How Alpha NetSolutions, Inc. Uses BrightGauge to Track KPIs

The team behind Alpha NetSolutions, Inc. is committed to helping its customers realize that technology is a competitive advantage, not an expensive nuisance. IT is what will help them grow and scale their businesses, especially with a partner like Alpha NetSolutions, Inc. by their sides. 

Co-founder Tim Shea has 30+ years of IT experience behind him, which has helped him shape the quality of service Alpha NetSolutions, Inc. brings to the industry. 

Tim recently shared with us how he uses BrightGauge to better manage his business on a daily basis. 

How Alpha NetSolutions, Inc. got its start

In the 1990s, Tim had a company called Systems Integration Group, which he sold off to a national roll-up called NetSetGo in early 2000, thinking there wasn’t much left for him to do for his clients (Y2K, ya know?).

When NetSetGo went out of business in 2002, Tim co-founded Alpha NetSolutions, Inc. and signed 85 of its clients to contracts in the first 30 days. From then on, they never looked back. 

Located in Millbury, MA, Alpha NetSolutions, Inc. serves SMB companies in industries like manufacturing, construction, distribution, lumber yards, dental, and other professional services.  Their mission is to bring enterprise-level IT services, including cybersecurity, to small businesses that are not quite big enough to want an in-house IT technician. 

Since opening Alpha NetSolutions, Inc., Tim has been passionate about catering to industries where he has plenty of personal experience. For instance, Tim’s grandfather built and remodeled houses, and Tim helped by carrying stacks of shingles up a ladder for him. He also spent 5 years working at toy manufacturer Hasbro, where his father was an industrial engineer. So, supporting the construction and engineering industries is a natural fit for Alpha NetSolutions, Inc., since Tim understands those businesses almost as well as his clients do. 

Apart from that, Tim’s been working in what’s now called managed services since 1995 and had to create RMM and Ticketing systems using open source platforms like Nagios and DotProject (ring a bell?). Perfecting their systems and leveraging key performance indicators (KPIs) to keep everyone in the loop are always top priorities for Tim and the Alpha NetSolutions, Inc. team. 

Becoming a BrightGauge partner

Given the primary role that KPIs play in Tim’s day-to-day, he was seeking a better way to manage those data points. 

“I was managing KPIs via spreadsheets,” says Tim. “It would take me half an hour to pull together one number. I needed a better way. I talked to my peers, they were using BrightGauge.” 

BrightGauge dashboards have helped Tim really hone in on the data he needs. They have different boards for all different roles within the company and have spent time building custom gauges that recreate the KPIs he was maintaining in his spreadsheets. 

“The best gauges are the ones that pull data from multiple sources. Numbers that used to take me so long to pull are now at my fingertips,” says Tim. 

What BrightGauge has helped the Alpha NetSolutions, Inc. team accomplish

Tim uses Quickbooks, ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, and Dropbox to manage his business. 

With BrightGauge, he’s able to cross-reference those datasources all on one screen. He has dashboards that are pulling from all 4 datasources, which frees up a lot of his time and allows him and his team to get back to focusing on their customer service. 

For Alpha NetSolutions, Inc., they believe their work is customer service delivered in the form of technical support. It’s important that all their calls are answered by a human and that they close their tickets on the same day they were opened, which BrightGauge helps with.

As Tim says, “We are a small team. That’s on purpose. It lets us focus. It lets us adapt. BrightGauge helps us do both of those things better and faster.” 

Thank you for being our partner, Alpha NetSolutions, Inc.!

Most-used datasources: Quickbooks On-Premise, ConnectWise Manage Cloud, ConnectWise Automate Cloud, and Dropbox

Top KPIs:

• Support Tickets Opened per End User per Month - measures the effectiveness of their Prevention team’s efforts (averaging under .3 tickets/user/month)
• Average Time to Resolution on Tickets Opened by an End User - measures the effectiveness of their Help Desk and Support teams (averaging 7 business hours)
• Project Labor Billed per Month - used to predict utilization to make staffing decisions and more
• Work in Process - used along Project Labor Billed to predicate utilization and make staffing decisions
• Monthly Recurring Revenue - primary tracker of growth trajectory; used to evaluate sales and make staffing decisions
• Total Monthly Revenue - secondary tracker of growth trajectory; also used to evaluate sales and make staffing decisions