The BrightGauge Blog

Two clear components of successful relationships are clear expectations and great communication. If we really think about it, this is true of every relationship we hope to foster in our lives and it’s no different in business. In fact, those two principles are the reason for the existence of SLAs and SLA reporting. We can, quite easily, reduce documents like SLAs to contractual documents, but they’re really more than that. The goal of a solidly written SLA and regular timely SLA reports is to help foster and build a relationship between provider and client. For that reason, it’s important to understand how to best use them to further that relationship building goal. Quick Links What does SLA stand for? How is an SLA measured? What are the 3 types of SLA? What is an SLA report? How to choose SLA metrics to report on Make SLA metrics reporting easy with dashboards What does SLA stand for? SLA stands for service level agreement. The SLA outlines the type and level of services one business technology provider will deliver for another business. Not only does it lay out the services as well as the expectations, but it also covers the remediations and consequences should service levels not be achieved. How is an SLA measured? SLAs are typically measured via specific and detailed metrics determined by the type of services being delivered. In other words, in a data center SLA one might expect to see uptime reliability as a reportable SLA metric. If you’re an MSP, one metric you might include is Resolved Tickets. Again, the SLA metrics included in an SLA will depend on the type of service being provided. What are the 3 types of SLA? As noted above, the SLA you provide will depend largely on the client. That said, there are, traditionally, 3 different types of SLA. A customer-based SLA is tailored to a specific client. Typically, this would be used when the client is only using very specific services that may differ from other clients and enables the vendor to keep things simple by utilizing just one SLA. In contrast, a service-based SLA groups customers together based on the one service they contact for. In this case, all customers are using the same service with no deviations. Finally, a multi-level SLA allows a larger organization to define different levels of services, such as across different departments, even if services provided are similar. For example, both a finance and human resource department may need the same umbrella service, but when drilling down into the details, they may need a different level of service based on their organizational and departmental needs. The multi-level SLA allows a vendor to tailor an SLA to meet varying needs within one complex organization. What is an SLA report? Essentially, the SLA report allows a provider to communicate with the client and maintain transparency on the deliverables outlined in the SLA. For example, if the SLA requires that trouble tickets are resolved within 72 hours, the SLA report would include data on whether that metric was met and, if not, how that issue is being addressed. Further, if the SLA includes device management, the report would include data and information on each device, its status, and where the management falls in relation to the metrics outlined in the SLA. While reporting SLAs does have some overlap with reporting performance metrics, there is a key difference between the two types of reporting: key performance indicators (KPIs) focus on business priorities for the service provider, while SLA metrics prioritize the client’s needs. Additionally, SLAs can be notoriously difficult to accurately track—especially when some SLA metrics are dependent on customer responses. How to choose SLA metrics to report Odds are that, as a service provider, you already have a list of SLA metrics to report. However, it's important to ask how relevant those metrics are to your customers. Why are you tracking some metrics and not others? When was the last time you reviewed your service level agreements? Before you start reporting SLAs, it’s important to start addressing these questions. After all, if you’re tracking irrelevant metrics, what good does that do you? Picking SLAs based on adherence to your service contract is a good start because it helps you find metrics that make sense to your clients. However, there is more to tracking SLA metrics than that. When setting new service level agreement metrics to track and report, it can help to look at your current SLAs and how well they: Align with your business’ services; Match with the details of your service contract; Support your customer’s needs/wants; Can be measured; and Can be controlled by you or your team. Taking the time to converse with your customers about what they want, or at least surveying them about their perception of your performance, can further help you refine your list of SLAs to report. Basing SLA metrics on the details of the service contract can help to ensure that you’re satisfying each client’s specific goals. For example, your SLA with one client may specify that you'll respond to support tickets within a day of receiving them. In that case, time to response would be a great SLA metric for your business to track. When creating SLA metrics, it’s also important to consider how factors outside of your control can influence them. For example, time to resolution is a commonly-tracked metric. However, when resolutions are dependent on customer response times, your results can easily become skewed. So, it may be necessary to either modify the metrics you choose for your SLA reports, or to find ways to minimize the impact of outside factors on the SLAs you report—such as “pausing the clock” on time-to-resolution tracking whenever your team has to wait on customer input or tracking total labor time spent on tasks instead. Having well-chosen SLA metrics helps make reporting tasks somewhat easier and more valuable to your customers. How to make SLA metrics reporting easy After finalizing the list of service level agreement metrics you want to track and share with your clients, how can you make reporting SLAs as easy as possible? One method is to use an automated reporting system that can pull the data you want to share from a preset source at the time the report is sent. Take, for example, BrightGauge’s own automated client reporting system. In the BrightGauge client reporting feature, you can select SLAs to share with your clients along with other KPI data. In the reporting feature, simply click on the drag-and-drop interface to choose which KPIs and SLA metrics you want to include, rearrange their order to choose which ones to highlight, and drag-click the box edges to resize them however you want. Once created, these data boxes will automatically populate with the latest information from whichever datasource they’re using. Alternatively, all available data sources in BrightGauge come with default report templates to help you get going right away. Choose a pre-built template, feel free to customize it, and you’re ready to send it off. From there, you can use the client mappings feature to select who you want to receive each report and then select a frequency for how often you want those clients to get a report (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.). Once set up, these reports will be automatically generated and sent for each of the clients in your client map whenever you set them to send; all without you having to lift a finger ever again (unless you want to alter the report or change the recipient list). For some BrightGauge users, this automated reporting feature can save between eight and ten hours a week on client reporting. The ability to report SLAs metrics consistently helps to build transparency between your organization and its clients—which helps to earn client trust in the long run. SLAs formalize the relationship between provider and client and enable alignment on expectations in a way that , when SLA metrics are met, helps build trust and long lasting business partnerships. If you’re ready to take your SLA metrics reporting to the next level? Reach out to our team at any time to get started!

Language matters; it’s often nuanced in ways we don’t explore. Further, it’s not important just because it’s how we communicate, but because it has the potential to shape the way we interact and the way we understand our worlds. For that reason, how we frame our interactions with customers matters. For decades we’ve focused on customer service with the implication, based on language, being that there is a clear delineation of roles suggestive of give and take, and often in a way that separates our goals from the goals of our customers. Customer success, however, looks at this relationship quite differently. Service, by definition, means the act of helping or doing something for someone. While there are relationships built on service, the key word here is for. Customer success, on the other hand, changes that word “for” and replaces it with “with.” The concept is one that shifts the focus away from what we can do for you to what we can do with you. And that whole idea changes the way we interact with our customers. When we start to view our success as intricately tied to our customer’s success, we shift a business paradigm in a way that has the potential to grow not only relationships, but also business and revenue. Quick Link What is customer success? What does a customer success team do? When should you start building a customer success team? Using your customer success team to guides your clients What is customer success? Customer success, as a customer relationship management method, ensures your team understands your customers’ goals and actively partners to help them achieve those goals. Your product or service was developed or designed to help your customers achieve specific outcomes or goals, and customer success is the method by which you track the success of your service and support. Essentially, customer success helps foster an aligned relationship that ensures mutual successes. While you’re working to their goals, the successful relationship, continued business, and potential for upsells means your team is also reaching their goals. What does a customer success team do? Currently, most businesses employ customer service teams. Customer service is who businesses call when a product or service isn’t functioning as expected or promised. In contrast, customer success is proactive. It’s an engaged method and a dedicated team that looks at data and performance and is therefore able to identify potential friction points or possible opportunities to improve or expand services. In short, it’s the difference between having a reactive team or a responsive team. Additionally, a dedicated customer success team is empowered to focus on specific clients with the understanding that by focusing on one’s clients, and their successes, a business then is successful as well. Currently, many metrics focus solely on how one’s business is doing, how it’s growing, where it’s generating revenue. Customer success shifts that focus to the customer and whether they’re hitting their targets because when they do, your business wins as well. Some of the structure looks similar to existing customer service team structures. Specifically, however, your customer success team is made up of the following individuals: Account Executive- This is primarily a pre-sale role responsible for prospecting, presenting demos, qualifying prospects, and closing sales. Once the sale is closed, the account/customer is handed off to the account manager. Account Manager- Post-sale, this person acts as the primary point of contact for the customer, managing and overseeing the needs and services provided for the customer. They are, primarily, responsible for nurturing the relationship. Success Specialist- As noted above, one of the goals of customer success teams is to have an individual who is responsible for understanding client goals and digging into customer/client data points to identify needs, proactively address issues or concerns, and ensure they are reaching their goals. Support Technician- Even the most proactive team will incur client issues. The role of the support technician is to handle any issues customers have as they arise, particularly those related to the service desk. The support technician will manage the ticket queue, and help clients solve IT problems. While each person has a distinct role, ensuring each aspect of the account has individual oversight, the overall goal remains to keep alignment with the client’s goals and work to proactively ensure their success. When should you start building a customer success team? Ideally, from the start of the business, establishing the members of a customer success team is best. However, when a business is just starting, the focus will likely be on customer acquisition, product development, and other elements that will help launch the business. However, customer retention is often a much stronger revenue strategy than customer acquisition as it costs less and can, ideally, lead to inbound sales. In fact, a majority of your revenue will come from existing customers, so ensuring they are successful and happy is a key revenue generation strategy. For that reason, it will be clear, once your business has established itself and has clients who will benefit from this level of assistance. These are the clients who have potential to be long term, who have the potential to assist with word of mouth, and whose success will help you build your own success. There is, naturally, a point at which it will seem clear to switch your focus from building product/services out to aligning your products and services with client goals and ensuring the two are symbiotic. Using your customer success team to guides your clients As noted above, customer success is about relationship building. The old customer service model involved a lot of handoffs, staff dedicated to roles and tasks rather than clients, and reactive services rather than responsive support. As your marketing team will tell you, your customer’s journey begins well before they’ve spent any money with you or on your product. The one agreed upon point across all sales is that multiple “touch points” are needed to close a sale. Each and every one of those touch points is an opportunity for your customer success team to begin nurturing the relationship (this is the job of the account executive). It’s an early opportunity to not only differentiate yourself in a competitive marketplace, but it also establishes the foundation upon which you will continue to build this proactive and responsive relationship. One of the key pieces once the sale is closed is a thorough onboarding process where the client has been provided a map and has had clear communications about what work will be done, when, and with whom. This ability to clearly communicate and provide a transparent process enables your business to demonstrate the nature of customer success vs. customer service. You can then continue this type of communication and dedication to their goals and aligning them with the services you provide and offer with a quarterly business review. Customer success teams can be the key difference not just between you and your competition but between churn and retention. Developing your teams, having them align with your clients, digging deep into their goals, and applying the tools and services you offer to help them achieve them is the future of proactive and responsive customer relationships. BrightGauge is no stranger to the MSP market where, among others, this strategy is incredibly valuable, but we employ this method as well. Our own Customer Success Team interacts with partners on a daily basis, using our business intelligence software to ensure success on both ends. Get in touch with us today to talk more!

Ready for a breakfast meeting? Not quite? Grab a cup of coffee because we’re about to tell you how to prepare for one of the most important breakfast meetings on your calendar. The Quarterly Business Review is among the most important meetings you’ll have with your clients. It’s like a managed service provider wellness check. An opportunity to build relationships with clients while showcasing your services and ensuring an ongoing partnership. In fact, there are few things more important than customer satisfaction in the business of managed services, and the keys to that satisfaction are transparency and great communication. For this reason, Quarterly Business Reviews are one of the best tools you can use when it comes to keeping your clients updated on all the work that you’re taking care of for them. Quick Links What is a quarterly business review (QBR)? How to structure a quarterly business review How to create a quarterly business review How to prepare for a QBR meeting Benefits of Quarterly Business Reviews Next Steps for Mastering Your Review What is a quarterly business review (QBR)? Sometimes referred to as a Technical Business Review or Semi-Annual Business Review, a QBR serves as an excellent opportunity, throughout the year, to touch base with clients, highlight the value of the services you provide, and create a strategic agenda moving forward. It’s an excellent opportunity to discuss your client’s business goals, projects or plans they have in the pipeline, and learn about their long-term goals. In turn, it gives you the opportunity to demonstrate how you and your services can help them along the way. In our managed services business, Compuquip, we learned a lot about perfecting these reviews and they served as a cornerstone in our efforts to keep clients happy and informed. Let’s take a deep-dive into what a QBR meeting should look like, and how to leverage these meetings for closer, more fruitful partnerships! How to Structure Your QBR As noted above, our managed service business afforded us the opportunity to become quite adept at structuring a QBR. Not only did our format and content enable us align ourselves with our client’s goals, but it also allowed us to showcase how our services were essential to helping them achieve their goals. These meetings and QBRs also allowed us to provide transparency with our clients that enabled us to build trusting relationships, the kind that enhance partnerships and create long-term success. Timing for a Quarterly Business Review If you think about your work week, and more specifically your work day, there are times you’re more amenable to conversation, less pressed for time, and more open to the kind of conversations that open doors rather than close them. This should all be taken into consideration when it comes to the timing of your QBR. First, ensure the meeting is convenient for all stakeholders. Still, it’s more than convenience. You also want to choose a time when everyone is alert and, again, open. Not easy, right?! That’s why we always suggest avoiding late lunch or a meeting near the end of the day. To be more specific, we found that QBRs as a breakfast meeting gave us the best results. Why is that? To start, people are more likely to be in good moods, alert, and ready to take part in strategic discussions in the morning. Further, because other meetings are rarely scheduled first thing in the morning, choosing an early meeting ensures availability and can help you stand out from the crowd. Finally, most of our morning routine’s are hectic. We rush out the door, drop off our kids or clothes at the cleaner (sometimes the other way if we’ve not had coffee) and fight rush hour traffic to get to work. A meeting that allows us to sit down, grab a cup of coffee, have something light to eat is a pretty nice way to start the day. Pro tip: Don’t think you have to assemble an entire spread of breakfast choices! Trust us... after years of successful QBRs, keep it simple. The secret? Bagels and coffee. They’re easy to transport, practically everyone loves them, and the price is great too! In addition to when, you want to consider how often you should be meeting. You know your clients best, and it is important to provide them with a valuable interaction, that uses their, and your, time wisely. That isn’t always possible if you’re meeting too often. We recommend you try to meet at least three times per year as that keeps you in the forefront of their minds and helps build a stronger partnership. Who Should Participate in QBRs? Knowing the first step to QBR success lies in picking a time that will yield the highest attendance, it’s also just as important to make sure the right people are present. This helps ensure that the QBR has the proper gravity, that all stakeholders understand the connection between their business and your services. Let’s take a closer look at who those stakeholders are: Your Technical Account Manager: Bring the person who manages this particular account on a day-to-day basis because they know the ins and outs of the client’s business. This is the person who puts together the report, sets the agenda, and generally leads the actual meeting. Your Point of Contact: Invite the person your team regularly interfaces with because they have an understanding of your daily operations and is likely someone with whom you already have rapport. Depending on the size and structure of your client’s business, this may be an Office Manger or even a COO or CIO. The Boss: Who’s the top dog, so to speak, on the client side? Again, this depends on the size and structure of each client, but someone like the Founder, Owner, or CEO of the business. The Person Who Signs Your Check: Who signs off on your partnership? It’s absolutely critical that this person sees the value in your services and they are the most important attendee. For your smaller clients, this may be the boss, but with your larger clients, the money person may be a CFO. Find out who it is, and make sure they are included at each QBR. Other Department Heads: This should include people who are one level down from the executives, such as members of a leadership team. Invite anyone who is relevant to the discussion, especially if you plan on pitching changes in processes that will involve their department. If necessary, provide a brief explanation for why you would like them to attend when planning the meeting. How to Create a QBR Okay. We’ve got a time, we’ve got a place, we’ve got the people. This is where we really dig in. It’s “The reason I asked you all here today…” Make QBRs Strategic, Not Tactical Your Quarterly Business Review isn’t the ideal time to get down into the nitty-gritty of daily operations. This is one of the few times you have executives from the client company there to listen to what you have to say — make the most of it and don’t get bogged down in the details. Instead, zoom out and take a high-level approach to subjects you discuss. Executives and stakeholders are unlikely to be involved in day-to-day operations, so they don’t care about execution. They care about results. Sometimes MSPs are tempted to use QBR time to discuss tactical issues, but we advise against it because those points should be discussed and coordinated directly with your day-to-day contact person. Executives aren’t as interested in the how as they are the what as in what have you done for them? For that reason, come to the QBR meeting armed with data. Show real-world returns from prevented problems and increased uptime. This approach builds trust and furthers your relationship as a trusted business advisor, rather than as just another vendor. Additionally, during the meeting address the various roadblocks and obstacles that must be overcome to deliver an ideal service. This allows you to demonstrate your overall understanding of the landscape, where your client stands, and where they’d like to be. Identify areas where improvements can be made, and take a big picture strategic approach to problem-solving. Make sure you also listen closely to their concerns. In the end, both teams should align on ways to drive more value through your partnership. What You Should Include in Your Reviews As an MSP, the goal of your Quarterly Business Review should be to provide a top-down view of operations, making sure each discussion offers transparency and highlights the value your MSP has provided in that specific area. Service Ticket Review First, your QBRs should include a comprehensive service ticket review from the past quarter that shows how your team is handling ticket volume. The metrics are very straightforward - you want to compare the number of open tickets to the number of closed tickets. If your open and closed numbers are fairly even, it shows your customer that your team is handling support requests quickly. If the numbers are not relatively even, then you may have some explaining to do! Or more likely, it may be an indication the customer is over utilizing the service desk or they may need a different structure for their support. In other words, this is an opportunity for you to be a business advisor. Suggest an alternative structure or methods and techniques to decrease service tickets. Service requests, even if your team is responding quickly and efficiently, results in slowed workflows and, potentially, employee frustration. Now is the time to offer a plan to alleviate both concerns. SLA Review Your QBR should also address your SLA. Compare your agreement to the services rendered and highlight areas where you have gone above and beyond. If there have been disputes or issues, now is a great time to discuss the matter while decision-makers are present. In your report, take a deep dive into your agreement and provide updates on goals. How quickly have you responded to service requests? Have you met or exceeded your agreed-upon standards? If not, is there a reason why this is the case? Have you reached your service request resolution goal? The SLA Review portion of your QBR is a good place to leverage positive client satisfaction surveys as well. As always, focus on the value you’ve provided while being honest about how you can improve moving forward and how those initiatives will work for your client’s goals as well. Technical Review The technical review should make up the bulk of your Quarterly Business Review. It gives you the opportunity to put the value you’ve provided front and center, while also providing some insight into where improvements in process could be made on both sides. The technical review must include all aspects of your services to provide a complete picture. Your technical review should include the following: Endpoint Management Having the ability to centrally deploy, update, and troubleshoot endpoint devices for your clients is critical to a successful partnership, which is why most MSPs will agree that endpoint management is the “meat and potatoes” of your partnerships. You probably also know from experience that, when done well, the client rarely knows everything that goes into endpoint management and likely everything you’re doing for them. For this reason, focus on detailing your endpoint management actions - it’s low-hanging fruit in terms of demonstrating value. Your QBR should include several aspects of endpoint management that should also be covered in your meeting: Patch management. Because patches are the first line of defense for your clients, it’s important to provide details about your patch management. More specifically, detail which machines are fully patched, which machines are missing patches (and how many patches they are missing), and reasons why those machines are behind. For instance, if those machines were powered off during that last installation window; it’s an important fact you should relay. Endpoint Security. Endpoint security is an important but often overlooked aspect of an MSP’s services. Often, clients only look into endpoint security when something goes wrong. However, you should make sure you set aside time in your QBR meeting to discuss your proactive efforts on endpoint security. Provide stats regarding your threat reporting and antivirus efforts. How many threats were detected? How many scans did you complete to identify those threats? Not only does this establish transparency and provide a full view of the work you’re doing to protect their assets, but again, it provides an opportunity to align on goals and demonstrate your understanding of the security landscape. Warranty Reporting. Establishing your knowledge and oversight of your client’s devices is an opportunity to help showcase your value. Which machines will have their warranty run out soon? What are the recommended next steps? Will you soon provide a quote to extend the warranties? Infrastructure Management The infrastructure management section of your QBR will include a lot of critical yet also technical information. While this is another excellent opportunity to showcase your value, reeling off a list of techie terms, speeds, and feeds won’t do that for you. Make sure that, in this section, you take the time to explain why each one of these areas is a big deal for the client’s business. Hint: If you use BrightGauge to monitor these areas, this is a great place to include your gauges and a visual representation of these values! If not, you can always include this data from other sources. Overall network uptime. Include network uptime data for all relevant servers. If uptime can be improved, provide insight into why the numbers are lower than expected and make recommendations for improvement. Alert trending data. Provide insight into recent trend reports. Is there a vital piece of equipment, system, or network that is constantly running into issues? What steps should be taken to improve performance? Server backups. How often are you backing up data? Have there ever been any issues during data backups? A summary of all relevant backups is a good thing to add, as it provides a detailed picture of how you are protecting their business. Domain admins audit. Who has access to the domain admin security group? Keeping a close eye on domain administrators that have access to servers, workstations, and files is important for protecting clients. How often is the user list being audited? Will that change moving forward? Server patch status. Which servers are up to date? Which servers are missing patches? Why are they missing patches? Offer a plan to ensure that all servers stay up to date moving forward. Again, the goal with each metric is to provide the data, look for and recommend areas for improvement, and take the opportunity to make those suggestions. Network Security Defense Since protecting networks against viruses and other threats is important for maintaining the security of the entire organization, you’ll want to detail some key aspects of your network security efforts in this section of your report (this may also be a good opportunity to touch on your GDPR compliance efforts): Server Virus Protection. How many updates and scans have been performed? Have any threats been detected? Provide a complete picture of server virus protection using data. Email Security. Detail the protection efforts of the company’s emails and email server. Provide any relevant data regarding detected threats. Many organizations are compromised through employee email and clients know this. Reassure them that you have protections in place and demonstrate how those protections are working. Strategic Planning Keeping the subjects you just discussed in mind, now is a good time to dive into big-picture strategy and proposals to improve the business relationship moving forward. Make sure that everyone at the meeting has a solid understanding of what you are currently working on, what is planned for the future, and any recommended changes you may have. Include these recommendations in your report, and come to the meeting prepared to discuss those aspects of your partnership. User-Training Let your clients know which of their employees may require additional training, based on the support tickets you have received. Training not only enables your organization to save time, but it is also another way for you to prove useful to your clients during the QBR meeting. Training may also go beyond tickets, but can include updated security and threat training as this is often a shortcoming at many organizations. How to prepare for a QBR meeting Got the bagels? Good. Truth be told, we all know it’s more than bagels and coffee. Again, this is your opportunity to stand out and demonstrate why your services are exceeding expectations and can continue to do so moving forward. You’ve got the chance to showcase how you are aware of your client’s business needs and goals and how your service can be tailored to help them achieve those objectives. Much like everything else outline here, however, there are a few steps you want to take to ensure your meeting runs smoothly and touches on all the points you want to address with your client. Create an agenda The agenda is your opportunity to outline the information you’ll be presenting to your clients and also provides an overview for the areas you’ll want to research and be prepared to discuss in depth during the meeting. Finally, it’s important to remember that the QBR meeting is a chance for discussion, a chance for you to listen as well as speak, so the agenda is a good place for you to identify the areas where you may want client input. You can also outline here the time you anticipate you’ll need which allows any executives or upper management in attendance to understand expectations and block out time for you. Your ability to anticipate their needs and deliver on them, in even this small way, sends an important message. Gather your data and do your research Three to four months, the time you’ll have, roughly, between QBRs, is ample time to analyze data regarding any initiatives started since your last meeting. Further, you’ll want to have the client data you’ll need as well as any relevant industry or market data to make any comparisons but also to provide that data and suggested initiatives to your client. It’s also an opportunity to review client goals discussed at the last meeting so you’re prepared to report on progress. You’ll also want ample time to formulate responses to any shortfalls or weaknesses and investigate potential fixes. Be prepared to demonstrate not only your awareness that they exist, but how you’re prepared to adjust your strategies and tactics to improve. Benefits of Quarterly Business Reviews After ironing out the QBR process in our MSP, we found that there are quite a few benefits. To start, it offers a personal touch that clients appreciate. As MSPs, we’re all too familiar with the dreaded “why am I paying you” question. Of course, we at BrightGauge advocate for weekly or monthly reporting to help avoid that question from popping up, but adding in the face-to-face QBRs is a great touch point and opportunity to explain things in detail or answer questions that may not come up in emailed reports. Second, having several people there from each department makes it easy to pinpoint issues and receive input from multiple viewpoints. Additionally, you’ll have everyone you need to make decisions to solve those problems. Ensuring that several high ranking employees within the company attend, you will dramatically improve your CSAT scores and ultimately, your customer retention. Another often overlooked benefit of conducting a thorough in-person QBR is the fact that it will help you to highlight which of your customers are not a great match for your services. During your meeting preparation, you may find that there are conflicts within your SLA that inhibit your ability to provide a valuable service. Some common examples include machines not receiving timely updates, or an unwillingness to invest in critical infrastructure. You can also use these reports to gauge the overall profitability of a customer and decide when it may be appropriate for both parties to go their separate ways. In fact, Andrew Hutchison, Network Ops Manager at BlackPoint IT, confirms “We had some hard conversations, but having the data available took us down the path of getting rid of unprofitable customers.” Next Steps for Mastering Your Review Quarterly business reviews are a critical tool for your success. Instead of putting together a report and attaching it to an email, take the time to schedule a meeting with all relevant stakeholders. And, before the end of your meeting, schedule the next! Use each meeting to highlight the value you’ve provided, identify areas for improvement, and establish your business as a trusted partner, expert, and advisor, rather than an ordinary vendor. In our MSP, we created a QBR template in Word that we could easily customize for each client with screenshot images from BrightGauge - and you can too! Download a copy of the Quarterly Business Review template that worked like a charm for us. And get in touch with the BrightGauge team to learn how our dashboards and gauges can enhance your QBR or how our reporting can streamline your data gathering efforts.

As we hit a few months into the new year, now is typically the time when memories of our resolutions start to fade, we lose track of our goals, or abandon them altogether. We’re here to say now is the time to recommit, rather than give up. It’s completely reasonable to review and adjust your goals regularly throughout the year. For many, 2020 was an interesting year and that means we put off setting goals in 2021 until we could see what the landscape might look like. Now is the time to set those goals. If you put them off or just need to re-evaluate, seize the moment. Quick Links What are team goals? How to set team goals Best practices for goal setting 50 team goal examples How BrightGauge Goals help you track progress throughout the year What are team goals? Goals help to keep our eyes on the prize, working towards a desired outcome, and focused on success. When we have an end result in mind, it’s easier to stay hyper-productive and in a deep workflow. This is especially true when working in teams. With a team goal, you ensure that everyone stays on track and focused on the common objective, even if their individual tasks seem isolated. When setting goals, both team and individual, it’s important to remember that there are 3 types of goals you, or a team, can set. Outcome goals are the results we’d like to see or what it is we hope to achieve. Process goals are the strategies or actions that will lead us to the outcome. Performance goals are the standards you set to apply to your process. For example, let’s say your team sends out a customer service survey after interactions with your team and lately those scores have fallen by 7 points. The outcome goal associated with this might be to increase customer service satisfaction scores by 7 points. The process goal would be to have weekly check-ins with your customer. Your performance goal would be to spend at least 10 minutes discussing concerns with the customer and ensure they have no questions or concerns when the call is done. How to Set Team Goals When setting a team goal, it’s important that you’re not just “going through the motions.” Often when we talk about goal setting, people envision lofty goals that are unattainable, and so faith in goal setting as a practice is weaker than it should be. When specific and challenging S.M.A.R.T. goals are set, especially for a team, they can be motivating. When setting goals for a team, you want to do the following: 1. Figure out the outcome First, nearly 40% of employees do not know what their business’s goals are. This should be deeply concerning to a company, and to teams. While team goals may only be part of the larger business goal, getting everyone on the same page is key. Right now, according to these stats, half the team isn’t even reading the right book! Further, if you don’t know what you want to achieve, it’ll be next to impossible to figure out the process or performance goals that will help you get there. You’ll want to assess the larger business goal (outcome) and see where your team fits in achieving that. What will the outcome for your team look like? How does it align with the overall business goal? 2. Have team members set personal goals One of the greatest assets you have is your team itself. For that reason, you want to ensure buy-in on your goals and one great way to do that is to allow team members to determine where their individual process goals will help achieve the outcome. Not only does this strategy ensure individual team members envision how they fit into the larger goals, but it can also improve efficiency and the chances of success. In setting these goals, it’s vital to remember the principles of S.M.A.R.T. goals: S-Specific - Keep it simple, but detailed. M- Measurable- Find a way to track it. How will you know when it is achieved? A- Achievable- Keep it realistic. R- Relevant- Does it matter? Does it help you get to the outcome? T- Timely- Set a deadline and keep that realistic, but challenging. Here’s an example: If you’re in sales, it’s not enough to say, “Next quarter, we'll close more accounts.” Instead, a S.M.A.R.T. goal would be, “By the end of next quarter, I will bring in 10 new accounts that will result in a higher commission for myself and contribute to the overall revenue goals of our company; I’ll do this by increasing the amount of calls I make from 100 to 150.” 3. Set deadlines One of the most important aspects of goal setting is creating deadlines. The fundamentals of S.M.A.R.T. goals include being timely. Open-ended goals, or a failure to create specific tasks (process goals), to be measured in a specific time, are likely to lead to confusion and, quite possibly, failure. Remember, it’s important to set realistic deadlines, and, if necessary, break large tasks into smaller tasks that can also be measured, and also have deadlines. 4. Track progress S.M.A.R.T. goals must be measured. That means you, and your team, need to be aligned and reviewing progress. Successes and meeting benchmarks will motivate team members, but tracking also allows your team to adjust. Some tasks may take longer than others and others may present unexpected challenges. By checking in with team members, and tracking progress, team leaders, and members, can step in where needed and adjust. 5. Adjust as needed One reason tracking is so important is that it allows you to adjust. Many people view goal setting as black and white. Success or failure. What this fails to account for is the importance of tracking progress and remaining agile throughout the process. Regular feedback and team input can help create the kind of cohesion that leads to success, even in the face of challenges. Best practices for goal-setting When you’ve landed on a goal that resonates with you and your team, and aligns with your overall business goals, be sure to keep a few things in mind that will ultimately help you be successful. Tie your goals to overall KPIs. We often compare key performance indicators to a North Star because KPIs are what keep everyone focused and aligned. If your individual goals aren’t tied to KPIs, then you won’t be working towards the target you care about most. And remember, just like goals, your sales team, service team, project team, finance team, and NOC/operations team KPIs will all vary from one another. Don’t rely on goals for performance reviews. This can be hard to do, but remember: goal-setting should encourage employees to stretch for something big. And in the process, it’s okay to not be afraid to fail and to not settle for mediocrity. It's also important to keep tracking, keep monitoring, and adjust as needed. If goals were simply boxes to be check and then tied to compensation, teams would naturally only choose attainable goals, which wouldn’t leave a lot of room for growth. Risk has its rewards. While goals should be attainable, they should also present a challenge. 50 team goal examples Each department in your organization contributes to the overall success of your company in different ways. Your support team will have different responsibilities than your sales team, and so each of your employees’ goals will vary as well. Make sure that the goals that are being set are relevant the goal owner. Here are some ideas: Leadership Team: Build on existing MRR: create upsell goals for existing managed services revenue Develop Existing Resources: look at how you can develop your team to meet hiring plans for the future Customer Satisfaction: monitor your percentage of satisfied vs. negative surveys (good for services lead) Reactive Kill Ratio: calculate whether your service team is closing more tickets than are being opened (good for services lead) Utilization Rate: hours billed vs. total hours in the week (good for operations manager) Past Due Receivables: track how much is owed to your business that is past due (good for finance lead) Average Response Time: monitor the time it takes to respond to a service request (good for services lead) Cash in Bank: see how much cash is in the bank at the end of the week (good for finance lead) Employee Engagement: assess whether you’re keeping and attracting top talen Current Pipeline: the total amount in the pipeline multiplied by percentage chance of closing (good for sales lead) Service Team: Bring Down Response Time: are you responding to support requests quickly enough? Bring Down Response Plan Time: are you starting work on the ticket fast enough? Bring Down Resolution Time: total time to resolve tickets, minus business hours and hold statuses New Certifications: stay on top of certifications that keep your team members relevant Customer Satisfaction: monitor your percentage of satisfied vs. negative surveys (good for services lead) Reactive Kill Ratio: calculate whether your service team is closing more tickets than are being opened (good for services lead) SLAs Missed: tickets that missed their SLA (good for services lead) Noisy Tickets: tickets with more than 5 time entries that are still open Ticket Backlog: tracking the backlog of tickets to make sure they are coming down Stale Tickets: open tickets that haven’t been updated in over 3 days Finance/HR Teams: Implement Quarterly Fun Event: a great one for HR, to keep team members engaged and close knit Nothing Over 90 Days Past Due: strive to reduce AR to as little as possible Past Due Accounts Receivable: total dollar amount of past due invoices >90 Days Past Due: total dollar amount greater than 90 days past due Cash in Bank: monitor how much cash is on hand Payables Past Due: total money owed to vendors/clients Invoices Delivered: monitor how efficiently and on-time invoices are being sent Continued Education Hours: track how well you’re investing in employees and how much continued education they are completing Operations/Projects Teams: Fixed Fee Projects > 20k: keeping track of the fixed fee projects in your pipeline Document Sales to Project Team Handoff: document the process for sales to hand off a won project to the project team Projects Over Budget: number of projects that are over budget against Work Plan hours Project Hours: track these to determine if too much/too little time is being spent on projects and see if priorities need to be readjusted Documentation New & Updated: monitor how many documents are being created and updated Open Projects: keep an eye on overall workload Hours Not Billed: hours without an agreement or project without an associated invoice Sales Team: New New MRR: the amount of money closed in managed services revenue Pipeline Per Sales Rep: the current weekly pipeline multiplied by stage Networking Events Attended: an important one for sales reps as they can result in new business, track the number of networking events they are participating in Dials Made: count how many outbound calls are being made Opportunities With No Activity: the number of opportunities with no activity in the previous week While professional goals are of utmost importance, we always like to leave room for personal development, too. That’s why we think it can be a good idea to assign 1 ‘fun’ goal to each employee per cycle. When we’re growing and pushing our own boundaries, it makes us more well-rounded and productive employees. Fun goals: Watch all the Oscar winning movies from your birth year Learn how to juggle Explore 3 new parks this quarter Win a trivia night this year Walk 50,000 steps in one month Learn an instrument Call at least one family member or friend on way to or from work, weekly Get an hour massage this month Watch a Ted talk with a friend or partner then discuss over coffee BrightGauge Goals helps you track progress throughout the year We’re passionate about goal-setting, and the goals feature of BrightGauge was designed for that reason. It makes it easy to stay on track of progress because it's automated for you. Further, our dashboards allow you to track and customize the KPIs that are along the path to your objectives. You can share those with your team as a whole or individual employees. Send employees an email to check in on their goals through highly visible goal cards. You'll keep team members motivated and accountable for their process goals. Plus, those inspiration ideas we mentioned above? Most of them can be found in BrightGauge, so if you’re feeling intimidated about the process of actually coming up with goals, fear not. They take just a few minutes to set up. We live for goals. Let us help you achieve yours.

Teachers can often gauge student engagement by how many are looking at the clock, waiting on a bell to ring. Your employees are likely no different. Your managers and team leaders can likely measure employee engagement by how eager your team is to leave at lunch, at the end of the day, and on Friday. While no doubt most of us look forward to our non-work lives, the most successful businesses are the ones with employees who have buy-in. Employees who are invested in seeing that a company succeeds are focused on tasks and objectives more than the clock. In fact, 71% of executives say that engagement is fundamental to their success. That’s not to say work-life balance isn’t essential (and a contributing factor to employee happiness), but employees who are engaged in business can have a significant impact on profitability, customer satisfaction, recruitment and retention, innovation and a number of other factors that help build business success. Because these metrics are so important, monitoring valuable employee engagement metrics can be vital to making sure you’re leveraging your employees’ energy and investment and turning it into a boon for your business. Quick Links How the remote workforce shift impacts employee engagement KPI examples for monitoring employee engagement Using data dashboards to gauge employee engagement How to use insights from data dashboards to boost employee engagement How the remote workforce shift impacts employee engagement By now, we’ve all come to the realization that the workplace changes instigated by the Coronavirus pandemic may be more permanent than originally anticipated. Certainly this shift presented multiple challenges to businesses well beyond human resource concerns, but those cannot and should not be ignored. It’s always been far easier to welcome new employees into organizational culture when they had daily touch points with other employees and integration into an office environment. Similarly, team building and mustering alignment on key objectives was also easier when everyone was in the same place. Team building opportunities and familiarity with co-workers and business goals, from working together on projects to casual office banter, facilitated employee engagement in ways that often cannot be recreated in remote work situations. That said, there is definitely an argument to be made that, on smaller teams, video conferencing has opened a window into our co-workers lives that helps team building and fosters relationships. Further, workers report being happier working from home as well. But can that, does that, translate into employee engagement? It might. In May of 2020, a study found that 62% of employees said remote work was actually beneficial to their engagement. KPI examples for monitoring employee engagement Regardless of whether remote work continues, there’s no debate regarding the positive impacts of employee engagement. Whether from home or from the office, employees invested in your business improve your bottom line, so it’s in your team’s best interest to understand the best ways to gauge employee engagement. One KPI example used to measure employee engagement is productivity. Workers who are engaged are driven to perform. They see value in their work. In turn, they are 21% more productive than disengaged employees. There are multiple ways to measure this, including revenue/employees, but there are other factors worth considering. Another KPI example for monitoring employee engagement is absenteeism. When your team wants to be in the office, feels connected to your organization’s mission or vision, and feels driven to deliver on tasks and projects, you’ll see a decrease in absenteeism. In fact, in a study, 63% of U.S. employers report a direct connection between attendance and engagement. In this regard, you can track and monitor team absences as well as employee churn. Engaged employees want to be at work. Another metric to consider when looking at employee engagement KPIs is efficiency. While productive workers deliver a lot of work, effective workers complete work correctly and with as little wasted time, effort, and resources as possible. You can gauge this by looking at trouble tickets, customer satisfaction, resource management, and the time it takes to complete standard tasks. A final KPI example for measuring employee engagement is customer satisfaction. Engaged employees want to support the businesses they work for and contribute to their success. Naturally, many of them will make the connection between customer experience and satisfaction and the success of a business. In response, engaged employees are more likely to extend themselves for customers and clients, reaching beyond expectations to ensure that coveted customer satisfaction. In turn, your business has returning customers who cost less to serve and sing your praises providing valuable word of mouth referrals. Using data dashboards to gauge employee engagement While we’ve highlighted a few of the key KPI examples to gauge employee engagement, there’s actually quite a bit you can be monitoring in terms of your employees to fully measure their engagement and satisfaction. In addition to their individual performance and customer response, you can also be monitoring revenue, customer acquisition, and HR metrics like successful hires and internal promotions. In short, there’s a lot to look at. One of the best ways to track all of these different KPIs is through a data dashboard. Particularly when you use BrightGauge’s customizable dashboards, you can tailor your view to include all the metrics you’ll need to fully understand how engaged your employees are and how that’s impacting your customers and business’s bottom line. A visual tool to monitor all of these items gives you and your team a great overview of where you’re having success and helps you measure when engagement may be waning so you can respond quickly and effectively. How to use insights from data dashboards to boost employee engagement Employee engagement not only ensures business success, but it also helps your organization hire and retain the best people for the job. Considering these two very important elements, it’s critical that should you notice employee engagement KPIs waning, steps can be taken to reinvigorate your team, increase their feelings of connection to the business and teams and to their work. Data dashboards and their visual display allow you to draw connections between an employee’s task and business growth or success. Your ability to share this data with teams or individuals helps establish a connection between them and larger goals, making them feel valuable to your organization. Additionally, if you notice issues, scheduling meetings with team members or whole teams, depending on the metrics and encouraging their feedback allows you to address issues before they start to impact other aspects of your business. Finally, the ability to see and share all of this information with your employees fosters trust in your organization. Transparency is valuable because it’s inclusive and that inclusion translates to buy-in. If you’re looking for a data dashboard that’s fully customizable, providing filters that allow you to organize information the way you’d like it to be seen, that provides a bird’s eye view as well as a drilled down inspection of the metrics you care about, that allows you to monitor the engagement, productivity, and retention KPIs you care about, get in touch with our team today. Let’s see how we can help you turn or keep your team into one of your business’s best assets.

In just about every business meeting, webinar, training, or retreat, the topic of goal setting is on the slate. It’s no secret that specific and measurable goals, especially a business’s financial goals, are important. For that reason, it’s even more important to understand key performance indicators (KPIs) and the business KPIs you should be using to track your progress on those goals. Furthermore, analysis of key financial metrics allows you to be responsive to any areas where you may be coming up short and help you understand where to build. Why MSPs should be tracking financial metrics Businesses, particularly in the tech industry, try to focus on a lot of different KPIs, but they often miss the important metrics. While there’s much to consider regarding the scope of your business, from IT and customer service to marketing and sales, there are also a lot of KPIs to look at to make strategic business decisions. However, one of the most important areas to analyze includes the several key financial metrics. These metrics help you assess your current position and provide insight into where improvements can be made and how to leverage your successes to continue your growth. The 6 key financial metrics your MSP should track While this is not, in any sense, an exhaustive list of financial metrics worth considering, as your metrics should always align with your specific goals, these are a few of the most important metrics you might need to examine closely to meet profitability and growth goals. 1. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) Your MRR is the income you can reliably count on each month. This is based on subscriptions, renewals, and contracted services. MRR should be a predictable number and one that informs your growth. Utilizing this data allows you to strategically scale your business based on established income streams. To determine your MRR, simply multiply the number of accounts you have by the average recurring revenue per account. Why not just total the value of all your recurring revenue? Because, finding the average value of each account’s recurring revenue can help with determining the impact of customer attrition on MRR. 2. Managed service agreement/contract profitability This is the profit you make on each service agreement you hold with a client. The temptation exists to simply look at the income, but to really understand this metric, you have to break it down and dig a bit deeper. There are, essentially, two ways to look at this metric. The first method requires that you look at how much you make from a specific client less the cost of attaining said client. This is known as the client contribution (CC). In other words, exactly how much is an individual client contributing to your gross margin? You can also look at your client effective rate (CER), which analyzes the value of a client based on how much you earn from them divided by the amount of time you dedicate to their service agreement. Being aware of how each service agreement is impacting your business allows you to adjust those agreements as needed and, perhaps, determine what clients you target for acquisition. 3. Customer lifetime value (CLV) For the duration of your relationship with this customer, how much value will they bring? Acquisitions being what they are, in terms of cost, client retention is typically quite a bit less costly than winning new clients. That said, part of your growth strategy should absolutely be creating new or more revenue from existing clients through upgraded service offerings. CLV is factored by subtracting the cost of acquisition from customer revenue. 4. Revenue growth rate Perhaps one of the most overlooked financial metrics is revenue growth rate, which looks at the change in sales revenue between two periods, whether that be month to month, quarter to quarter, or year to year. How you decide to measure this growth (or lack of) depends on your short and long-term strategies and goals; however, the key variable is that the time periods you choose to analyze must be equal in length. One important element that must be factored in here is churn rate. The immediate response to flagging growth is, typically, to invest in methods and efforts that will earn back lost business, but strategically, the stronger, more balanced response is to focus on reducing the churn rate rather than increasing the revenue growth rate. Again, you’ll want to look at all the numbers here, but stability is generally preferable to paying for new customer acquisition. 5. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) While there’s some debate over the value of this key financial metric, it’s a fairly standard assessment of a business’s profitability and performance overall. It’s important as it provides insight into profit margins without factoring in any deductions. For that reason, it provides a clear look at a company’s cash flow and potential for stability and growth in the future. There are two ways to calculate EBITDA. The first method is to add operating income to depreciation and amortization, and the second method adds net profit, taxes, interest, depreciation, and amortization. One of the biggest uses here is that it acts as a point of comparison between businesses and, in a sense, levels the playing field to compare profitability and performance. 6. Gross margin Finally, but perhaps most importantly for managed service providers, another essential KPI is gross margin. This key business metric determines just how much revenue a business is generating to cover its overhead. The higher a company’s gross margin is, the more it can invest in strategic growth. For that reason, it’s a good key financial indicator of a company’s health and potential for growth. There are multiple ways suggested to calculate gross margin, but one method is to subtract cost of services from total services revenue and then divide that by total services revenue. Ideally, a healthy percentage for this calculation is 50%, with 60% suggesting industry leadership. When the number falls, it could lead to cash flow issues. The primary goal of tracking key financial metrics is to spot potential growth issues before they happen, which allows you and your team to respond in a strategically appropriate way. Successful businesses are monitoring key business metrics regularly and making analysis part of their goal setting strategies. Again, without understanding where your company is making progress or falling behind, it’s difficult to achieve any benchmarks your team sets. Track the right financial metrics with ease through BrightGauge’s KPI dashboards Let’s be honest. That’s a lot of numbers and a lot of data and a lot of work if you don’t have the right tools. That’s where BrightGauge’s KPI Dashboards come in. All accounts come with a number of "out of the box" preset gauges, and dashboards are fully customizable, allowing you to select and filter for the data you want and need. Not only do you get the data, but you can analyze it side-by-side and then deliver it to your team or customers so everyone has full visibility into performance and critical metrics. When it comes to the key financial metrics that help you determine the direction your business is headed in, you want the right tools by your side, the tools that help you grow.

It’s traditional to set resolutions at the beginning of a new year. These are simply goals we’d like to see ourselves achieve over the next 12 months. Any life or business coach will tell you, setting goals without any mechanism in place to track them is a recipe for failure. It’s why the gyms clear out by March and savings accounts fail to grow. Not only do most folks struggle with setting specific goals, but they fail to establish a method for measuring them. Without metrics, there’s no way to celebrate success and keep you motivated and no way to realign and adapt when falling short. Quick Links How Can KPI Tracking Help Your Business Achieve its Goals? Key Performance Indicators Your Business Should be Tracking to Meet its 2021 Goals Set Your Business Up for Success in 2021 with BrightGauge! How can KPI tracking help your business achieve its goals? For many, goal setting is a struggle in itself. Arguably, one of the reasons it’s a struggle for individuals and businesses alike is because no one has identified the metrics associated with the goals they’ve set. Without understanding the best way to measure success, it’s hard to analyze the landscape; it’s difficult to figure out where to set your sights; it’s a struggle to determine what’s attainable and relevant. You have to understand where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’d like to head in order to set appropriate goals. The only real way to understand all of those elements is to determine what key performance indicators (KPIs) are the best measurements for your goal. These help you collect the right data, monitor it, and analyze it over time. The first real step is to determine the business objective, break it down into specific and time related goals, and then determine which KPIs will best help you measure your success on that path. Key performance indicators your business should be tracking to meet its 2021 goals The KPIs you choose to monitor will, of course, depend on the goals you set. That said, it’s important to identify and segment the key business areas where goal setting can help determine your path, grow your business, build your teams as units and as individuals, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Some of these KPIs will obviously overlap as integral business systems interact with and depend on one another. For example, employee satisfaction will likely have a direct impact on customer satisfaction and retention. When analyzing the metrics over the year, it’s important to keep that in mind as you adapt strategies to meet your goals. Employee KPIs When we discuss employee KPIs, business minds naturally turn to employee productivity and performance. But before getting into those metrics, there’s one that’s more important as it is costly to your business in time, money, and productivity loss. Churn rate Perhaps one of the most important indicators is churn rate. While that rate is typically customer turnover, it can, equally, be applied to employee turnover. As noted, the two may be related so it’s a good idea to keep track of both. When factoring in the amount of time it takes to find a suitable candidate and get them trained and up to speed on business needs, your business has likely lost time, money, and work. If you’ve lost a lot of employees over the past year, it’s a good time to make some changes and track the success of those efforts. Revenue or profit per employee Depending on the structure of your workforce, both of these provide valuable information regarding just how much each employee is bringing in and ensures your company’s profitability. Your workforce should never be the reason you’re not making money. For businesses that rely on contractors or freelance workers, profit is a better indicator as it excludes expenses, something you likely have less of for those employees. Average task completion rate How long does it take your team to perform tasks they do often? Not only does this help you measure their efficiency and perhaps determine areas for improvement, but it is also incredibly helpful for project management by helping them determine how long tasks will take. Employee capacity By examining an employee’s weekly capacity and subtracting the hours they’ve logged, you can determine what an employee’s capacity is to better manage your team. Not only that, but by measuring this KPI, you can also see who on your team can handle more and who cannot. When employees are consistently overwhelmed and overburdened, satisfaction goes down. When satisfaction goes down, productivity is impacted as well. Keep your team running smoothly, efficiently, and happily by monitoring their capacity. Additional KPIs for this group might include sales quotas, production goals, and customer retention. Again, KPIs will largely be dependent on your organization’s business goals. Business growth KPIs For many organizations, growth is the goal, but what that growth looks like depends on where a business is in its own lifecycle, what goals are attainable in the market, and what strategies will be employed to hit those goals for the upcoming year. Still, there are a few very important metrics that may help an organization align those strategies. Cost of customer acquisition (COCA) How much does it cost your business to acquire new customers? How much is being invested in marketing efforts? This business KPI, to be a useful, must be compared with lifetime customer value to help your team determine if you’re over spending. If you realize this cost is too high, one strategic goal may be to focus efforts on your customer service team and support them in hopes that improved customer satisfaction and retention can increase referrals from existing customers. This word of mouth can actually drive the COCA down. Simply put, this is a good metric for any business to analyze to determine marketing strategies. Lifetime customer value (LCV) How much will a single customer spend at your business over their lifetime? Ideally, you can keep this number growing through more product or service offerings, but at a minimum, organizations should be tracking this to ensure that customers come back. If they’re not returning customers, why not? It may be time to look at customer service metrics. Revenue growth rate This is the best way to measure whether your business is growing or not. Are you bringing in more revenue now than across a previous similar time period? You’ll want to make sure you’re comparing month to month or quarter to quarter to ensure accuracy. If you’re seeing this number slip, it’s a good idea to investigate why and analyze it with other metrics. While there are certainly other KPIs here to consider, such as conversion rates, customer attrition, cart abandonment (for online sales), average order value, number of subscriptions or subscribed users, number of active users etc., these are all largely dependent upon the type of business and industry. Ideally, business KPIs that focus on revenue, profits, and balance against costs and expenditures are going to be the best indicators of your organization’s health. Customer success KPIs The health of your organization depends not just on your team, or your leadership, but it also depends on the happiness of your customers. So, keeping track of business metrics associated with your customer satisfaction is just as essential as any other data you collect and analyze. As with many of the other metrics, there’s crossover here. Lifetime customer value is something you’ll want to keep track of in terms of customer success as well, not just for your business growth. Churn rate This metric shows up for key segments of your business. Across the board, you should be keeping track of where you’re losing leadership, team members, and, of course customers. Not only does this business metric include customers who leave, but it also includes customers who decrease their service level. It’s typically an indicator of service quality or value. Customer satisfaction This one is simple to measure: Survey your customers. How satisfied are they overall? Surveying your customers is one of the best ways to track how your team is doing. This number will impact several others down the line. Net promoter score When you survey your customers (not if, but when), how likely are they to recommend your product or service to others? When we look at decreasing COCA, your current customers become a very strong asset. This score ensures you’re keeping track of how they’re marketing for you. Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) While churn reveals how many customers are leaving, MRR is a good indicator of the health of your existing customer base. Growth in this area is a financial indicator of customer satisfaction and success. Revenue expansion A direct result of customer satisfaction and a key component of LCV, this metric reveals how existing customers are purchasing additional products and services from your company. Are your customer service and sales teams working together to upsell these customers on other offerings? Further, if they’re spending more, you can be certain that customer service satisfaction and product or service values are high for your existing customers. Much like other areas, KPIs for your customers will depend largely on your industry or business, but keeping track of these metrics will help you determine how to best address customer service needs and explore areas for business growth and improvement. Leadership KPIs A good number of the KPIs used to measure a leader’s success will depend on the success of their team and some of the KPI examples mentioned above. How effectively your organization is meeting sales, service, support, production, and growth goals is largely an indicator of how successful your leadership team is in seeing that your team delivers on larger strategic goals. However, there are certainly some other metrics worth investigating. Employee engagement and satisfaction How effectively is the leader managing their team, keeping them invested in team and business goals, and ensuring churn rate stays low? How satisfied are the employees with their jobs and understanding where they fit within an organization, and how does that translate to their job performance? You can determine this by measuring engagement and satisfaction rates throughout your staff. Team retention and training dollars While two separate metrics, they can be closely related. If training spending is high, it may suggest issues with quality of hires or retention. As noted above, is a team leader retaining top talent? That said, you’ll want to balance this number with any promotions that may suggest a leader is effectively mentoring employees and ensuring business continuity and growth. Promotions may also impact training dollars spent as training may be better preparing team members for other roles within the organization. Of course, much of your leadership KPIs will be visible in other metrics, but perhaps it's most visible in company culture KPIs. How is your leadership team fostering a culture of growth, success, and engagement? Company culture KPIs Company culture KPIs are closely tied to your employee KPIs. Your organization is only as strong as your team, and your team’s satisfaction is reflected in their productivity, engagement, and happiness. Utilizing some of the top business KPIs above to get an overview of whether your company culture is indicative of growth and team investment, you’ll want to look at both employee KPIs and leadership KPIs. These metrics will provide valuable information. Another metric to measure your culture includes the following: Utilization rate This metric, not noted above, provides information about how your team is using its time. How productive are individual employees? Happy employees are productive employees. They're not feeling overwhelmed or underutilized, either of which can impact overall job satisfaction and performance. Ultimately, the more satisfied employees are, the more likely they are to buy in to company culture and objectives. Set your business up for success in 2021 with BrightGauge! For many organizations, yearly goal setting is reliant upon the data from these important business KPIs. Without this information, it’s hard to set goals that are specific, relevant, and attainable. These are, of course, the tools that make progress measurable, but they’re also how you adapt and ensure alignment across the organization throughout the year. It’s a lot to manage, no doubt. As you probably noted as well, it requires being able to customize and segment metrics across teams or departments as well as individual employees. Further, it requires the ability to compare different KPIs to one another to get a better understanding and complete picture of your business. BrightGauge’s customizable dashboards allow you to keep all of your KPIs in one place and visualize them as you set strategic goals for the future. No more switching applications or monitoring tools – all your data is accessible with robust reporting tools and visualizations of that data tailored to your needs. BrightGauge’s dashboard provides the ideal solution for your tracking so you can focus on growing.

2020 was a banner year for dashboards. As workers shifted from the office to home, having access to vital information, valuable data, and important metrics at their fingertips was more important than ever. Across multiple industries, many platforms, and varied job roles and responsibilities, dashboards were invaluable for keeping tabs on systems and KPIs. While good dashboard design is meant to keep things simple, they should improve efficiency, save time, and still provide all the data a user needs. For some users, particularly in the age of big data and with an intense focus on tracking metrics, that’s a lot of information. For that reason, knowing how to design a dashboard with the end-user in mind is key. The bottom line is a properly executed dashboard has to be both useful and usable. Quick Links 2020 Data Dashboards Roundup Top Data Dashboard Best Practices Effective Data Dashboard Examples Transform Your Use of Data Dashboards in 2021 with BrightGauge! 2020 data dashboards roundup In much the same way as radio stations, tv stations, fashion influencers, restaurants, and even individuals reflect on the year that has passed to make a plan to look forward, our blog is doing a bit of the same. Why do we all participate in this time honored tradition? Because reflection is good. Because analyzing what we’ve done right, where we’ve been successful, allows us to recreate those wins. There’s no reason why, as businesses, as managers, as strategists, we shouldn't do the same. And, if our dashboards would do it on their own, we’d let them. Instead, let’s take a look at what went right this year. Top data dashboard best practices As noted above, the goal of any dashboard is to be both useful and usable. Keeping that in mind there are a few best practices, some familiar, some new, to consider when designing dashboards for business use. 1. Consider the end-user- First and foremost, any dashboard should be designed with the user in mind. What information is relevant to these specific user or user group? What information are they monitoring regularly and what’s the best way to deliver that information? Should it focus on operations (what’s happening now)? Analytics (performance trends)? Or strategy (KPIs)? Always design with the end-user in mind. 2. Keep it high level- On first glance, your user should see the data they need. If they need to drill down and dig deeper to get more specific information, provide an easy way to do so, but avoid cluttering a dashboard with too many cards. 3. Consider data representation elements- Not all data needs a number. Some data, particularly as you move into performance analytics and KPIs, may be better represented by a chart or a graph or a meter. For example, when considering network performance, a meter that shows a slow down in red rather than a number which measures user traffic may be more useful. 4. User design and information architecture principles- When structuring the layout of your dashboard, remember design principles and consider the importance of information. If design principles say lead with the top left corner and move in a “Z” direction, the most important data/metric should go in the top left corner and lead from there. Similarly, the temptation exists to fit as much as possible on a single screen and to use bright colors, and a lot of them, to help differentiate data sets. However, this actually runs contrary to design principles. To make a dashboard most useful, keep it simple. 5. Create context- It’s great to have charts and graphs, but label them or consider allowing a user to drill down to comparison through a simple click. Some data isn’t nearly as useful if there’s no framework around. Consider again a user traffic metric. If a dashboard reports 54 current users, that information is data and might seem useful on the surface. However, if it’s noted that bottlenecks occur at 56 users and traffic is heavy, then the context of 54/56 becomes important. 6. Consider multiple layouts- Your main dashboard should have a different appearance than dashboards that drill down or represent different users or systems. You want your user to be able to, at a quick glance, determine which “view” they’re looking at. It doesn’t have to be complex, but simple layout changes will indicate where in the dashboard a user finds themself. Applying filters to your dashboard which you can toggle on and off can help you achieve the view you're going for. 7. Optimize for accessibility- If your workers are remote or there may be need to view dashboards on a mobile device, make sure you’ve designed with that layout in mind. This may have been a tough lesson learned in 2020, but moving forward in 2021 and beyond, remote workers will need those dashboards and desktops or laptops may not be their device of choice. 8. Measure performance- We likely spend a lot of time talking about metrics, KPIs, and data regarding our businesses, we should be doing the same when it comes to a dashboard. Is it functional? Is it working? How are the end-users actually using it? As with any tool we use, we should regularly be evaluating if it’s the right tool for the job. Dashboards are no different. Effective data dashboard examples Over the course of 2020, we highlighted a few standout dashboards to share with you. Clever Ducks, an MSP out of San Luis Obispo, California focuses on clients who want to strategically use IT to cut their costs. They built a client success overview dashboard that allows them to effectively manage their customer relationships. Blending visual and informational architecture design strategies, they achieved a clean and clear dashboard that not only simplified their CRM duties, but also improved the efficiency of client meetings. Check out their dashboard view here. If like many companies, you’re managing a remote workforce, then you likely understand the struggle of keeping track of where team members are on important objectives. At the start of the pandemic, in April, we shared our Managing to Green and Managing to Zero dashboards. As discussions of remote work continue, these are still incredibly valuable. Further, in BrightGauge, you can filter those dashboards for individual team members and share with them to ensure alignment on key objectives. Another remote work management dashboard, this time from Network Doctor based in the Northern U.S., demonstrates how a dashboard can manage a team members workload and time utilization as well as how that fits into a larger strategic picture. Not only are they managing team members and utilization, but it’s helping them handle trouble tickets in a way that fits into current team availabilities and needs. Check out their dashboard view here. While BrightGauge dashboards are great for team management, they’re also versatile enough to give a high level overview of essential KPIs and financial insights for a CEO. As demonstrated by Premier One, a dashboard like this keeps all important data in one place providing enough data for an assessment of what’s impacting a businesses revenue and what strategies will be best moving forward. Check out their dashboard view here. The final dashboard we shared with you in 2020, the Agreements Dashboard, is a great way to assess whether your Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is hitting the mark. It’s a great tool for sharing a lot of key data points with executive team members regarding that MRRs as well as customer value. If your executive team and even CRO need a quick look at the customer landscape, this is a great option. Check out that dashboard view here. Transform your use of data dashboards in 2021 with BrightGauge! 2020 was full of challenges and, for some, being able to adapt your business to meet them head on may have been one of them. For many, it just meant finding the right tools, like BrightGauge dashboards, which allowed managers to keep remote teams working together and achieving team objectives. As you move into 2021, and as we adjust to this new work landscape that no doubt will continue to include remote work, stay on top of your business and team member needs with digital dashboards. To talk to someone about how we can help you inform, analyze, and strategize with BrightGauge’s customizable dashboards, get in touch today.

Employee accountability can be a crucial part of ensuring that everyone in an organization is putting forth their best effort—driving productivity and results. While many organizations use goal setting and management to drive accountability for product development, customer service, and other “front line” staff, it’s also important to track human resources department goals and hold HR teams and leaders accountable for their responsibilities. While human resources teams are usually in charge of enforcing accountability—tracking employee performance to monitor whether employees are meeting goals or falling behind—they also need to be held accountable to help ensure that HR department goals are met. Goal management can be an integral tool for ensuring HR teams are able to demonstrate high accountability. How does goal management improve employee accountability? What are some example goals of HR managers that should be met? What about HR team goals? How goal management improves employee accountability Goal setting and management can help any team create (or improve) employee accountability in several ways: Creating a shared purpose among HR teams. Having common goals for a team helps to foster a culture of responsibility and accountability. Nobody wants to be the one person who let the department down. With shared HR goals, some HR department staff may be more motivated to help out those who are struggling with specific tasks. Enforcing individual responsibility for specific metrics. Individual employee goals help people take ownership of their work since they’re being held to a set standard. This can be just as important for HR teams as it is for “front line” employees. Giving HR professionals measurable progress targets. Sometimes, it can be hard for employees in any department to feel motivated when their goals are too big, far off, or reliant on others. Effective goal management helps create smaller, specific, and achievable goals to motivate employees that they can be held responsible for. This helps to foster accountability in all departments—including HR. 7 leadership goals of HR managers to track What types of goals should be tracked for HR leaders? What overarching human resources department goals will help increase accountability for HR leads while helping move the needle for an organization’s overall business goals? This can be tricky, since many HR goals may not be directly controlled by HR managers/execs. However, tracking these strategic HR goals can be important for identifying issues within the organization and creating strategies to improve them. Here are a few HR manager goals to consider: Cost per hire. How much does the business spend on employee acquisition per hire? HR leadership should be providing strategies for minimizing employee acquisition costs while improving retention. Voluntary employee attrition. How many employees are willingly leaving the company per month, quarter, or year? High rates of employee attrition can be indicative of a systemic problem in the organization, issues with specific managers or job roles, or flaws in the employee retention strategy. HR managers should watch for high voluntary employee attrition and devise strategies to prevent it. Time to productivity. How long after a new employee is hired does it take for them to start being productive? While there will always be some variance in how long it takes for employees to start being productive based on their job role, if the time to productivity metric for employees falls well behind the industry average, it might be time to reconsider the organization’s onboarding and employee training processes. Time to hire. How long does it take to hire an employee? While hiring timelines will vary depending on how strictly employees need to be vetted for a given role, if the time-to-hire is too long, it can hurt productivity in departments that desperately need personnel. Tracking time to hire helps HR managers stay on top of potential issues that may cause delays in the hiring process so they can suggest solutions and keep hiring timelines short. Employee satisfaction. How happy are employees with their work? Do their job responsibilities and rewards align with the expectations set during the hiring process? Tracking employee satisfaction helps HR leaders determine if there are issues that may be affecting employee retention. By creating fixes for these issues, HR managers can help increase employee retention so the organization can maintain higher productivity and minimize recruitment expenses. HR expense to revenue ratio. How much money is being spent on HR needs in comparison to the company’s total revenue. While HR is important, spend on human resources shouldn’t exceed what the organization can afford. An organization’s overall size and budget will be the primary criteria to determine what their HR spend should be. HR staff to employee/worker ratio. The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) highlights this statistic as a “way to compare HR staffing levels across and within organizations.” While the ideal HR team to worker ratio may vary from one organization to the next, it should be high enough to allow employees to avoid serious bottlenecks in any given HR process, but not so high that HR team members are sitting idle. 5 goals to track for HR professionals If HR managers are mostly concerned with strategic-level goals and ensuring they can be met, what kinds of employee goals should HR team members keep track of an be accountable for? Some examples of goals that can help drive HR employee accountability include: HR service tickets closed. How many employee service tickets do members of the HR team handle each day? How frequently are employees able to get resolution for the issues they bring to HR? Tracking HR service tickets closed helps businesses keep track of how effective their HR teams are at providing important employee support services (which can help drive employee satisfaction and prevent voluntary turnover). Time to resolution for service tickets. How quickly can an HR team member resolve specific types of employee problems? Are employees going in circles getting redirected between different HR team members? If reporting issues to HR is too much of a hassle, employees may opt to avoid making reports—they’ll just quit instead. So, tracking how long HR staff members spend on resolving calls or complaints from employees can be vital. # of new hire interviews conducted. In organizations where HR team members are part of the interview process, tracking how many interviews HR personnel are part of can be an indication of how dedicated they are to supporting the hiring process. However, this metric may be less valuable for organizations that aren’t consistently brining on new employees on a regular basis. # of recruitment calls. How frequently are HR personnel reaching out to potential employees to bring in fresh talent? This is a recruitment activity metric that can help establish how much HR team members are working towards hitting recruiting goals. New hire quality. When new employees are brought on board by the HR team and have been able to become productive, how do their managers and fellow team members rate their performance? New hire quality can be an indicator of how well HR team members are vetting job applicants and preparing them for integration into the company’s culture and work processes. Need help tracking HR performance metrics and other internal statistics? Reach out to BrightGauge today to discover how you can create custom data dashboards that make tracking any department’s (or employee’s) performance fast and easy!

Employee engagement continues to be a key driving force for meeting business goals in all industries. However, even during the record-high employee engagement rates reported by Gallup in April of 2020, less than half (38%) of all employees were engaged with their work. Also, shortly after that record high, Gallup reported a record drop in engagement of 7%. This drop brought the ratio of engaged employees to slightly less than one in three (31%). There are many factors that go into employee engagement and inspiration—from manager attitudes and behaviors to career growth opportunities, job stability, work expectations, and more. Keeping employees inspired to do their best work can be a major challenge. However, it can be well worth it! As noted in research cited by Forbes, “engaged teams have lower turnover, 21% greater profitability, 17% higher productivity and 10% higher customer ratings than disengaged employees.” For sales teams, goal management can be a key driver for employee engagement. So, in today’s post, let’s discuss how you can use goal setting to inspire sales teams to go the extra mile and increase results. How to set sales goals that drive more revenue for your business When setting employee goals for sales team members to meet, it can be helpful to follow a few basic best practices: 1: Keep goal timeframes short (or break larger ones into more digestible chunks) While annual goals are important for the company as a whole to meet, pushing annual sales team goals into a sales rep’s face at the start of the year can be intimidating. For example, in another blog, when we told one of our sales reps that “his quota had almost doubled to $80,000 after last year doing $45,000 he had a minor panic attack.” This is a natural enough of a reaction to being told to do nearly twice as much as before, and the big goal was a little intimidating. However, we broke that big annual goal into much smaller and more manageable daily and weekly goals like “10 opportunities opened per week” or “40 conversations per week” that provided a short-term goal to focus on. This way, instead of worrying about a massive end-of-year goal that might feel impossible to meet, all he had to worry about were smaller weekly process and outcome goals that all contributed to keeping him on track for that big end-of-year outcome goal. 2: Benchmark sales goals against past performance An important part of the SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely) goal setting framework is that a goal must be achievable for it to motivate people to work for them. But, how can you determine what is or isn’t achievable? One way to ensure that your sales team goals are achievable is to take a look at past performance and use that data as a benchmark for future performance. This can help you set goals that are aggressive, but realistic. 3: Create accurate estimates of how long sales tasks should take before setting task-based goals How long does it take for a sales team member to complete a successful prospect call? How long is the average failed call? When setting process goals for sales people that ask them to complete “X” actions in a day, the time it takes to complete the specified task can have a huge impact on whether that goal is or isn’t achievable. For example, if you set a goal of “make 20 prospect calls a day,” and each call takes half an hour on average, there is no way that a sales rep will be able to meet their goal, as that’s ten hours of calls to make in an eight-hour shift. Additionally, it’s important to leave room for some downtime between calls so the sales rep can recover mentally, take care of other tasks, and prepare for the next call. So, a goal of 12-14 calls per day might be more realistic when the average time per call is 30 minutes. This works to keep sales reps motivated so they sell more rather than give up (or try to cut corners to save some time to meet an impossible activity goal). 4: Use a goal tracking solution that provides a public data dashboard When setting goals for sales teams, it’s important to make sure that the reps on those teams know what their goals are at all times—as well as how they and their colleagues are tracking towards those goals. Public data dashboards can be an invaluable tool for accomplishing this. With a public dashboard displaying each sales rep’s key performance indicators (KPIs), you can ensure everyone knows how well they’re progressing towards their goals—and even encourage some healthy competition as salespeople try to one-up each other on the “leaderboard.” The 3 sales goals you should be tracking Which sales goals should you be tracking to encourage business growth? Here’s a brief look at the top three sales KPIs your team should be tracking: 1. Closed monthly recurring revenue (MRR) for the current month and year to date For managed service providers (MSPs) that thrive on providing consistent services from month-to-month, tracking MRR is a no-brainer. Your closed MRR will tell you how well your team is selling (and how well client services is doing at retaining customers) so you can identify trends over time. Being able to track MRR on a monthly and year-to-date basis helps you identify ebbs and flows in your sales over the course of a year—making seasonal trends clearer so you can set better goals and targets based on your company’s “busy” and “slow” periods. It can also help you determine if your company is or isn’t growing. 2. Current sales pipeline How many opportunities are in your company’s sales pipeline at any given time? Your sales team should never be without prospects to call or leads to follow up with. Your current sales pipeline is a measure of how many opportunities/leads are in your sales process at any given time—which can help you estimate the number of new customers your business can expect to gain. A closely-related statistic that may be worth tracking is sales attrition rate—the number of opportunities/leads that leave your sales process without successfully closing a deal for one reason or another. If there is a high attrition rate at a specific step of the sales process, then that could indicate an issue that needs fixing. 3. Sales activity goals A successful sales process typically involves engaging in certain activities a set number of times—such as making calls, setting up demos, and using specific sales-generating strategies. These sales process goals help to ensure that sales team members are engaging in the key activities needed to drive success and results. However, process goals alone may not be enough. Sales reps should also be held accountable to meet outcome goals—after all, anyone can make 20 calls a day if they aren’t putting in the time and effort to make a sale. With outcome-focused sales activity goals, like “sign X new customers” or “generate $6,000 in net new sales each month,” sales reps can be motivated to do more than just go through the motions. Being held accountable for results and process goals gives them a roadmap of what they need to achieve and how they can achieve it. Set and monitor the right sales goals through BrightGauge’s goal management dashboards Whether you’re tracking sales goals for a whole team or for individual sales reps, BrightGauge is here to help! We make tracking metrics like closed MRR, current sales pipeline, and sales activities quick and easy. BrightGauge’s public data dashboards let your sales reps see their numbers at a glance, letting them know which KPIs they need to focus on to meet their personal sales goals. These dashboards are also a handy tool for one-on-one meetings with employees that give managers a convenient look at an employee’s actual performance to date. Also, if the goals you need to track change because of a new initiative, BrightGauge makes it easy to modify the information displayed in the dashboard. With numerous integrations for different data sources, BrightGauge is easy to incorporate into your business. Are you ready to transform your sales team performance tracking? Reach out to the BrightGauge team today!