? According to the Atradius Payment Practices Barometer of 2014, 52% of the value of invoices 90 days past due were written off as uncollectable in North and South America. The average in Europe was 35%. The most important aspect of healthy cash flow is proper accounts receivable management. Having the right processes in place to incentivize clients to pay invoices on time is important. So is ensuring that you are staying on top of overdue accounts. Reps must communicate in a way that encourages quick resolutions. In a BrightGauge financials dashboard, we make it simple for businesses to improve cash flow. Outstanding invoices are spelled out plainly by the company, amount owed, and time past due. Take a look: Having easy access to your Accounts Receivable data helps to ensure that you have a handle on your expected cash flow. This makes investing in assets and making changes less stressful and more informed. Keeping a real-time view of your overdue accounts makes it easy to follow up personally with overdue accounts, a critical step for maintaining positive cash flow and keeping clients from falling behind. BrightGauge integrates directly with several popular financial software solutions to ensure that you always have reliable, real-time financial data on hand. How to empower your business with a single platform At BrightGauge, we believe that connecting operations and financial management in one seamless platform empowers businesses. We’ve gone the extra mile to ensure that our clients are able to connect all of their key business data in one single platform. BrightGauge integrates with the most popular business finance software in use today including QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Reckon. Learn more about our Financial integrations, including QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Reckon.
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Best Practices   |   Read

The 6 Steps to Creating Successful, Data-Based Strategies

If you’ve been paying attention to the big data revolution the last few years, you are probably eager to launch your own data-based strategies. In the short time since “big data” has come to the forefront, the benefits of leveraging data to make business decisions have been well-documented. According to McKinsey, retailers that leverage data analytics at scale could see their operating margins increase by as much as 60%. That kind of result isn’t limited to retail either, businesses in every industry can benefit from increased data usage. MSPs can use data to monitor response times, examine behaviors, or analyze trends. Data is the most valuable tool that businesses have to aid the decision-making process. Unfortunately, too many underestimate the impact that data could have on their business. As you explore ways to improve data usage and incorporate it into your decision-making, it is important to outline your processes. The inclusion of data in big business decisions will require changes on the part of executives and management. Having an outlined process will streamline changes and help companies make smart decisions. Creating a data-based strategy begins with the definition of a problem. What is it that you would like to see changed within your company? What would the goals of that change be? Simply having a large amount of data on hand doesn’t provide any insight without having it attached to a tangible business goal. Download our free guide on 10 Steps to Implement Data-Driven Decision Making. 1) Analyze your data Once you have identified a problem, you must analyze your data and determine what metrics are most relevant to the issue. For instance, if slow responses to network outages are causing friction with clients, analyzing your mean time to repair would be a good place to start. Make a list of all metrics that apply specifically to the issue that you want to resolve. When choosing the metrics to use for making changes, remember that not all data is valuable. The method used to capture the data determines its usefulness. According to a TDWI report, data quality problems cost U.S. businesses more than $600 million every year. Making large-scale business decisions based on bad data could have catastrophic consequences for any business. 2) Stay focused on areas of importance Businesses collect a lot of data. The business analytics firm McKinsey projects a 40% growth in global data per year. When you have a wealth of data available and are excited about injecting data-based strategies into your business, it can be easy to get caught up in areas that are unimportant to big picture goals. Focus on the core of your business. What are the biggest challenges your company is facing? Identify the biggest areas for improvement within your business and focus on those. Data-based decision making is beneficial, but can incidentally lead some down paths that waste time and resources. 3) Evaluate your results Once you’ve identified a problem and metrics to use in evaluating the effectiveness of your changes, you must decide on a change and see how the data moves after the change is implemented. Business owners must allow the change to take hold for long enough to ensure that the data changes that you see have statistical significance. A few days worth of data is not enough to draw conclusions from. Give your employees time to become used to the changes as well. As their familiarity with the new process grows, your data may change over time. 4) Identify what’s working and what needs improvement When you make a change to your processes, you do so with an idea of the result that you would like to see. However, once a change has been rolled out, there may be unforeseen issues that may not reveal themselves immediately. Evaluate each change in full. Did the data move in the direction that you had hoped? By figuring out what worked when you made the change, you can begin to iterate with new changes and refine your processes. 5) Iterate and implement changes Once you have identified what is working and what isn’t working with your changes, you can then begin the process of iteration. There may always be small issues, but with new small-scale changes, you can reduce their impact. With each new iteration, keep what works and try to find new data-backed solutions for the processes that are having issues. Every iteration gets your business a step closer to a nuanced, data-backed solution to your larger business problem. 6) Work closely with your team Remember that data is only a tool that you have at your disposal. Another tool that you should not take for granted is the feedback from your teams. A data-backed strategy that moves your metrics in the right direction is great but can cause internal issues if the changes are misunderstood. Try to ensure that the process is as transparent as possible. Show them why you are making the change, including the data that helped you to make the decision. By involving your employees in the process, you will receive valuable feedback that helps you to make smart business decisions. Interested in learning more about data-driven decision making? We’ve recently released a new whitepaper that can help any business to inject data-driven decision making into their processes and grow their business. Click here to download 10 Steps to Implement Data-Driven Decision Making.

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Podcasts   |   Read

[Podcast] Episode 33 with John Davenjay of Bowman Williams

Finding and retaining the best candidates is a common challenge for any business, and it also happens to be the topic that our customers bring up most often in their conversations with us. There are a ton of resources available on general best practices for hiring and keeping a team engaged, but we wanted to take a closer look at the specifics of the MSP industry. Our conversation with John Davenjay, CEO of the IT Services staffing firm Bowman Williams, highlighted the industry’s current trends and insights as seen from both an employer’s and employee’s perspective. Finding and Keeping the Right Employees in an MSP: Episode Highlights An introduction to John and Bowman Williams (0:50) A closer look at how John helps MSPs plan their hiring pipeline and scale their business (2:49) Hiring trends in the IT Services market: salaries, skillsets, tenure, and more (3:44) The main reason why candidates look to leave an MSP (8:17) How MSPs can help retain their talent: details on culture and avoiding flight risks (11:22) How business owners can start building career tracks to help retain talent (16:04) The need to be nimble in small companies with limited advancement opportunity (18:02) Combating the fear of recruiter cost vs. companies who spend tons of time searching for a candidate alone (19:30) The ideal customer for Bowman Williams in the MSP recruiting space (22:47) Q&A: Favorite business book, best personal improvement resource, parting advice about recruiting, how to reach John (25:29) Book mentioned in the episode: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don’t, by Jim Collins Want to find out more about The BrightGauge Podcast? Check out all the episodes here.
Culture   |   Read

MSP Industry is Doing Great… Am I Right?

For the past 7-10 years we’ve been hearing that the MSP industry is going to be disrupted by Google and Microsoft cloud services. In fact, even a current customer came to our office the other day saying he is worried about the future of the industry yet he’s grown 25% YoY for the past 5 years (>$2MM revenue to start). At this point I think it’s fair to say that the industry is healthy, growing, but also as a whole has a terrible paranoia about the future. Anecdotally we hear this constantly even as we meet hundreds of new MSPs entering the market each year who are looking to us for a data platform, or we meet the smartest MSPs who are dropping over 20% in EBITDA constantly every year with $5MM + in revenue. Another way to look at it is how much M&A money is flowing into software vendors such as Autotask, N-Able, LogicNow, Kaseya, etc. Private Equity and acquisitions with great multiples means smart people are betting on MSPs growing and seemingly their bets have paid off as more investments keep on pouring in. This is a very encouraging sign on top of our anecdotal evidence with our personal experience. All in all I think it goes back to technology support (in whatever form) for small business will always be needed as technology is ever changing. The only constant of technology is change. And as long as there are small to medium sized businesses then there will be need for MSPs. We may not be featured in TechCrunch but I believe many of us will take cash flow over hype any day of the week! If you want to learn about how our customers are growing, request a demo with BrightGauge today. We help IT Services companies (MSPs) become more data driven with our powerful data platform. You’ll learn how we feel the right Dashboards, Custom Reporting, and Scorecards in one easy to use platform will help any company grow!
Service, Best Practices   |   Read

How to Drive Employee Accountability Through Goal-Setting

Did you know that employees believe 30-50% of their peers lack accountability, according to a study from the American Management Association? Of course, accountability can refer to a number of different traits. Are they socially accountable, and willing to admit a social faux pas? Are they accountable in their performance and effectiveness? Are they accountable to their team and collaborators? Do they appropriately prioritize their tasks and inform stakeholders of changes? In truth, accountability is all of the above and more. To inject accountability into a team that is lacking it requires a concerted effort from the top of an organization. To encourage accountability, employees must have a clear definition of the standard that they are being held to. Defining clear and realistic goals is crucial. Accountability is driven by company culture and that culture comes from the top down. Goal-setting is the most critical component for fostering an environment that encourages accountability. Learn the right way to set and track goals, establish a cadence, and drive your organization forward using accountability. Setting Goal Scope and Creating Shared Purpose Accountability is driven and facilitated by the culture within an organization. The policies that shape that culture must be expected of all employees, from the owner down to new hires that are just learning the ropes. Successful teams must embrace accountability as individuals and groups, but organizations must also be accountable as a whole. Accountability works its way into company culture when teams are willing to take ownership of their objectives, not because they have to, but because they want to. When they are unsuccessful, those same individuals should be willing to take ownership of their failures. Passing the buck and making excuses leads to resentment and ultimately works against an accountable workplace. Accountability doesn’t come from strict rules and discipline. It comes from an open environment where stakeholders aren’t afraid to contribute. The goals that you set within your company should encompass all levels of work and collaboration: Organizational goals. Goals that encompass the company or organization as a whole. Organizational goals are the driving force behind shaping all other goals. Team goals. Goals for departments, teams, and collaborations. These goals should help dictate the individual goals employees set for themselves. Individual Goals. Individual goals help advance careers while progressing toward a company's larger objectives. These goals should build toward both team and organization goals. Creating a shared purpose for teams ensures that no large goals fall squarely on the shoulders of one person. Instead, those successes and failures fall on the company as a whole. According to Partners in Leadership’s Workplace Accountability Study, 85% of those surveyed were not sure what their organization was trying to achieve. This kind of disconnect actively works against accountability in the workplace. Clearly defining the organization’s goals and connecting them to smaller team goals provides clear insight into company direction and motives. Every employee should have clarity on the importance of specific goals to see the bigger picture. Setting Effective Long and Short-Term Goals When setting goals, each type should include both short-term and long-term goals. Long-term goals are completed after successfully completing a series of short-term goals. One goal should build to the next, one step at a time toward a larger company vision. Although long-term goals mark the finish line, short-term goals play the largest role in daily accountability. Fast, sustained completion of goals provides consistent rewards. To set realistic goals, those goals should be tied to specific business metrics that set a clear line for success. These metrics, known as key performance indicators (KPIs) may include metrics like revenue, sales figures, or job-specific metrics such as first call resolution rate and cost per incident. Accountability is a Two-Way Street According to the Workplace Accountability Study by Partners in Leadership, 80% of respondents surveyed said that feedback was only provided when something went wrong with a project. This sends the wrong signal to employees, who begin to see feedback as a negative development. A step where feedback is given should be a part of any project, regardless of the outcome. That feedback shouldn’t just focus on negatives, but highlight the positives as well. This promotes a culture of accountability for both the good and bad and lets employees know they are appreciated. Next Steps for Improving Accountability Accountability matters, but is not easy to achieve in large companies. It starts from the top down, from organizational goals through helping employees define their own. Performance accountability is achievable when employees have clear initiatives, but too often organizational accountability is misunderstood and confused with discipline. This does more harm than good. As you make changes to facilitate more accountability within your company, remember to take things one step at a time. You can’t make an unaccountable workforce change their stripes overnight, but you can make progress overtime with a game plan and consistency. Are you ready to take the next step in setting up a culture of accountability in your company? Learn more about the right way to set and track goals, establish a cadence, and drive your organization forward using accountability.

70+ Metrics for MSPs

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

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Podcasts   |   Read

[Podcast] Episode 32 with Javier Sola of Compuquip

IT Security in today’s world is no longer a basic blocking and tackling approach mixed in with a bit of antivirus protection. And as the state of security continues to evolve rapidly, it’s hard to keep up with all of the threats that businesses face. We recently sat down with Javier Sola, Cyber Security Director at Compuquip, and asked him to share some insights on how you should be thinking about security, how to educate your customers on security, and updates on some of the recent topics associated with security threats. The State of Today's IT Security: Episode Highlights Javier’s intro and background (0:49) How to approach helping a new customer with their network (4:20) How should SMBs be looking at their security? (6:43) Where to start with security for companies with a limited budget (8:58) Hot topics right now in security: next generation firewalls, zero day threats, sandboxing, network access control and data loss prevention (10:11) How would you start to educate a new customer on IT security if they’ve never thought about this topic before? (15:58) Why you should have an expert partner to rely on for different security domains (19:15) Advice to engineers on assessing perimeter database applications (20:54) Is it more or less difficult to secure cloud applications as compared to an on-premise infrastructure? (23:23) Resources for learning more about security (24:57) Parting advice for companies getting started with security, and how to reach Javier (28:56) Want to find out more about The BrightGauge Podcast? Check out all the episodes here.
Best Practices   |   Read

How We Help Our Sales Team Hit Their Annual Quota

The beginning of the year is a very anxious time of year at BrightGauge. For us, Q4 is our biggest quarter of the year and the Sales team hustles until the end of the year leaving no stone unturned. So when the calendar changes, we are still coming off the “high” of Q4 and the year end rush. But now the page has turned on the prior year, the high fives have been doled out and the champagne has been poured... it’s time to focus on this year. The entire sales team gets very anxious when we start planning the new year wondering “how’s my compensation changing” or “what’s my new quota going to be”. By the second week of January I sit with the Sales Team and we lay out the quota for the year. Like clockwork I can see them in their heads calculating all the work they have to do for the year which seems like a daunting task. But like I tell our Sales Team: “Don’t sweat the annual goal, focus on the daily & weekly hustle” At the end of the day, Sales is a numbers game. Although the percentages may be different based on how good you are, it's still a game of getting as many non-customers as possible into your funnel and then working them through the funnel to customer status. When we told Stephen his quota had almost doubled to $80,000 after last year doing $45,000 he had a minor panic attack. But then we took the annual goal and broke it down into daily & weekly goals. Here’s how our annual Sales formula works: $80,000 - total new business Stephen needs to book in 2017 $64,000 - total revenue from new customers (80%) $16,000 - total revenue from upgrades of existing customers (20%) $250 - Average Sales Price $75 - Average Upgrade Amount 256 - Number of Signups Required ($64,000 / $250) 213 - Number of Upgrades Required ($16,000 / $75) 512 - Number of Opportunities Required (256 deals @ 50% closure rate) At the end of the calculations, we translate that $80,000 quota into the following: 10 Opportunities Opened Per Week 7 Demos Completed Per Week 40 Conversations Per Week And instead of worrying about the $80,000 all Stephen has to do is worry about what he needs to get done today and this week. And to always remember: “Don’t sweat the annual goal, focus on the daily & weekly hustle” Now that we have his targets for each week, we use our BrightGauge Scorecards to monitor his progress each week. This allows him and the entire team to see if he’s on track or off track for a given week and course correct as necessary. The more green the better! And this also has the added psychological benefit of taking a monster quota goal and breaking it down into bite size chunks that are easier for Stephen to focus on. To learn more about scorecards and how to help your team monitor weekly progress towards their KPIs, please visit our BrightGauge Scorecards Overview.
Culture   |   Read

ForwardJS Summit 2017 Recap

Our development team had an unusually busy end of February. We hosted our first-ever Builders’ Meeting, welcoming other engineering teams in the Miami area, and that following weekend members of our team namely, myself and Francisco, headed to San Francisco for nerd time at ForwardJS, a JavaScript-focused conference Downtown. The Sights With tutorial days mixed in and a single, all-day conference on the schedule for the week, Sunday was spent exploring and getting settled as first-time SF visitors. If you’ve never been, take it from us that SF is a city with beautiful architecture and landscape. For one, they have hills with steep inclines which is cool to see coming from incredibly-flat Miami. I made a couple touristy stops before the day was through, visiting The Palace of Fine Arts, getting a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge from Chrissy Field and then taking in the fantastic sight that is Twin Peaks before getting dinner with Francisco in the Embarcadero Waterfront area and calling it a night ahead of tutorial day number one. View of The Golden Gate Bridge from Chrissy Field One thing to know about San Francisco is that its food game is generally on point as day one’s breakfast highlighted: fantastic salmon scrambled eggs and eggs Benedict. Another thing to know is that there are apparently consumer incentives for low-emission vehicles as most of the cars we traveled in were hybrids which stood out to us. The Tutorials ForwardJS tutorials are all day (9:30am - 4:30pm) affairs and absolutely worth the time spent. They're on the smaller side in terms of class sizes and give you the chance for a deeper understanding of specific topics. Of the plethora of tutorial options available during the week, Francisco and I picked subjects on: ReactJS core principles Web Performance Features new in ES6 (ES2015) Asynchronous JavaScript Patterns in general and with ReactJS Francisco’s Asynchronous JavaScript Pattern Tutorial with Kyle Simpson In addition to being exposed to great content on JavaScript, web development and getting to explore San Francisco, one of the other major highlights of attending tech conferences of this nature is being able to meet others in the industry and learn about the contexts in which they work. Lunch tutorial breaks were ripe for this occasion, especially since we conveniently ate in the hotel restaurant where the conference was hosted. Besides lunch, the conference organizers hosted a few happy hour events to facilitate more socializing which was also fun. We partook in some street sushi and hard cider and loved it. Conference Day Conference day came and went with a few tutorial-appropriate subjects but of course in bite-sized talks. We attended sessions that highlighted the importance of designing applications smartly to reduce user cognitive load in making decisions, introduced the concept of service workers (very cool stuff), explored ReactJS virtualization (windowing) and a few other talks touching on React basics and best practices. All-in-all, it was quite an organized and adequately paced conference day with awesome presenters. Before I forget, thanks to our group lunches (and street sushi) we also managed to make some conference friends! Conference friends! From bottom-left, clock-wise: Francisco Marcano (BrightGauge, Miami, FL), William Lubelski and Lara Parvinsmith (EverTrue, Boston, MA), Jordan Maslyn (CO+LAB, Richmond, VA), Keith Perfetti (Def Method Inc., New York City, NY) and me, David Small (BrightGauge, Miami, FL) Takeaways At the end of it all after being sufficiently enlightened and intrigued by a few concepts, we definitely returned to Miami eager to make some changes to our BrightGauge development. On a technical level a small portion of our service is built using ReactJS taking advantage of ES6 goodness but the majority of the remaining, highly-interactive portions, use AngularJS and CoffeeScript. Having seen a few sessions on ES6 we’ll be looking into implementing it and moving away from CoffeeScript and ES5. We also want to evaluate and possibly revamp some of our asynchronous design patterns and look into improved server-side data compression. We also had no idea that the yarn package manager was a thing and worth considering as a replacement for npm - definitely worth looking into as well. We were happy to have spent the time in San Francisco taking in some great content from a sweet conference, exploring a beautiful city and making new friends. Take a look at a few of our other pics from the trip in our Facebook album!
Product   |   Read

[New Feature] Save Time by Converting Dashboards to Reports

Sometimes a dashboard just won’t do! Our customers spend a lot of time building out dashboards and customizing it to get the data they need exactly the way they want it. If you’re like me, I love using our dashboards for viewing my data because they are up around the office which makes it easy to see, plus they are updating in real time. However, every once in awhile I want to send a dashboard to someone who doesn’t have a log in or doesn’t want to have to log in. This happened recently with our Board of Directors when we set up a new dashboard for them to monitor how BrightGauge is doing. We noticed they might go a few days or even a week without logging in. Now we can take that dashboard and simply convert it from a dashboard to a report with 1 click of a button. This saves all the time of having to build a report from scratch! All you have to do is click the “More” drop down menu on a dashboard and you will see the option to “Convert to Report”. Here is a quick overview of the process to convert a dashboard to report in just seconds: This is a great example of a small yet very impactful feature that our awesome Product Team is constantly working on. If you have any other ideas for new features that you think will be a great fit, please email them to support@brightgauge.com and label it “Feature Request” in the title so it gets properly routed.
Podcasts   |   Read

[Podcast] Episode 31 with Rob Rae of Datto

In roughly 10 years, Datto has grown from being one of many names in a sea of backup solution providers to one of the headlining names of the IT Services industry. We recently invited Datto’s VP of Business Development, Rob Rae, to join us for a conversation on achieving incredible growth in a commoditized industry. The insights Rob shared carried the conversation from brand messaging to customer education, partnering with the right solution providers, common themes in the ITSP industry, and more. Achieving Incredible Growth in a Commoditized Industry: Episode Highlights Rob’s introduction and background (0:48) How Datto has accomplished incredible growth in a short time, in a commoditized industry (6:31) Networking continuity and the acquisition of Open Mesh networking technologies (11:33) How is Datto’s messaging changing with the addition of cloud, appliances, and more? (14:14) The “sweet spot”, or typical solution provider partnering with Datto (18:18) When MSPs come to Datto, is it because they need to solve a problem for an end user, or because Datto is a brand focused on education? (23:01) Why ransomware solutions have been a significant win for Datto (24:29) How do MSPs make money with Datto? (27:48) Simple fixes for improving business: a common theme among the community (33:34) Datto’s trajectory and focus for the next 6-12-18 months (38:52) Q&A: Best business book, favorite personal improvement resource, parting advice for MSPs, how to reach Rob (42:41) Books as referenced by Rob: Anything by Malcolm Gladwell and also his Revisionist History podcast Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey Moore The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg and John David Mann Resources referenced by Rob: ChannelE2E.com Want to find out more about The BrightGauge Podcast? Check out all the episodes here.
Culture, Customers   |   Read

Introducing Our New Customer Success Team

In case you missed it, we’ve made some major investments in our Customer Success Team over the past few months and I wanted to share why and how this team is here to serve you! Growing a Customer Success Team First of all, we have added a few new faces to our Customer Success Team to help handle the demand of our growing customer base. The team is now made up of 4 Customer Success Rockstars whose only mission in (work) life is to deliver “over-the-top” support to customers and ensure that we are exceeding all of your expectations. You will work with this team from the moment you sign up as they are responsible for Onboarding and Training. They are also responsible for any Data Customization needs you might have during your onboarding or any other time the need arises. Their fourth area of responsibility is Application Support making them your one stop shop for all your BrightGauge questions. What has Changed by Creating a New Team? We collapsed the Support, Data, Onboarding and Training teams all into one, which will be known as our Customer Success Team going forward. We realized that the line between Support and Data Customization was starting to blur and it was becoming too difficult to distinguish between the two. Additionally, when the Support Team was on a call and the customer needed some training, did we have to change teams? We realized the work and role they were playing might change but the person and their mission did not, so why make them separate teams? What Does a Customer Success Team Mean for You? It means a more integrated and simplified experience when working with our team. From the moment you sign up through the life of our partnership, you’ll be working with this team who is here to help and support you in any way we can. To learn how having a Customer Success Team can impact your growth check out our webinar: How Investing in Customer Success Drove our MSP Growth. Customer Success Starts with Onboarding Here’s a snapshot of the Onboarding Dashboard our team uses to monitor the progress of our customers getting started with us. The gauges listed above are: < 20 HS Divided by Total Subscriptions: We have a custom Health Score algorithm we use to monitor the health of our customers that ranks from 0 to 100. We keep track of the percentage of customers with a score of 20 and under to make sure we are monitoring our “unengaged customers”. Our goal is to keep that below 8%. Average Health Score: This takes the average across all of our customers of the Health Score I mentioned above. Our goal is to continually push that number up and this quarter we are targeting to get the number over 75. Stay tuned for updates on that. Churn TW: Number of customers that have canceled their account with us this week. (Six...ouch!) New Signups Not Connected: The most important first step for any new customer is to connect their data to our system. Therefore we keep a running list of the customers not connected. OnBoarding Tickets By Status: We have 5 stages in our Onboarding process and this pie chart helps us identify where the majority of the customers are. Not Connected: This is simply a Number Gauge of the “New Signups Not Connected” mentioned above. Count of Open Onboarding Tickets: The total number of Onboarding tickets our team is currently working on. Customer Success Includes Support Here’s a snapshot of the Support Dashboard our team uses to monitor the progress of our ongoing customer support. The gauges listed above are: Average Response Today: The team tracks their response time each day to ensure we’re getting back to our customers in a timely fashion. Average Resolution Today: We also track the total time it takes for us to complete each of our tickets to make sure we are closing tickets out quickly. Avg CSAT: This allows us to see the customer satisfaction for our given week. We aim to be 100%, but aren’t always perfect. Tickets Solved This Week Leaderboard: For a little healthy competition we track who’s closing the most tickets and it’s also a great way to see if someone is falling behind. Tickets By Type: This pie chart gives us a snapshot of the tickets currently open and what type of tickets they are. As we shared here, we recently updated our ticket types to give us better visibility into the trends of our requests. Customer Success is Held Accountable The team not only manages their regular KPIs via our Dashboards but also leverages our Scorecards to track unique KPIs that allow us to see trends over time. As you can see in the example above, Kristian (known to us as Client Call Connoisseur) tracks the number of Knowledge Base articles he updates. That’s an area he’s responsible for and each week he has to check in with the number of documents he has updated. Jessica, aka Flipper of Desks, is our main triage person and we expect her to close more than ⅔ of the tickets we receive. So we track her performance over time. And finally, Rick (aka Player of Games and Most Things Data) has a lot on his plate with Training Calls so we track how many he has each week and also check his other two main tasks of creating gauges for customers and solving tickets. How Can You Apply This in Your Business? Customer Success played a huge role in the growth of our MSP and continues to play a major role in our BrightGauge growth. If you’re not focused on Customer Success, you are missing out on an opportunity to turn up your growth. It’s important that all of your teams have a set of standard KPIs that you’re tracking and sharing in real time monitor their performance. Dashboards can easily identify when you are off track. Holding your team accountable via a scorecard allows everyone to see how they are performing over time and for you to identify trends that need to be addressed. To learn more about using a Customer Success Team to impact your growth check out our webinar: How Investing in Customer Success Drove our MSP Growth.

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Why BrightGauge is the Best Analytics Solution for MSPs & TSPs

In a world where data drives decisions, BrightGauge stands out as the premier analytics solution for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) & Technology Service Providers (TSPs), offering the tools and insights needed to excel. Empowering TSPs with Data-Driven Insights In today's fast-paced technological landscape, the ability to make data-driven decisions is crucial for the success of Managed Service Providers (MSPs) & Technology Service Providers (TSPs). BrightGauge is on a mission to empower MSPs by offering robust analytics tools that turn raw data into actionable insights. By leveraging BrightGauge, MSPs can monitor performance metrics in real-time, get proactively notified on threshold alerts, identify trends, and make strategic decisions that drive growth and efficiency. With BrightGauge, MSPs have access to a comprehensive suite of dashboards, reports, goals and proactive notification workflows that provide a clear view of key performance indicators (KPIs). This not only helps in tracking operational efficiency but also in identifying areas for improvement, thereby facilitating a culture of continuous enhancement. New Tools and Features: What's Fresh at BrightGauge In 2024, BrightGauge significantly expanded its native integration capabilities by adding support for five tools, including Acronis, Axcient, ConnectWise MDR, ConnectWise Asio, and Strety. These line of integrations highlights the critical need for monitoring endpoint status and backup recovery posture for business continuity. Notably, the integration with Strety allows BrightGauge metrics to power scorecards and create linked To-Dos and issues, marking BrightGauge's first outbound integration and reinforcing its leadership in providing comprehensive solutions for MSPs & TSPs. BrightGauge continually evolves to meet the dynamic needs of MSPs. This year in 2024, our Recent updates have introduced a variety of new tools and features designed to enhance the user experience and provide proactive insights & personalized visualizations to everyone at your organization. Proactive notifications workflows feature was made generally available in first half of this year. It enables you to create thresholds on metrics that you want to track based on threshold conditions. With flexibility to get notified on MS Teams, Email & Slack notifications, BrightGauge monitors these metrics and provide customizable & personalized alerts if metrics crosses the threshold. BrightGauge also introduced brand-new Dashboard management experience in Asio-neon theme which enables management of dashboards, filter on different fields, categories to organize, manage access to users at a single place. This also paves way to have access to BrightGauge dashboards from within AsioTM platform. Another exciting addition is the Sidekick for BrightGauge (currently in Early access), the AI-enabled chatbot enables BrightGauge users to ask questions in a natural language and MS teams-based Sidekick app provides summarized answers from the data sources connected out of 60+ supported integrations. This innovation makes BrightGauge the only MSP-focused analytics platform that truly integrates AI to deliver insights with your existing BrightGauge subscription. Personalized Insights for Every Role in the Organization At BrightGauge, we want to empower MSPs to provide personalized insights to everyone at your organization. We believe creating visible & measurable goals, providing visibility to different activities & its metrics that contribute to those goals makes people rally around the goals and often exceeding them. One of the stand-out features of BrightGauge is its ability to create Parent-child dashboards. Using a single Parent dashboard, you can create multiple clone child dashboards to provide personalized view tailored to needs of every role within an organization. Parent dashboards enable you to control and make updates to multiple dashboards at ease. Whether you're a technician on the front lines, a manager overseeing operations, or an executive shaping strategy, BrightGauge delivers the specific data you need to excel in your role. In last one year of launch of this feature, MSPs across the world created around 12000 dashboards from their parent dashboards fewer than 1800. That shows how easy it has made to provide either client-facing dashboards or technician specific dashboards. Why BrightGauge Outshines the Competition Central to BrightGauge's design principles is the ease of use and the empowerment of MSPs through self-service capabilities. BrightGauge distinguishes itself from other analytics solutions with its intuitive interface, extensive customization options, and strong integration features. Unlike many other platforms, BrightGauge is specifically crafted with TSPs in mind, ensuring that all features and tools are tailored to the unique challenges and needs of this industry. Integrations and features mentioned earlier in the blog are some examples of our focus for TSPs success. Furthermore, BrightGauge is committed to meeting the needs of MSPs worldwide. In addition to North America, BrightGauge now has data centers in the EU and AU, offering data localization options. With over 4,200 pre-built metrics and gauge templates, along with its seamless integration with other essential systems used by MSPs, such as PSA and RMM tools, BrightGauge enhances its value, making it an essential component of any MSP's toolkit. Looking forward in 2025 ConnectWise is dedicated to delivering the first and only true MSP platform, and as part of this commitment, more of BrightGauge's features will be reimagined with user-friendly enhancements in an Asio-neon theme, becoming available on the ConnectWise Asio platform. In the addition to new integrations, existing ones, particularly those with AsioTM solutions, will be more tightly integrated, ensuring seamless data access across the tools MSPs use within the platform. Next year, BrightGauge will introduce features designed to support the community and its needs, offering self-service capabilities for creating data views to generate domain-specific insights and foster community sharing experience.
Best Practices   |   Read

How to Generate Powerful Autotask Reports

You know what clients love? Partners who are trustworthy and transparent about what they’re doing. Know what’s even better? When that foundation is set naturally, without clients having to ask. It’s likely a priority of yours to foster a really strong sense of trust between you and your clients, which is great. Trust breeds long-term relationships and repeat business, putting you on a path towards success. And a really simple, yet powerful way to build that trust is to get in the habit of consistently sending out client reports. It’s not as tedious or time-consuming as you may think, and the payoff is substantial. Determining what to report on Let’s say you’re using Autotask Professional Services Automation to track your support tickets, SLA data, engineers’ hours, and more. That’s some pretty important data! How do you show your clients what you do with that data to keep them running efficiently? This is where Autotask reports come in. Consistent reports give you the opportunity to visually display your value to your client and reinforce the reasons why they are paying you. Autotask reports also show that you’re proactive and committed to helping them run their business - a.k.a., you’re a partner, not just a service provider. However, while we are clearly in support of showing off your data management skills, we should caution against dumping too much Autotask data (or any data) on your clients. The key is to choose the right data. There are a few questions to ask yourself whenever you’re choosing the Autotask data to report on: How does this fit into my client’s SLA? Referring to the SLA you and your client agreed upon is an excellent way to refresh yourself on what matters to them. For example, if the SLA specifies a satisfactory support ticket response time, you’re going to want to include your Autotask Average Time to First Response on each report you send. Does this impact my client’s bottom line? Only include the Autotask data that’ll have the most impact to each specific client. They may not need to know nitty-gritty details like Hours Today by Engineer, but would probably appreciate an update on Projects Opened vs. Closed. Am I spending significant time on this? If it’s not something that matters a whole lot to you, it’s not likely to matter a whole lot to your client. Remember, this is an opportunity to report on your value, so show off Autotask data that you spend a worthwhile amount of time on. Once you’ve got your data ironed out, you can start pulling your Autotask reports together. A little help goes a long way You’re really busy. You don’t have 8-10 hours a week to spend on compiling reports. And no one says you have to. Using a business intelligence tool like BrightGauge can help you get your Autotask reports out with very little work on your end. First of all, BrightGauge takes all your Autotask data (plus data from your RMM, BDR, security, finance tool, etc) and puts it up on one seamless dashboard, so you can keep an eye on the metrics that matter to you in real-time. Then, when it comes to building reports, the whole process is automated and can be set up in just a few clicks. When you connect BrightGauge + Autotask, your account will come pre-loaded with 8 report templates to get you started, including Daily Member Scorecard, Weekly Project Work Summary, Service Calls, Sales Daily Wrap Up, and more. You can open one of these templates, personalize it with a client logo, choose your client recipient(s), and then schedule the report to automatically be sent out at the frequency you choose (like every Monday at 8 a.m.). If you’d rather build a report from scratch, it’s just a matter of dragging and dropping the data you’re already tracking into the report template, and then personalizing it and scheduling it out. It’s honestly that simple. And the reports look clean, professional, and digestible. Once you get your Autotask reports scheduled, you can rest easy knowing they’re automatically being delivered to your client’s inbox every week/month/quarter and that your client’s can rely on you and trust you to receive this information. High-five! By the way, in addition to 8 report templates, you’ll get almost 200 default KPIs and 9 pre-built dashboards to get you started. Some KPIs include: Amount on Invoices 90 Days Past Due Average Time to First Response Average Time to Resolution Breached SLA Summary Per Resource Customer Satisfaction This Month Leaderboard Opened vs Closed Tickets Project Phases - Current Month Tickets Assigned by Tech Tickets Completed This Week Leaderboard Tickets by Issue Type Watch this video to learn more about setting up and sending out reports. If you’d like to add Autotask to your stack of BrightGauge datasources, please contact us today.
Customer Success   |   Read

Dashboard of the Month: RMM Overview - Endpoints

Dashboards and reports play a vital role in streamlining data and extracting valuable insights. In the dynamic realm of endpoint management, it is imperative for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to have real-time access to consolidated data from their array of tools, enabling swift action on behalf of their clients. Utilizing metrics not only aids in pinpointing areas for enhancement but also empowers them to enact precise strategies for advancement. In this month's featured Dashboard, we delve into RMM Overview metrics tailored to streamline endpoint monitoring and management. Our inspiration stems from a recent user showcase webinar featuring Nate Ginn, the Centralized Systems Manager at ESI Technology Advisors, who shared insights on leveraging ConnectWise RMM and ConnectWise PSA data for enhanced client management. Tune in to Optimizing Remote Monitoring and Client Management with Data to discover more on how Nate drives performance enhancements through data utilization. Nate and the ESI team rely on the RMM Overview dashboard to gain a snapshot into critical indicators like patch status, warranty updates, and disk space utilization, guaranteeing optimal functionality of their endpoints. This visual aid, shared among their team, helps them stay ahead of RMM tickets for prompt issue resolution as well. RMM Overview - Endpoints - view here. Here are some featured metrics: Ticket & Configuration Information - These segments organize RMM tickets based on their status, time spent, and attached configurations. It also offers a historical perspective on ticket volume, and provides insight into the endpoints and software under your management. Patching & Disk Space Utilization - These metrics provide valuable insights on missing patches, OS patch compliance rates, and disk space utilization percentages. These data points are crucial for addressing performance concerns and identifying potential security vulnerabilities. Thank you, Nate, for collaborating with us and sharing your valuable insights! Recreate in your BrightGauge RMM Overview - Endpoints Dashboard (public view link) RMM Overview - Endpoints Buildout Key Make sure to visit our library of more report and dashboard templates and please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions!

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