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Customer Stories: How BrightGauge has Helped First Stop IT Stand Out in Their Market

First Stop IT got its start in the UK when the founders felt that they could take IT Support into their own hands and improve upon the process. With 18 years of experience, First Stop IT has been ...
First Stop IT got its start in the UK when the founders felt that they could take IT Support into their own hands and improve upon the process. With 18 years of experience, First Stop IT has been helping small to medium sized businesses with their technology issues. In 2017, First Stop IT became a BrightGauge customer in hopes that it would help them improve the way they run their business. We chatted with Gemma Staines, Owner & Managing Director, to learn more. First Stop IT’s mission First Stop IT wants to help customers maximize their investment in employees and find business success all through the use of technology. To do this, they rely on great customer service, learning each customer’s specific business needs and going above and beyond to exceed their expectations. An appreciation of the value of excellent service extends beyond their customers and into their own First Stop IT team. “Since we started in 2000, we’ve held onto our core values of teamwork and taking ownership of our client’s problems,” says Gemma. The kind of reputation they’ve built for themselves is what drives First Stop IT clients to refer their provider to others, which is increasingly important as the company continues to grow. When they discovered BrightGauge, it seemed like a tool that would strengthen the First Stop IT team, keeping their reputation intact. Becoming a BrightGauge customer According to Gemma, the BrightGauge interface has the single most intuitive GUI on the market. “The power of BrightGauge is in its simplicity,” says Gemma. Having this tool at their fingertips has made a significant impact on First Stop IT, both internally and externally. As a team, BrightGauge has helped First Stop IT reach a higher level of visibility, from staff KPIs to department targets. “Giving all employees a running commentary on how they’re doing each day has proved to be really motivational. Plus, it’s created some healthy competition within our office,” says Gemma. Externally, BrightGauge has given First Stop IT a valuable edge over their competitors. When pitching to larger clients, having BrightGauge in their back pockets helps them stand out. “Generally, we find the bigger the client, the more they expect a certain level of account management and reporting. With BrightGauge, we’re able to report on just about anything our client’s heart’s desire. This has proven invaluable for customer retention and customer negotiation,” says Gemma. Go-to BrightGauge features At First Stop IT, BrightGauge dashboards are at the heart of their operation. They have 3 large screens in their office that display dashboards day in and day out, with data coming from ConnectWise Manage and ConnectWise Automate. Specifically, their “How are we doing today?” dashboard monitors their helpdesk tickets and alerts. It shows tickets that haven’t met their SLA yet, live figures on how everyone is doing at logging their time and closing tickets, and kill rate % for the whole helpdesk team. BrightGauge dashboards have just given their team members a level of visibility they hadn’t previously experienced, in turn fostering a stronger culture of accountability and visibility. The added power of reports has given First Stop IT a welcome boost. “We’ve been able to report on metrics that we couldn’t before. Between the two datasources we integrate with, BrightGauge allows us to report on 90% of the activity in our business,” says Gemma. Surprising benefits of using BrightGauge BrightGauge has shown First Stop IT the behavior of not only all the endpoints they’re entrusted with, but also with the inner workings of their own company. Gemma says it best: “By opening up this black box of information, it has enabled us to improve moral, team building, efficiency, customer service, and response times. Additionally, the data we can collate and present to clients has given them a much better understanding of their own systems and staff training needs. BrightGauge has empowered us to deliver an outstanding level of service to the SMB market.” It’s thoughts like these that push us to deliver you a tool that meets your needs on a daily basis. Thank you Gemma and First Stop IT for being an awesome BrightGauge customer!
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What to Expect as a New BrightGauge Customer

So, you recently became a BrightGauge user? Awesome! Welcome aboard. You might be wondering what to expect as a new customer, so we’ll give you a quick overview. If you’ve got questions at any time, you should know that you can reach out to our support team for help. We’ve got you covered. Your first 90 days BrightGauge was designed to simplify your daily tasks and give you a strong grasp on your data. To help get you started, we’ve developed a guided training that takes you through your first 90 days as a customer. When you first signed up, you should have received an email with the credentials to access your account. Hopefully you signed in and started taking a look around. Once in your account, you’ll notice a column on the right with a checklist and helpful links. This is your go-to area for next steps and more. Here, you’ll find a 90-day checklist that you can use as your guideline for success. These support documents will show you how to connect your datasources, build gauges, put your dashboards on display, schedule reports to go out automatically, and improve with goals. Our Knowledge Base is a resource to help you get the most out of BrightGauge. A ‘Go-Live Checklist’ is also available off the app, within our support page. Think of our Success Team as an extension of yours We understand you may need some help navigating BrightGauge, and that’s where our Success Team comes in. During your first 90 days with us, hopefully you’ve learned the basics and started bringing in others to use BrightGauge, both viewers and admins, with you. Once you’ve progressed, we recommend you get on a one-on-one call with a member of our success team for further tips and tricks. This training call is free to each team using BrightGauge, and gives you the opportunity to dig deeper into your data and ask any questions you may have. This is an opportunity to learn much more about the ins and outs of BrightGauge. Current users have told us it’s been one of their favorite and most valuable uses of time. Manage your expectations Some of our customers have asked us how app-knowledgeable they should expect to be within their first 3 months as a user. While everyone’s motivation, pace, and learning curve may vary, we do want you to quickly see the value in BrightGauge and to benefit from the data insights you will gain, so here’s a timeline you can try to stick to: Within one week: Log into BrightGauge Connect your datasource(s) Watch our introductory webinar Assign Admin, Viewer, and Analyst roles Take advantage of the pre-built gauges, dashboards, and reports that are automatically included with your datasource(s) Within one month: Subscribe to our blog for best practices, customer stories, new feature alerts, and more Explore our Knowledge Base and Resources to help you troubleshoot any issues Build out your own custom gauges Send internal reports to your team members Open a support ticket Within 3 months: Complete your one-on-one call Sign up for a Data-Driven Workshop to get even more advanced training Set up client reports to go out automatically Assign goals to your team members and have them check in on a weekly basis Give us feedback Our priority is to help you find success. Whether we do it through the support we provide or by improving BrightGauge, we really want to help you make better business decisions through the power of data. To do that, we rely on your feedback. Tell us what you like, what you don’t like, what you think could be better, what your dream feature would be, etc. We love hearing it all. We hope you’ll get a lot out of BrightGauge, so make the most of these first 90 days to really soak it all in and come to us with any help you need. Again, if you need anything, we’re just a message away. Thanks for being our customer!!

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How Our Answer Bot Can Resolve Your Support Requests

Usually, we consider it a sin to use “automated” and “support” in the same sentence. But bear with us here. The truth is, we do offer an automated support service in the form of an Answer Bot, and you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised by it! Read on to see how our Answer Bot can help resolve your questions quickly and accurately. How Answer Bot works in replying to support tickets If you’re working in your BrightGauge and you get stuck on something - whether it’s figuring out how to build a data mashup gauge, how to create impactful ConnectWise reports, or how to properly set up client mappings - you can always feel free to submit a support ticket. Shortly after you submit, you’ll get a reply from us that acknowledges receipt of your request and lets you know our hours and that we’ll get back to you soon. You may or may not realize, but that reply also includes links to articles that may answer your question. This is thanks to our Answer Bot. Our little robot friend has been trained to seek out 3 relevant articles per every support request that comes in. Our techs are constantly monitoring the Bot’s choices and teaching it to become smarter over time. If one of the Bot’s articles answers your question, awesome! You can click to close your request. If the Bot didn’t get it quite right, no worries. One of our techs will reach out to you real soon to get to the bottom of your issue. Why use an Answer Bot? We do this because we want you to get your answers as quickly as possible, so you spend less time waiting around and more time getting the data you need. It’s all about making things as easy as possible. Other support resources Did you know that our site has lots of other resources that might be able to help you figure out your issue without needing to submit a ticket? Our Knowledge Base is chock full of articles meant to help you. Anything from Dashboards 101 to how to calculate Client Efficiency Index for ConnectWise Manage can be found there. We’ve got training videos if you consider yourself more of a visual learner. You can find a free podcast, webinars, whitepapers, and case studies that reinforce your use of data. Our blog is full of useful articles, tips, and tricks that can help you get the most out of your BrightGauge. All that being said, we really do love getting your support requests. It helps make us sharper and helps us get to know you better, too. Plus, if we’re receiving a lot of the same request, that lets us know that it might be time to update or add a feature. So, don’t be afraid to reach out to us if that’s what works best for you! Anytime you’ve got an issue, just head to our Support page to get what you need (cue Friends theme song now).
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Customer Stories: How LA Creative Technologies Uses BrightGauge to Remove Helpdesk Friction

When Josh Weiss founded LA Creative Technologies in 2008, he was honestly just hoping to support himself for a couple of months so he could get on the road and travel. What started as neighborhood IT support - Josh literally printed up some flyers using Clip Art - quickly flipped into a successful MSP business. 10 years into his business journey, Josh has no plans to slow down. The LA Creative Technologies mission In speaking to our customers, we often find their values and mission perfectly align with our own. We love that! And with LA Creative Technologies, it’s no different. As CIO, Josh first and foremost wants to help customers add more value to their time by using technology to their advantage. He sees technology as a strategic goal that helps empower business leaders to grow their business. Because they are based in LA, LACT focuses on creative industries and innovators. Josh says, “Every MSP is out there selling into the same couple verticals and we are working with people who aren’t into those verticals. They really appreciate that we understand their business.” Differentiation has always been key to LACT. They know who they want to work with, so while they may grow slower, it’s always in the right direction. In looking for a customer who is a perfect fit, Josh suggests a couple of things: “A lot of it comes down to having an abnormal marketing message, so by the time you get through the pitch, you know if the person is a good fit. For example, have brightly colored marketing materials. Just stand out. Listen to what people say. If they are more concerned about price instead of solution, those are the kind of people you may want to stay away from.” Joining BrightGauge Something unique about LACT is they outsource a lot - including their helpdesk - to Continuum and other partners. Because of this, their dispatch process has to be on point. Josh believes in working with an IT-focused executive coach when looking to scale a business and his coach at Sea Level Operations strongly recommended they work with BrightGauge to help manage their dispatch process. It was an obvious pick for LACT. LACT has turned dispatch into a live tool by using a custom BrightGauge dashboard to monitor their helpdesk. It has changed the way they interact with an outsourced helpdesk. By using BrightGauge, LACT knows exactly what’s going on with tickets: how they’re being categorized, if a ticket hasn’t been seen yet, if a ticket is more than a day old, what any given day’s kill rate percentage is, and more. According to Josh, BrightGauge has completely removed the friction of not being physically near their helpdesk. There are no longer any tickets where they are unaware of what’s going on. And instead of training their helpdesk through the use of static documents, working with a live system helps them implement their process more quickly and provide a higher level of service. “I set up BrightGauge before a 3 week vacation and it completely took the stress off of me as an owner of a 2-employee company. It was a major, major thing to know these tickets were being pushed out and escalated faster, and just being handled better.” - Josh Weiss, Founder & CIO, LA Creative Technologies Go-to BrightGauge features We’re truly impressed with how much LACT gets out of BrightGauge: they integrate with four datasources and are looking to add even more. It makes sense that they are constantly using Dashboards over any other tool. Recently, Josh and his Sea Level coach are having a good time getting Goals going as well. He finds having a digital dashboard to play with is a huge help when it comes to reading Traction, the book many people turn to when implementing their own goals system. In fact, he can’t imagine getting much out of Traction without having BrightGauge to help him along. In terms of goal-setting, Josh’s advice is simple: try to pick only 3 things to focus on at a time and delete what’s not needed. Surprising benefits of using BrightGauge Josh was hoping BrightGauge would help LACT out, but he wasn’t expecting it to completely solve his dispatch problem. More than that, he’s been incredibly happy with the level of customer service he’s experienced. Beyond our helpdesk, Josh gave us props for our blog, our marketing, and our team as a whole. Thank you, Josh and LA Creative Technologies! We’re proud to call you our customer.
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Get Powerful Insights Into Your Service Team With This 2-Minute Survey

As an MSP, monitoring how well your Service Team is performing is a necessary part of your day-to-day operations. How quickly and efficiently are they responding to tickets? What are their billable hours this week? How is your service team tracking against SLAs? It’s important to stay on top of your service team because their competency is directly correlated with the trust your clients have in you, which impacts how long they’ll stick around and continue paying for your services. Even though you’ve got a handle on your service team, it’s always helpful to get additional insights. Which is why we created an MSP Service Readiness Grader. This 2-minute survey will give your service team a score, show where you’re doing really well, and let you know if there are any areas that need your attention. Plus, you’ll get several recommendations for KPIs that you should always be tracking. Get your score now by taking our free MSP Service Readiness Grader.

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Do You Know Your Sales Team’s Efficiency Score? Get It Now

Think of your Sales Team as the face of your company. They are the ones responsible for getting customers to buy into the services your MSP provides and to stick around for the long term. They are an undeniably integral part of the success of your business. But how do you know if they’re working efficiently enough? You likely have your own benchmarks for success and performance, but how do they rank against the industry standard? We’ve developed an assessment tool to help you evaluate the functionality of your sales team. A quick, 2-minute survey will reveal where your sales team is rocking and where there might be room for improvement, and will recommend KPIs that you should always be tracking. Rate your sales team now with our free MSP Sales Readiness Grader.
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How to Send Client Reports: A Quick Guide

New BrightGauge users (or anyone looking for a quick refresher): this one's for you! Recently, we've had customers asking us why they should create client reports and how they can set them up. Let's take a quick look at the 4 W's of Client Reporting and How to pull them together. Who should I send executive reports to? - Based on our research and experience, we see our customers sending reports to their main point of contact who manages the relationship, but we also see many of them sending the report to that person’s manager (if they have one). When we probed about why reports are sent doubly, our users all said it's because this way if the contact person changes, a history of communication with their manager still exists. If asking yourself, "Who should I send this report to?", we think it's better to be safe than sorry. What should I include in client reports? - Choosing the right metrics for your client reports will depend on your integration (like Connectwise, Webroot, IT Glue, Autotask, Quickbooks, etc) and what is laid out in your SLA. A large portion of our users integrate with ConnectWise and use BrightGauge to create impactful ConnectWise reports based on their metrics. When creating client reports, use one of our pre-built templates or easily start from scratch; either way, reports are customizable. When should I send client reports? - We see 30,000+ reports that get sent out each month, and the standard default is for our customers to send reports on a monthly basis to their clients. This seems to be a natural rhythm when it comes to reporting, however, we also see a large number of our partners sending out weekly or even daily reports that are hyper-focused on whatever key metrics they care about. Perhaps they are interested in patch status for their workstations or a specific type of support request. The flexibility of our client reporting allows you to customize when to send them the information they want. Why should I send client reports? - You want to start building trust with clients as soon as possible because it’s the foundation of a long-term business relationship. Client reporting holds you accountable and keeps you transparent, both reputable qualities in client's eyes. So, “How” do you start earning their trust? How do I create a client report? - That’s the easy part! Below, we quickly outline the steps to get started with Client Reports. Step 1: Create a new report Step 2: Select your clients Step 3: Choose to start from scratch or use a template Step 4: Populate your report with gauges, a title, and your logo (or your client's) Step 5: Set the schedule and send it off! Yes, it is really that simple. To learn how Client Reporting can make a huge impact on your business, download our free webinar where we share why Client Reporting is a key pillar in the area of Customer Success.
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Customer Stories: Cards Technology Extends BrightGauge to their Customers

In business since 2000, Cards Technology started out as a computer repair shop and system builder. As the years went on and the IT industry continued to evolve, they made the switch to full IT Services provider. Today, they focus on infrastructures and database management. Joining BrightGauge Cards Technology first came across BrightGauge when they were looking for a way to supplement the work they started in Connectsmart. Within 30 minutes of getting connected, Sam Card, the CEO of Cards Technology, was able to create his first custom dashboard in BrightGauge. “When we first tried BrightGauge, our goal was to see our metrics in one place and to get our KPIs in front of our team. We were able to get started up with BrightGauge pretty quickly, and with ease. I have other employees who know nothing about database queries and they got in there with no trouble.“ After learning of BrightGauge’s connection to Kaseya and Quickbooks integrations, lots of lightbulbs went off for Sam and his team. They went deeper in their Advanced account, working with the data mashup between gauge layers to make their metrics and data do the work for them. They also use Smileback quite a bit. Each week, they run an analysis of service tickets and how much time they're spending on each. For example - 4 hrs on printer issues and 10hrs on workstations. They then ask themselves how to get those numbers down, and then measure the actions taken vs results of such. Cards Tech has 6 TVs spread across the office to track their KPIs and monitor tech performance. Each tech gets an extra boost in compensation based on their performance. Customizing BrightGauge for the Customer Since launching back in 2012, BrightGauge has mainly served IT and MSP companies. In recent years, some of our customers have started to ask, “how can we extend BrightGauge to our own customers?” Sam came to us to see how we could create a BrightGauge account for one of his clients who was using a datasource that had yet to be added to our list: Aptora. A software used by HVAC companies for tracking techs and managing their business, Aptora has a couple of products. BrightGauge integrates with Aptora’s Total Office Manager. Both Sam and his customer instantly saw the benefits of taking two otherwise disconnected systems, and creating dashboards and metrics to bridge the data points across their tech stacks. “With BrightGauge, we get better reporting and metrics out of PSA software that otherwise you can't easily filter for in other programs. It's great that you have filled that need.” Their Go-to Tracked Metrics Number of endpoints in Kaseya and divided by revenue logged in Quickbooks Measure agreement efficiency -- measure breakdown of agreement by client
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Customer Stories: NetworkDR Uses BrightGauge to be Fully Transparent

NetworkDR is a Managed Service Provider (MSP) based out of New Jersey and a BrightGauge user since 2013. We spoke with Cenon Hipolito, Service Desk Manager, to find out what NetworkDr does, why they do it, and how BrightGauge has helped along the way. Starting an MSP business Similar to BrightGauge, NetworkDR began as a side business in 2003 when one of the partners felt he could help his community figure out how to set up their at-home wifi. From there, the business grew thanks to customers asking for help with other IT-related issues. Before long, a full-fledged company had been established. Cenon tells us that he believes NetworkDR’s success is partially owed to the fact that their mission has remained the same since day one: to create raving clients. To do that, it starts from within. “We zeroed in on ourselves first and focused on developing a really great work culture so that our superstars and superstars in the making would want to stick around,” explains Cenon. “Familiarity is key to great customer service, so those employees who have been around for a long time have a better sense of how our customers operate. I think that’s helped our clients spread the word about us.” Great customers deserve great customer support NetworkDR prides itself on word-of-mouth being their strongest marketing tool, never taking for granted how important a client relationship is. Ideally, they want their clients to think of NetworkDR as a trusted partner, not just a third-party service provider. “We try to look for customers that don’t look at us as just another vendor,” says Cenon. “Someone who feels confident enough to tell us what they need when faced with a problem.” NetworkDR’s commitment to customer service is what keeps customers coming back for more. Their technicians spend time listening to each customer’s unique issue and patiently work to find a solution, even using FaceTime when necessary to get a first-hand look at what the customer is dealing with. For NetworkDR, customer service goes beyond just solving problems. It also means nurturing client relationships and making sure team members go above and beyond to adhere to service level agreements (SLAs). This is where BrightGauge comes in. How BrightGauge fosters NetworkDR’s relationships When a NetworkDR partner attended IT Nation one year, they were introduced to BrightGauge at a time when they were seeking a client reporting solution. “We were looking for something that could automate reports in a nice format,” says Cenon. “BrightGauge said, ‘We can easily do that and we integrate with ConnectWise,’ so it was just a no-brainer for us.” The impact has been significant. Since signing up, NetworkDR has sent their clients monthly reports outlining their SLAs, tickets, alerts, and a number of other metrics. “We’re trying to make ourselves as transparent as possible; we don’t have anything to hide,” says Cenon. “With BrightGauge, our clients are getting these automated reports that don’t come from an excel spreadsheet or a specific individual, so they know we’re not manipulating any numbers.” Plus, Cenon loves that you don’t need to have specific SQL knowledge in order to easily create powerful BrightGauge reports. Cenon and NetworkDR have also discovered the power of BrightGauge dashboards. With 6 TVs around the office displaying rotating dashboards, it’s easy for them to immediately jump on any issues that pops up. Clients who visit the office are amazed at what NetworkDR can monitor through BrightGauge. Unique ways to use BrightGauge Cenon makes it a point to have full visibility of all the office’s TVs displaying dashboards so that if an issue arises, he can see it right away and get the appropriate parties involved as soon as possible. Cenon found a way to take that visibility even one step further. “Two of our TVs are actually 50-inch touchscreens,” says Cenon. “If we have a gauge with an alert, we can touch that gauge to drilldown further and find out what the alert is all about and then take necessary action.” This type of visibility has resulted in improved response times and SLAs, a true win-win for all parties involved. To keep his team motivated, Cenon uses leaderboards to monitor how many tickets an individual has worked on, how many alerts were resolved, billable time versus non billable time, and more. As Cenon puts it, nobody likes to be on the bottom, so the leaderboard situation has publicized the need to stay productive. Finally, Cenon has started implementing BrightGauge goals with his team in an effort to place accountability back into individual team members' hands. “We’re all busy,” says Cenon. “When my team members have the opportunity to check in on themselves and see how far they’ve gotten in a goal, it takes a lot of pressure off of me and lets everyone work at their own pace. Having the simplicity to see how much work has been done or needs to be done on a goal is key.” Cenon talks more about great customer support and team-building practices in this month’s podcast. Check it out to learn more about how they're growing their business through team input and mentorship.
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Customer Stories: Andromeda & their unique team dashboards

Illinois-based Andromeda Technology Solutions may have been around since 1994, but they're always looking out for ways to better serve their customers. The key to their continued growth stems from their push for transparency, both internally and with their customers. Growing a business For this interview, I sat down with Jeffrey Borello, the owner & CEO of Andromeda Technology Solutions, an IT-turned- communications and security group. Now in business for over 20 years, Andromeda grew from a small web development firm into a business with growing monthly recurring revenue through the hardwork of Jeffrey and his two partners. Before Andromeda came to be, they all worked at the same company, focused on getting better at their own respective professions. One day it clicked for all of them to start a business of their own. They wrote a plan, stating that 50% of their income would come from residential work done in the evenings and on weekends. After slow, but steady growth and their individual hardwork, they hired their first technician and set out on their own. “All centered around making technology easy for the customer - make life better, not be a source of frustration.“ . Dashboards for everyone! As one of the first BrightGauge users, it’s no surprise that they average around 980 gauges and 144 dashboards! That’s a lot to work with though. You may be wondering, “What could they possibly need all of those dashboards and gauges for?” These are a result of getting the whole team in on the data sharing fun. Taking advantage of their free unlimited viewer licenses, Andromeda has a total of 41 viewers from their team, including a couple just for their tv-based dashboards. Scaling Up When it came time to examine their growth more closely, Andromeda turned to EOS. They didn’t quite find the traction they expected though. After spending a year and half trying to implement it, they didn’t get far. They’ve since found success with the Scaling Up Model, one that’s focused around larger businesses. To them, this felt bigger and fit better. Now it felt like the whole company was rowing with the same oar. Still, it’s an ongoing challenge for all leaders to keep focused and afloat in the day-to-day wearing multiple hats. Jeffrey keeps a big BHAG poster on wall with the number that they want to hit in 10 years, plus an eye on the opportunity to open up multiple offices in multiple states. “I love the team. I love how responsive everyone is. I request something at 10 at night and Brian was there. You guys are there to really help us try to succeed.” Working with BrightGauge Like a few of our customers, Andromeda has built up their software stack based around what’s available to integrate with in BrightGauge. They’re taking full advantage of what’s available to them with a total of 8 datasources connected: Dropbox to cover their call data and Google Analytics needs NAble and datto for covering endpoints Customer Thermometer to ensure they’re providing their customers with great service Webroot for extra layers of security Infusionsoft to cover their CRM needs Quickbooks for their financial needs Tigerpaw to streamline their PSA opps With a client base made up mainly of legal, financial, and medical-based businesses, it’s important to Andromeda that they keep the most important numbers up for all to see.
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Customer Stories: Compuquip

Compuquip Cybersecurity is a Miami based, family-owned business that focuses on cybersecurity products and services for their enterprise partners. Since 1980, they’ve helped businesses address their network infrastructure and cybersecurity needs. The Compuquip team makes it a point to equip businesses of all sizes with the tools they need to manage any risks. In today’s information age, it’s an absolute necessity to safeguard your networks against outside intrusion. A need for efficiency Although Compuquip remains focused on their core mission, they do face the day-to-day realities of running a well-organized business. Like all technology partners (and any business for that matter), they find it important to track what their engineers are doing and to report on critical work that’s being handled. In the past, they found difficulty in processing their orders. Compuquip services many customers on a daily basis, covering a very sensitive topic. There’s a sense of urgency that naturally permeates the cybersecurity industry, as issues can unfold very quickly, so it’s important for technology partners to have a timely view of the status of orders and networks. Additionally, Compuquip had no real-time reporting. Everything was done via a manual report, which meant they had to take data from their system, literally type it into an Excel spreadsheet, massage the spreadsheet, convert it to a PDF, and then send it out internally or to clients. This was done for every single report on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis. As a company that is continually optimizing their cybersecurity offerings and adding more clients to their roster, it makes sense that Compuquip looks for ways to maximize their efficiency. Adopting BrightGauge Adriel Argote, Accounting Manager at Compuquip, had a request form his CEO: Compuquip needed visibility into the operations in each department of the company. To assist with that, Adriel helped implement BrightGauge as a trusted business solution. “We brought in BrightGauge in several different areas. We brought it in to automate our daily reporting of all the deals we close. We brought it in for our weekly aging report. We brought it in for sales reporting, so we can see how our sales team is doing month-to-date, quarter-to-date, and year-to-date. And we’ve also used it for tracking of our engineers - who’s billing, who’s not billing, how much time are they billing?” Through their integrations with Microsoft Dynamics GP and Harvest, Compuquip has everything they need to keep track of order processing, engineering, invoicing, time-tracking, billing, and more. sample Harvest dashboard How BrightGauge Has Saved Compuquip Time Since bringing on BrightGauge’s dashboards and reporting features, the Compuquip executive team has seen a significant shift in how departments are spending their time. As Adriel explained, “BrightGauge’s automated reporting has saved about 15 minutes every day for the daily report. We calculated it out to be between 8 to 10 hours a week that we are now saving in man hours, while getting much more accurate information. That’s a lot of time!” Although there’s an incredible amount of value in time saved, the Compuquip team has noticed an added benefit to using the features that BrightGauge offers. “It brings in a level of transparency for the team. When we find something that looks off on a dashboard or report, we jump in in real-time instead of waiting for the report to come out at the end of the day or week. We’re catching things faster, so errors are going down.” Favorite Feature Through BrightGauge’s reporting feature, Compuquip has been able to buy back time spent on mundane, but necessary tasks and, in turn, can focus on hitting KPIs in areas that truly matter - making sure each and every customer is satisfied with the level of security and attention they are receiving. “Allowing us to focus on what we need to do, instead of creating reports, reduces errors and saves us a lot of time, which makes us more efficient. And then having all the information in real-time where I can see it is a huge, huge victory for us.”

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Why BrightGauge is the Best Analytics Solution for MSPs & TSPs

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

How to Generate Powerful Autotask Reports

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

Dashboard of the Month: RMM Overview - Endpoints

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

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