The BrightGauge Blog

Business owners face a lot of risks – mostly because there is no guarantee that a company will make money or that it will survive and grow. Company stakeholders mainly take on these risks because they hope to create a company they can someday sell or pass down to their families with enough wealth to live a safe and comfortable lifestyle when it's time to retire. High Operational maturity owners understand that knowing how much stock value you want to create and by when you want to create it is a foundational best practice. A Value Creation Strategy is an owner's plan for how they will get from their current business valuation to their business valuation target so they can exit their company having met their personal wealth goals. As Yogi Berra once said, "if you don't know where you're going, you might end up someplace else." In the simplest terms, this is exactly why every business owner needs a Value Creation Strategy. In essence, owners and company stakeholders should be asking themselves a few simple yet incredibly important questions: How much do I need when I exit the business to live my desired lifestyle? How much does my business need to be worth when it's time to exit? How much time do I have between now and when I'd like to exit? How do I plan to extract value from my company? What steps do I need to take, year-over-year, to to reach those targets? In Getting to Goal: Knowing your Value Creation Strategy, Brad Schow, the VP of Business Transformation Evangelist Growth with ConnectWise, reviews what a value creation plan is and why it's important. Using easy-to-follow logic, he will also walk you through the steps to create or revisit and recharge your value creation strategy. By the end of this webinar, you'll also know how to modify your plan based on common changes in the market and how to determine if your goals are reasonable. The next webinar in this series, Getting to Goal: Putting your Value Creation Strategy into Action, happening live on Wednesday, December 7, 2022 at 1:00 pm EST, will build upon the concept learned this month to help you put your plan into action. Make sure you either join live or tune into the recording using the link below! We're here to help! If you aren't sure where to start with creating your own value creation strategy, our partner success team can help! Schedule a confidential 1-hour session with a partner success manager at no cost to walk through creating a basic value creation strategy. We will also discuss your ownership mode, key profitability metrics, and a few ways you can improve your operational maturity level. Reserve your place now! NOTE: Spaces are limited. If you cannot schedule a meeting using the link above, email us for additional options on how we can help. If you haven't tuned in to the CEO Growth & Profit series yet, the Partner Success team has combined forces with Service Leadership to bring MSP owners, CEOs, and executive leadership teams loads of valuable content across 10 webinars. This series is dedicated to helping you quickly determine how you're performing on the biggest financial drivers in your business. Taking it a step further, this series also provide practical guidance on improving sub-optimal business practices by adopting the proven methods of best-in-class. Check out all of the webinars in this series: CEO Growth & Profit Topic Date/Time Expert Register/Watch Now! Making Service Profitability Decisions the Way the Top Performers Do August 3rd, 1pm Eastern Paul Dippell, Founder, Service Leadership https://bit.ly/service-profitability Making Sales Investment Decisions the Way the Top Performers Do August 25th, 1pm Eastern Rob Bufano, Service Leadership Solutions Director bit.ly/sales-investments Tracking your Financials the Way the Top Performers Do September 22nd, 1pm Eastern Rob Bufano, Service Leadership Solutions Director bit.ly/tracking-financials Key to Success: Knowing your Ownership Mode October 12th, 1pm Eastern Brad Schow, VP, Consulting Services, ConnectWise bit.ly/ownership-mode Getting to Goal: Knowing your Value Creation Strategy November 16th, 12pm Eastern Brad Schow, VP, Consulting Services, ConnectWise bit.ly/value-creation-strategy Getting to Goal: Putting your Value Creation Strategy into Action December 7th, 1pm Eastern Brad Schow, VP, Consulting Services, ConnectWise bit.ly/value-creation-action Foundational Excellence: Choosing your Target Customer Profile January 12th, 2pm Eastern Peter Kujawa, VP, Service Leadership & TSP Evangelist https://bit.ly/target-customer-profile Foundational Excellence: Driving Technology Standards February 15th, 11am Eastern Peter Kujawa, VP, Service Leadership & TSP Evangelist https://bit.ly/technology-standards Foundational Excellence: QBRs as your Scale Engine March 16th, 1pm Eastern Peter Kujawa, VP, Service Leadership & TSP Evangelist https://bit.ly/QBRs-scale Foundational Excellence: Pricing and Packaging April 20th, 1pm Eastern Rob Bufano, Service Leadership Solutions Director https://bit.ly/pricing-packaging To sign up for future episodes in the CEO Growth & Profit series or to watch previous webinar recordings, use the links above or visit our webinars page. Make sure to keep an eye out for additional emails and in-app invites from us, and follow @BrightGauge on Twitter for updates. We highly suggest you RSVP to each webinar now! Even if you can't attend the live webinar, we’ll still email you the recording. As always, we love your feedback and your questions, so shoot our success team an email any time!

Every business owner, regardless of the industry, has an evolving set of aspirations and goals for their business. On a scale of a startup mindset to creating an exit scenario, those aspirations are unique to what you, the owner, currently value in life and business. Having a plan is important at every stage, but it's not always easy to know where to start or how to get from point A to point B within your timeline. To add to that complication, it's often difficult to communicate your vision and share it with your organization in a digestible and actionable way. Modes Theory for ConnectWise partners is a system of purpose-built methods that specifically help TSPs cultivate a growth mindset so they can achieve successful business outcomes. It is a robust framework that uses a common language to clarify the process of understanding, communicating, and following your personal vision of success. In Key to Success: Knowing your Ownership Mode, Brad Schow, the VP of Business Transformation Evangelist Growth with ConnectWise, explains what modes theory is, why it's important, what modes are available, and how to get started. In this webinar, you'll learn how understanding your current and future "mode" can help you better utilize purpose-built training, peer groups, solutions, and ecosystem resources. Further, you'll learn about the next steps you'll need to take to start aligning your behaviors with your business model, culture, strategy, and leadership approach. You'll find that once you get all of your boats rowing in the same direction, you can more easily adopt the best practices for your mode and business model. Want to check out Modes Theory now? The first step to getting started with modes theory is to take the modes assessment. The modes theory assessment is an ongoing tool for TSP owners, leaders, and ecosystem partners. Once you've taken the assessment, you'll be guided through the interrelated concepts, tools, and benchmarks that you and your team can capitalize on to engineer a resilient and profitable business. If you haven't tuned in to the CEO Growth & Profit series yet, the Partner Success team has combined forces with Service Leadership to bring MSP owners, CEOs, and executive leadership teams loads of valuable content across 10 webinars. This series is dedicated to helping you quickly determine how you're performing on the biggest financial drivers in your business. Taking it a step further, this series also provide practical guidance on improving sub-optimal business practices by adopting the proven methods of best-in-class. Check out all of the webinars in this series: CEO Growth & Profit Topic Date/Time Expert Register/Watch Now! Making Service Profitability Decisions the Way the Top Performers Do August 3rd, 1pm Eastern Paul Dippell, Founder, Service Leadership https://bit.ly/service-profitability Making Sales Investment Decisions the Way the Top Performers Do August 25th, 1pm Eastern Rob Bufano, Service Leadership Solutions Director bit.ly/sales-investments Tracking your Financials the Way the Top Performers Do September 22nd, 1pm Eastern Rob Bufano, Service Leadership Solutions Director bit.ly/tracking-financials Key to Success: Knowing your Ownership Mode October 12th, 1pm Eastern Brad Schow, VP, Consulting Services, ConnectWise bit.ly/ownership-mode Getting to Goal: Knowing your Value Creation Strategy November 16th, 12pm Eastern Brad Schow, VP, Consulting Services, ConnectWise bit.ly/value-creation-strategy Getting to Goal: Putting your Value Creation Strategy into Action December 7th, 1pm Eastern Brad Schow, VP, Consulting Services, ConnectWise bit.ly/value-creation-action Foundational Excellence: Choosing your Target Customer Profile January 12th, 2pm Eastern Peter Kujawa, VP, Service Leadership & TSP Evangelist https://bit.ly/target-customer-profile Foundational Excellence: Driving Technology Standards February 15th, 11am Eastern Peter Kujawa, VP, Service Leadership & TSP Evangelist https://bit.ly/technology-standards Foundational Excellence: QBRs as your Scale Engine March 16th, 1pm Eastern Peter Kujawa, VP, Service Leadership & TSP Evangelist https://bit.ly/QBRs-scale Foundational Excellence: Pricing and Packaging April 20th, 1pm Eastern Rob Bufano, Service Leadership Solutions Director https://bit.ly/pricing-packaging To sign up for future episodes in the CEO Growth & Profit series or to watch previous webinar recordings, use the links above or visit our webinars page. Make sure to keep an eye out for additional emails and in-app invites from us, and follow @BrightGauge on Twitter for updates. We highly suggest you RSVP to each webinar now! Even if you can't attend the live webinar, we’ll still email you the recording. As always, we love your feedback and your questions, so shoot our success team an email any time!

In any business, there is a primary need to generate enough gross margin dollars to cover overhead expenses, and to contribute to the bottom line so that the business can grow. In the Managed Service Provider (MSP) space, service gross margin is the most important component of that overall profitability. While product gross margin is important, it typically only makes up roughly one-fourth of the total gross margin dollars that an MSP generates. Services on the other hand, tend to produce a higher and more reliable stream of gross margin dollars. Despite the stickiness of the service business, it is also riskier. This is primarily because if you fail to sell enough services, you still have to carry those high service labor costs that do not exist in product-centric businesses. Since service gross margin is the most important aspect of an MSPs profitability, it goes without saying that accurately measuring and optimizing it is a foundational best practice. And to improve your financial performance, you'll need to adopt an accounting setup that gives you greater visibility. Doing so enables you to see what is happening in the business, take remedial action as needed, and see if your actions are having the desired effect. Unfortunately, most accounting systems are not set up to measure Service businesses usefully and they do not, by default, provide the level of visibility MSPs need to see what is really happening within the company. In Tracking your Financials the way the Top Performers Do, Rob Bufano, the Service Leadership Solution Director with ConnectWise, shared how top performing MSPs set up their chart of accounts to obtain the granularity they need to measure and optimize their gross margin. Rob focused not only on the 'why' but the 'how to' for gaining better visibility and control of your financial performance. If you missed this CEO Growth & Profit webinar, no worries! You can always watch the recording, shared below, at any time! What you'll learn by watching this webinar: How the best-in-class, median, and bottom 1/4th of solution providers are performing financially How to use the Sales and Service multiple of wages successfully Benchmarking methodology by predominant business model How you can identify your predominant business model Setting up your chart of accounts to have a useful profit and loss statement Why a correctly designed Chart of Accounts is so important How to use your financials to create your budgeting and forecasting Tying your financial tracking back to operational maturity level best practices If you haven't tuned in to the CEO Growth & Profit series yet, the Partner Success team has combined forces with Service Leadership to bring MSP owners, CEOs, and executive leadership teams loads of valuable content across 10 webinars. This series is dedicated to helping you quickly determine how you're performing on the biggest financial drivers in your business. Taking it a step further, this series also provide practical guidance on improving sub-optimal business practices by adopting the proven methods of best-in-class. Check out all of the webinars in this series: CEO Growth & Profit Topic Date/Time Expert Register/Watch Now! Making Service Profitability Decisions the Way the Top Performers Do August 3rd, 1pm Eastern Paul Dippell, Founder, Service Leadership https://bit.ly/service-profitability Making Sales Investment Decisions the Way the Top Performers Do August 25th, 1pm Eastern Rob Bufano, Service Leadership Solutions Director bit.ly/sales-investments Tracking your Financials the Way the Top Performers Do September 22nd, 1pm Eastern Rob Bufano, Service Leadership Solutions Director bit.ly/tracking-financials Key to Success: Knowing your Ownership Mode October 12th, 1pm Eastern Brad Schow, VP, Consulting Services, ConnectWise bit.ly/ownership-mode Getting to Goal: Knowing your Value Creation Strategy November 16th, 12pm Eastern Brad Schow, VP, Consulting Services, ConnectWise bit.ly/value-creation-strategy Getting to Goal: Putting your Value Creation Strategy into Action December 7th, 1pm Eastern Brad Schow, VP, Consulting Services, ConnectWise bit.ly/value-creation-action Foundational Excellence: Choosing your Target Customer Profile January 12th, 2pm Eastern Peter Kujawa, VP, Service Leadership & TSP Evangelist https://bit.ly/target-customer-profile Foundational Excellence: Driving Technology Standards February 15th, 11am Eastern Peter Kujawa, VP, Service Leadership & TSP Evangelist https://bit.ly/technology-standards Foundational Excellence: QBRs as your Scale Engine March 16th, 1pm Eastern Peter Kujawa, VP, Service Leadership & TSP Evangelist https://bit.ly/QBRs-scale Foundational Excellence: Pricing and Packaging April 20th, 1pm Eastern Rob Bufano, Service Leadership Solutions Director https://bit.ly/pricing-packaging To sign up for future episodes in the CEO Growth & Profit series or to watch previous webinar recordings, use the links above or visit our webinars page. Make sure to keep an eye out for additional emails and in-app invites from us, and follow @BrightGauge on Twitter for updates. We highly suggest you RSVP to each webinar now! Even if you can't attend the live webinar, we’ll still email you the recording. As always, we love your feedback and your questions, so shoot our success team an email any time!

High-performing MSPs have learned that in order to drive best-in-class revenue and experience operational maturity, you need to determine and implement optimal business practices while constantly keeping an eye on key profitability metrics. However, for most top MSPs, the journey towards best-in-class has been arduous and rife with trial-and-error learning tactics. In our new CEO Growth & Profit series, we aim to impart that hard-earned knowledge of best-in-class solution providers. For this series, the Partner Success team has combined forces with Service Leadership, using their expertise to help owners, CEOs, and executive leadership teams quickly determine how they're performing on the biggest financial drivers in their business. Taking it a step further, this series will also provide practical guidance on improving sub-optimal business practices by adopting the proven methods of best-in-class MSPs. If you are not familiar, Service Leadership provides total profit solutions for IT Solution and Service Providers. Service Leadership also publishes the Service Leadership Index®, which is the industry-leading financial and operational benchmark. And, they publish SLIQ™, the exclusive web application for owners and executives to drive financial improvements by assessing and driving their Operational Maturity Level™. On top of that, Service Leadership offers advanced peer groups for Solution Providers of all sizes and business models, as well as executive and industry best practices education and speaking. In the CEO Growth & Profit webinar series, we’ll cover a range of topics that'll help you take your business success to the next level. Each webinar will be hosted by an industry expert who will review key profitability metrics, best practices for setting up and tracking your financials, the benefits of knowing your ownership mode, creating a value creation strategy, and 4 impactful operational maturity level traits. You’ll walk away from each webinar with actionable advice on processes, practices and procedures that you can execute within your business with confidence. What’s the webinar line up look like? CEO Growth & Profit Topic Date/Time Expert Register/Watch Now! Making Service Profitability Decisions the Way the Top Performers Do August 3rd, 1pm Eastern Paul Dippell, Founder, Service Leadership https://bit.ly/service-profitability Making Sales Investment Decisions the Way the Top Performers Do August 25th, 1pm Eastern Rob Bufano, Service Leadership Solutions Director bit.ly/sales-investments Tracking your Financials the Way the Top Performers Do September 22nd, 1pm Eastern Rob Bufano, Service Leadership Solutions Director bit.ly/tracking-financials Key to Success: Knowing your Ownership Mode October 12th, 1pm Eastern Brad Schow, VP, Consulting Services, ConnectWise bit.ly/ownership-mode Getting to Goal: Knowing your Value Creation Strategy November 16th, 12pm Eastern Brad Schow, VP, Consulting Services, ConnectWise bit.ly/value-creation-strategy Getting to Goal: Putting your Value Creation Strategy into Action December 7th, 1pm Eastern Brad Schow, VP, Consulting Services, ConnectWise bit.ly/value-creation-action Foundational Excellence: Choosing your Target Customer Profile January 12th, 2pm Eastern Peter Kujawa, VP, Service Leadership & TSP Evangelist https://bit.ly/target-customer-profile Foundational Excellence: Driving Technology Standards February 15th, 11am Eastern Peter Kujawa, VP, Service Leadership & TSP Evangelist https://bit.ly/technology-standards Foundational Excellence: QBRs as your Scale Engine March 16th, 1pm Eastern Peter Kujawa, VP, Service Leadership & TSP Evangelist https://bit.ly/QBRs-scale Foundational Excellence: Pricing and Packaging April 20th, 1pm Eastern Rob Bufano, Service Leadership Solutions Director https://bit.ly/pricing-packaging To sign up for future episodes in the CEO Growth & Profit series or to watch previous webinar recordings, use the links provided above or visit our webinars page at any time. Make sure to keep an eye out for additional emails and in-app invites from us, and follow @BrightGauge on Twitter for updates. We highly suggest you RSVP to each webinar now! Even if you can't attend the live webinar, we’ll still email you the recording, which you can keep on hand to reference any time you need it. As always, we love your feedback and your questions, so shoot our success team an email any time!

A major component of any MSP business is project management. While projects may often times seem simple on the surface, they require careful planning and budgeting to get right. BrightGauge dashboards can provide data visualizations to help MSPs with this challenge. To illustrate, we sought to feature the work of a partner who has become a pro in the project management space. For the July Dashboard of the month, we have featured a Project management dashboard inspired by July's user showcase webinar, KPIs for Managing Profitable Projects with Derek Diaz, a program manager at Charter Technology Solutions (CTS). Charter Technology Solutions is an MSP focused in the EdTech space serving over 25 schools across the U.S. From bringing technology into a new or scaling school to repairing and maintaining school's IT infrastructure, CTS's mission is to be an education partner for schools in a way that benefits educators, students, and their families. Completing 100's of educational technology projects a year, it is no wonder CTS has been able to successfully master their projects. For The Project Manager View dashboard, we've taken the more customized Manager View dashboard that Derek shared during the webinar and created a simpler yet still impactful version that can easily be recreated without any custom SQL querying. It features metrics to help track project tickets, conduct budget hour assessments, and provides a breakdown on project margins. Project Manager View - view here. Here are some featured metrics: Past Due and Off Track - These gauges help keep an eye on tickets and projects that have past their due dates as well as projects with no remaining hours on them. Setting due dates for each project ticket in your work plan and tracking through BrightGauge can help you stay on track. Project Revenue Goal and Cost Performance Index - Using a progress gauge can help you see just how close you are to hitting your target revenue. While a cost performance index gauge will help you compare estimated time costs versus actual time costs on recently entered projects. Hour Assessment Gauges - Check out Hours by work type, budget hours versus actuals, and see which projects are over or under their hours' budget. Project Margin Breakdown - This gauge aims to break down project revenue by service and products so you can determine the margin on each. By understanding your margin in a more granular way, you can better understand each project's profitability. Thank you, Derek, for collaborating with us and sharing how you and your team have been able to successfully plan for and execute on projects with the aid of BrightGauge dashboard and reports! Recreate in your BrightGauge Project Management - Manager View Dashboard (public view link) Project Management - Manager View Dashboard 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!

During phases of rapid growth, all too often, solid data practices fall by the waste side. However, it is during this time that data-driven process development becomes even more important. Being able to see and track your improvements over time will be paramount to your success. BrightGauge is the perfect companion along any growth journey as it enables you to track process changes and determine whether they were successful or need further revision. Over time, this can lead to a fine tuned system for service delivery excellence. For the June Dashboard of the month, we have featured a Service Delivery Management dashboard inspired by June's user showcase webinar, Continuous Revision as a Recipe for Operational Excellence with Jeremiah Best, the VP of Service Delivery at Aligned Technology Solutions. Aligned Technology Solutions operates nationally, offering managed IT, cybersecurity, compliance & vCIO, cloud solutions, and CMMC certification. They cater to a wide range of industries with a focus on government contractors, nonprofits & associations, health care, and professional services. They have successfully operated in an ever-evolving space because of their adaptability and ability to build strong personal relationships with dedicated experts. These personality traits are reflected back in their approach to data visualization and goal management as showcased through BrightGauge. The Service Delivery Management dashboard features the key metrics shared by Jeremiah Best, used at various stages of their growth. Jeremiah, having 16 years experience across various service delivery roles in the MSP space, shared the importance of having a continuous improvement mindset in order to grow. Over his tenure and with the guidance of consultative coaching by Seal-Level Operations and their IT Nation Evolve peer group, Jeremiah has built and rebuilt their dashboards and goal lists several times to aid in refining their processes to maturity. Service Delivery Management - view here. Here are some featured metrics: Kill Rate % - This gauge is an easy-to-read metric that tells you if the team is closing more tickets than are being opened. If the kill rate is under 100% for prolonged periods of time, there is a good chance that the ticket backlog is becoming unmanageable. Stale, High Time, and "Noisy" Tickets - Across several gauges, these metrics help any service delivery manager quickly view potential problem tickets. This can enable them to step in proactively where needed to decrease resolution time. Actual Vs Billable Hours - Across two gauges, managers can get a quick view of the team's billable and/or client hours in comparison to the actual hours they are working. Many teams shoot for 80% billable. SLA Statistics - These gauges allow you to see what tickets are missing their SLA's and view the overall SLA adherence. This provides a quick view on whether you are overall hitting your response, resolution plan, and resolution time goals. You can also use these to proactively address tickets that fell short of their goals where needed. Utilization - Time management is perhaps the trickiest task for any service delivery manager -- making sure your team is entering all time, on time, and that every resource is equally utilized. These gauges provide a quick glance into what each team member has been doing, plus metrics to determine their billable utilization. Thank you, Jeremiah, for collaborating with us and sharing insights on how your metric tracking practices have played a key part in your journey towards service delivery excellence! Recreate in your BrightGauge Service Delivery Management Dashboard (public view link) Service Delivery Management Dashboard 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!

Kite Technology Group (aka KiteTech) is a U.S. based Managed IT service provider offering consulting, infrastructure management, security and compliance, US-based help desk support, cloud solutions, business continuity, and vCIO services. They package their suite of key IT services into a comprehensive support package specifically designed to proactively manage the unique technology needs of today’s organizations. Also, Kite Technology has earned the CompTIA Security Trustmark+™. This is the highest level of recognition for IT service providers that consistently follow security best practices, demonstrate a commitment to industry recognized security standards, and adhere to prescribed security compliance measures. Over the years, Kite Technology Group has become a trusted technology advisor to more than one hundred organizations across the United States. While Kite Technology Group specializes in serving independent insurance agencies, they also provide IT services to nonprofits, medical offices, legal firms, manufacturers, construction companies, and other professional organizations. A BrightGauge power user In 2021, we met with Daniel Gilbert, the Chief Operating Officer at Kite Technology Group, to spotlight their beautifully designed dashboards, reports, and goal lists. As a result, Daniel co-hosted a user showcase webinar and was featured in our Dashboard of the Month series. After such a pleasant working experience with Kite Technology Group, we wanted to learn more about them and their journey as a BrightGauge partner. So, we once again chatted with Daniel Gilbert to learn more about Kite Technology Group and to see how, over the last 6+ years, BrightGauge has become such a big part of their daily operations and success. Kite Technology Group's Dashboard rebuilt with dummy data. See a buildout key here. . How Kite Technology Group got its start Before forming Kite Technology Group, President Jeff Kite had already been self-employed for a decade. In 1992, Jeff was part owner of a cabling business when he realized he was much more interested in the computer side of IT than the cabling side. In contemplating his next move, Jeff knew he wanted the opportunity to combine his passion of helping people with his technical and networking skills. So, he decided to sell his share of that business and start an IT company. He was fortunate to have a jumpstart on that business because some of his cabling customers became his first IT customers. In 1994, Jeff got his first Insurance Agency customer and when he served them well, they invited him to speak at a local peer group for Insurance Agencies. This began what would eventually become the primary vertical for Kite Technology Group: Independent Insurance Agencies. Jeff operated for a long time but was struggling to mature and grow the business. By early 2004, Jeff started discussing the idea of a partnership with the now CEO, Greg DiDio. On January 1, 2005, Jeff and Greg established their partnership and rebranded the company as Kite Technology Group. After spending 17 years working for a Fortune 500 company, Greg left the comforts of “big business” to bring an “enterprise mentality” to KiteTech. With Greg on board, Jeff was able to focus on building relationships with customers, while Greg was able to build vision and process, allowing the business to steadily grow. During this time, Greg led the transformation of a former “break fix” company into the national full-service IT company that KiteTech is today. This positioned them to provide high-quality proactive services to even more clients. Further, it was by Greg’s wisdom that KiteTech began participating in HTG (now IT Nation Evolve) in February 2011. Having access to like-minded companies allowed KiteTech to learn from the successes and failures of others and to contribute to their peers’ successes as well. Over ten years later, Kite Technology Group is still an active IT Nation Evolve member. Another important turning point in the company happened in 2015 when Kite Technology Group established the Agency Executive Advisory Board. This was a group made up of principals at a handful of their customer locations, all running independent insurance agencies. The goal was to get a group of like-minded business leaders together (like Evolve) and learn what KiteTech could do to transform their company and better serve their needs. Daniel said “going into this process, we thought we would learn about the other aspects of IT we should be offering our clients. Instead, we learned that what our customers wanted most was advisement on how to run their insurance agency business better. We decided that we had an opportunity to build a consulting practice designed to help agency owners and their leaders improve their business operations. In 2016, we hired our first agency consultant, and have continued to deliver and grow ever since.” Between 2005 when Kite Technology Group was officially founded and today, they have grown from about 5 employees to about 40 employees servicing over 100 fully managed IT clients. Becoming a BrightGauge partner Prior to BrightGauge, Daniel said Kite Technology Group used ConnectSmart for several years. However, they found it cumbersome, requiring a heavy application for dashboard design and a dedicated machine for displaying data. That drove them to look for easier-to-use alternatives. After discovering BrightGauge in 2016, Daniel said he immediately realized how intuitive the standard web UI was right out of the box. Daniel stated “it was simple to add the datasources they needed including LabTech (now Automate), QuickBooks, Quosal (now Sell), and ConnectWise Manage. And having all of our data in one product that was easy to adopt was a game changer!” As Kite Technology Group added additional tools, such as SmileBack, and processes like EOS, they were able to continue building out and fine tuning their dashboards, reports, and goal lists through BrightGauge. What BrightGauge has helped Kite Technology Group accomplish Daniel said BrightGauge has been the cornerstone of KiteTech’s business intelligence ever since they first adopted it in 2016. In the beginning, they were only using BrightGauge dashboards to help their teams keep a handle on service metrics, such as number of open tickets, unassigned tickets, and aging tickets. These kinds of metrics are particularly helpful to the dispatchers and arm them with the data they need to assigned or reassigned tickets efficiently. The dashboards also helped KiteTech’s engineers stay on top of tasks, time entries, and helped them to better prioritize their tickets. By utilizing dashboards, team leads also knew where their support was needed and that enabled them to proactively prevent tickets from aging unnecessarily. As a result, Kite Technology Group has been able to drastically improve their SLA adherence metrics. Daniel said once they saw the success they were having in the service team, they started to spread their BrightGauge footprint into other areas of the business like NOC, Sales, Marketing, and Finance. Eventually they started making use of Goal Lists for their weekly EOS check ins, which has been instrumental in helping them achieve their company objectives. Kite Technology Group now uses Goal Lists at all levels of the organization for their EOS scorecards and Rocks. Today, every department of the company has dashboards and goal lists to look at, and every single individual in the company has multiple goals for which they are responsible. This added level of transparency and accountability has propelled Kite Technology Group's growth and has helped them garner happy customers. In fact, Kite Technology Group's 5 star google rating illuminates just how happy their customers are! Connected Datasources: ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate, SmileBack, QuickBooks, and OneDrive Top 5 KPIs: Billable Utilization Team-Wide Billable Hours Scheduled Tickets/Hours Billable Labor Revenue Revenue from Opportunities (Won and Expected)

For most Managed Service Providers, sales is the cornerstone of growth. As such, developing a solid sales pipeline for stable recurring profit is paramount. As part of a proactive process for a well-managed sales pipeline, you need good data entry practices and good data visibility. This is where dashboards come in! Creating a sales pipeline dashboard can help you analyze lead quality, sales success rates, and enable you to provide valuable data for reviewing and improving your process. For the May Dashboard of the month, we have featured a Company Sales Pipeline dashboard inspired by May's user showcase webinar, Powerful Dashboards to Grow your Sales Pipeline with D.J. Hanen, the senior director at Five Star Technology Solutions. The Company Sales pipeline dashboard is designed for the sales manager and should be checked weekly or biweekly and used in team meetings. This dashboard can also be cloned and filtered for individual sales representatives so each sales rep can better manage their own pipeline. Company Pipeline - view here. Here are some featured metrics: Deals in the Pipeline - This snapshot gauge can track trends related to how many leads your team is bringing in over time. Sales Funnel - This gauge tracks leads as they move through the customer journey. It usually covers several sales stages that equate to your prospects' awareness, interest, decision-making, and action stages. A healthy pipeline resembles a funnel where a larger amount of qualified leads are at the top portion of that funnel. Past Due and Missing Revenue - This set of gauges is all about keeping good data by managing past due activities and opportunities, and making sure opportunities past the lead stage have an estimated revenue set. Won vs Lost Opportunities - Tracking what percentage of your leads are lost can help you fine tune your lead generation process, better determine your ideal client profile, and help you implement different sales techniques where needed. Company Pipeline Gauges - Across several gauges looking at different time frames, these metrics look at the sales funnel in a more granular way. They include the number of opportunities, the amount of revenue, and the margin in each sales stage. Thank you, D.J., for collaborating with us and sharing insights on your sales process and how you've managed to improve that process to get better sales data overall. Recreate in your BrightGauge Company Sales Pipeline Dashboard (public view link) Company Sales Pipeline Dashboard 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!

The client onboarding process is an opportunity for you to instill trust and confidence in your services to your new clients. Even though a successful onboarding can lay the groundwork for a positive, long-term relationship, many MSPs find themselves struggling with unforeseen mishaps and miscommunications. With such a high stakes moment in your client relationship, you'll want to ensure your business shines by setting up a system that predicts and avoids major pitfalls altogether! One of the best things an MSP can do to set themselves up for success during this critical time is to check, double check, and audit their work. For the April Report of the month, we have featured an onboarding audit report inspired by April's user showcase webinar, Motivating your Teams to Meet Company Objectives with Anne Schoolcraft, President at a Couple of Gurus and a professional EOS implementer. A Couple of Gurus is an award-winning IT services company that helps world-changing organizations with Managed IT services, managed cybersecurity, cloud solutions, IT consulting, and more. And as a professional EOS implementer, Anne helps entrepreneurs get more of what they want from their businesses, by helping them implement a system of simple, practical tools. The onboarding audit report was designed to be run at the tail end of the onboarding period and works as a proactive assessment so your team can double check their work before they've completed the onboarding process. This will help you identify potential problem areas like critical items that your team may have missed and items your customers should address before onboarding is completed. Onboarding Audit - view here. Here are some featured metrics: All Managed Machines - By seeing how many machines are being reported on in your RMM tool, you can cross check what you quoted the client and ensure they are set up to be billed properly. You can also make sure all devices are reported on as configurations in your PSA. Anti Virus protection audit - Allows you to check whether antivirus was successfully enabled on all devices. Configuration Expiration details - Use these metrics to ensure you have the warranty expiration dates for all devices. Next, review the warranties that are expired or are about to expire. These should be prioritized and you can set that discussion to take place before the onboarding process is over. After Hours Access and Software criticality Configuration Q&A - You can set up custom configurations in ConnectWise Manage to ask your clients questions on how you should handle emergency situations and after hour access to their offices. You can also use configurations to help identify the most business critical software for each of your clients. NOC and Security Tickets - Make sure alert tickets are properly configured and reporting to the right board in your PSA. Thank you, Anne, for collaborating with us and sharing your invaluable insight on setting up a simple and practical report to audit the onboarding process! Recreate in your BrightGauge Onboarding Audit Report (public view link) Onboarding Audit Report 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!

A dispatchers job is to maximize the utilization of the service team. In essence, they need to keep resources busy and ensure every ticket that comes in gets scheduled out and attended to properly. When you're juggling all the nuanced differences across teams and agreements while also making sure to check every field entry for accuracy, things can inevitable fall through the cracks. Having a ticket dispatch dashboard in BrightGauge can help your dispatcher easily pick up the missing pieces and "paint tomorrow green." By using a simplistic design and simplifying your service KPIs, you'll help your dispatcher works as efficiently as possible. For the March Dashboard of the month, we have featured a ticket dispatch board inspired by March's user showcase webinar, Simplifying Service KPIs to Support Rapid Growth with Ken Smith, Chief Operating Officer at 2W Technologies. Ticket Dispatch - view here. The ticket dispatch dashboard is broken out into 3 parts. The first section takes a manage to zero or manage to green approach focusing on priority tickets and important ticket fields that can get overlooked like type, agreement, and configuration. The second section focuses on process and scheduling. A text box is used to provide the steps to take for triaging, dispatching, and escalating tickets. Next, information on upcoming schedules, current ticket assignments, hours worked, and information on whose out of the office proves the perfect supplement for ConnectWise Manage's dispatch portal. The last section provides some high-level metrics to help further understand ticket volumes and gauge the utilization of the team. It includes metrics like same-day resolution percentage, average time to resolution, and tickets per endpoint. Thank you, Ken, for collaborating with us and sharing your straightforward technique to building dashboards to improve operational efficiencies! Recreate in your BrightGauge Ticket Dispatch Dashboard (public view link) Ticket Dispatch Dashboard 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!