We’re excited to welcome Roarke “Rocky” Suarez to our team as a Customer Support Specialist! Join us in learning more about the newest member of our growing BrightGauge team… In the beginning Rocky, like so many of his fellow BrightGaugers, says he’s been a born-and-bred Miamian since day 0! After growing up in sunny South Florida, he decided to stick around for college and earned his degrees from Miami Dade College and the Computing School of Florida International University. Post-college, Rocky set out to see the world. He spent six months traveling through Thailand, Australia and New Zealand and picked up some career experience along the way, working as an IT intern in the Circular Quay area of Sydney. Most recently, Rocky worked as a Customer Support Specialist for a business management software company called HHA Exchange. There, he updated internal software and made medicare compliance changes in accordance to national and state regulations for at-home healthcare. Joining BrightGauge The Customer Support team is happy to have snagged Rocky as our latest Customer Support Specialist. Prior to joining, Rocky was intrigued by our podcasts and by a conversation with founder and CEO, Brian Dosal. He says that those things made the BrightGauge office environment very apparent to him before interviews even started. “One of the most important things for me is the work-life balance and environment at work,” says Rocky. “So much of my life is dedicated to my work and we spend so much time in the office, so a good environment is priority number one.” We think he’ll fit right in. Rocky is looking forward to being a part of the “best and well-designed support environment I have seen to date” (his words) and to learn more about the MSP industry. Out of office     When not in the office, Rocky enjoys exploring his newfound interest in working out and healthier eating, but also makes time for watching anything on Netflix, especially comedy specials. When it comes to reading, Rocky has a passion for science fiction novels and deciphering their philosophical implications. Perhaps you’ll find him doing this on a beach thousands of miles away from Miami, as traveling is always high on his list.

Every business owner and manager knows that maintaining a strong relationship with a solid base of clients is non-negotiable in setting an organization up for success. This takes a lot of work. Clients tend to stick around when business owners and agencies prove themselves to be trustworthy and reliable. Long-term clients mean a positive impact on your bottom line, so transparency should really be a priority for any business manager. This isn’t the first time we’ve said this and it won’t be the last time, but we are big believers in sending consistent client reports to remain transparent and build that trust we’re all looking for. Client reports show that your word is credible and that you are dependable, plus they are great at driving accountability within your own team. Why reports are so impactful When a client hires you to provide a service, both parties agree upon and set forth a service level agreement (SLA) with certain benchmarks that will define success. How well or not you adhere to said SLA tells a client a whole lot: whether you’re experienced and knowledgeable, if you’re good at keeping your word, if you’re providing fair and honest service, and (most importantly) if you should be trusted with repeat business. Since customers are investing a lot of their resources into you, it serves you well to consistently show them the work you’re doing for them. Reports are a powerful way to exercise this level of transparency because they pull in metrics that are based on hard data, and numbers don’t lie. Factual data leaves no room to be subjective - it allows one to draw objective conclusions, which leads to wiser business decisions. Basically, you can’t bs your way through a report. If your SLA states that your Ticket Response Time should never go past 5 minutes, you’re going to have to report that number whether it’s 1 minute or 10 (talk about motivation to hit your goals). Reports also pack a punch because they allow you to show a client exactly what they want to see. You don’t need to fluff up a report. Provide clients with straightforward, honest data that gives a comprehensive snapshot into the work you’re doing so they are not left wondering, “what am I paying you for?” Motivation to do your best work By sending frequent, regular reports - let’s say on a daily basis - your clients come to depend on you for consistency. They’re going to see your team’s actual output and knowing this drives an inherent sense of accountability. Therefore, your team members will be motivated to do their best, most productive work on a consistent basis. As humans, we like to feel good. When you take actions that the brain perceives as good, it releases feel-good chemicals that bring on even more happy feelings (the opposite of a vicious cycle). Conversely, when you have feelings of stress, which are likely brought on when you have to report less-than-ideal metrics, your cortisol levels increase, which is bad news for overall health. It’s literally good for your health to do valuable work and remain accountable. This may seem like a stretch, but when you consider the portion of our days and lives that are spent working, it only helps us to take actions that are positive. In the case of client reports, it’s realistic to assume that there will be times when your performance is not up to par, but if you’re persistently trying your best and showing your value to your clients, you’re walking down the right path. BrightGauge makes reporting a no-brainer If you’re using BrightGauge dashboards to view your important key performance indicators in one place, then everything you need to send client reports is at your fingertips. BrightGauge provides insights through many popular datasources, like ConnectWise, IT Glue, Webroot, Quickbooks, and Customer Thermometer, just to name a few. Regardless of the integration you want to connect with, we take the time to pre-build default gauges and dashboards so you can get started right out of the box. Same goes for reports. The insights that you’re already measuring on a daily basis are likely what your client cares to see as well. When you visit the Client Reporting section of BrightGauge, you’ll be prompted to create an internal report or one for your clients. Then, you can opt to start from scratch or choose from our pre-built templates. From there, it’ll take just a few minutes to customize your reports with the exact info you want - including your logo and any contextual copy - and then schedule it to go out on a recurring basis to whoever you want, whenever you want. It takes such little effort on your part to create these reports, but the payoff is huge. When thinking about scaling or growing your business, repeat business can do so much in terms of profitability. Hold yourself accountable to your company’s success by taking actions - such as sending client reports - that, at the very least, make you look good. Wondering who to send reports to, what to include, how to send them, and why you should even bother? We dive deeper into the subject in our free webinar, Client Reporting Best Practices.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) help everyone in your company feel aligned and motivated to work towards a specific outcome. While each individual team member should have personal goals to aim towards, all work should be tied to overall company KPIs. Knowing which KPIs are most important is the tricky part. As a company owner or manager, you have the best idea of where you want to see growth and how you want to track it, and this applies to every team within your organization. Different departments are responsible for multiple areas of growth, so it makes sense that your Service Team KPIs will vary from your Project Team KPIs. We’ve been in this business for a long time and have spoken to plenty of executives along the way and have discovered common threads across the board. When it comes to your Project Team, we’ve found two KPIs that almost always make it to the top of managers’ lists. First, let’s get one thing clear We can’t stress enough that just because we’re listing these top two KPIs, by no means do we believe that other KPIs are less important. Your discretion is what matters most. When you created your company or started working there, you developed a vision for success and you know best how to carve a path for getting there. We’re simply here to offer up suggestions and knowledge based on our own experiences. Our goal for BrightGauge is to make your day-to-day life a bit easier, and we hope the guidance we provide here adds to that. Project Team KPIs Your Project Team is incredibly important because it’s the team that keeps your work moving and flowing. Adhering to the Service Level Agreement (SLA) you and your client created at the onset of your relationship is critical, and your Project Team is going to play a major role in that. Specifically, the number of hours your Project Team members bill and how efficiently they stay in line with your budget will show whether or not you’re on track with your SLA. Therefore, two KPIs we recommend when it comes to your Project Team are Billable Project Hours and Over Budget Projects. Billable Project Hours Some business owners or team leads require their team members to bill a certain number of hours per week, as it ties into recurring revenue, so keeping track of this metric is pretty important. It’s also a good idea to see how many hours are being billed to a specific project because it gives you an idea of whether or not you have adequate resources assigned to that project. This also gives you insight into how well your company and team can handle various scopes. If your team is over-billing on a project, it’s possible that you did not forecast an appropriate number of hours for the required amount of work. As you can imagine, these insights come in handy for future projects. BrightGauge dashboards make it so easy to see every team member’s billable hours in real-time and at a glance. More than likely, we connect with the integration you’re using to input hours (like Harvest, for example), and all our integrations come with pre-built gauges, dashboards, and reports based on the metrics people like you care about the most. This means you’ll be able to get started as soon as you open an account! Over Budget Projects Any project manager knows how important it is to stay on budget. Dealing with finances is a sensitive matter and impacts your bottom line, so you really can’t scrutinize it enough. When you budget a project, you’re setting forth guidelines, just as an SLA does. Abiding by those guidelines makes you reliable and trustworthy and keeps your business running efficiently. You shouldn’t wait until an accountant or financial manager crunches numbers for you to see if anything is falling through the cracks. It’s much more optimal and productive to know where you stand on a regular and frequent basis. Tracking projects that have gone over budget will help you course correct and make data-driven decisions that ensure you’re still on a path to success. Just like the insights you gain when looking at billable hours, Over Budget Projects will tell you if you have enough resources on a task or if there are any missing gaps. Keeping tabs of Over Budget Projects on a real-time dashboard makes it easy to see if you’ve got any glaring issues and it helps prevent problems from turning into full-blown disasters. With BrightGauge, you can drilldown further into the Over Budget Projects gauge to get more information. BrightGauge helps you keep your team motivated With BrightGauge dashboards, you’re able to see your important KPIs in one place and use the metrics displayed to drive impactful business decisions. Beyond that, you can use dashboards to motivate your team. When it comes to billable hours or open projects, put your team members on a leaderboard to inspire a little fun, healthy competition between them. Or, use our Goals feature to keep everyone accountable and striving for results that impact your bottom line and your overall company KPIs in a good way. There’s a whole lot you can do with BrightGauge to make your daily operations more manageable and productive. To learn more about KPIs that make a positive impact, check out our free whitepaper, How to Improve Your Business With KPIs.