The BrightGauge Blog

Most readers probably know what key performance indicators (KPIs) are by now, but just in case: KPIs are performance metrics that you can use to measure the performance of an employee, a team, or a business as a whole. Using KPI tracking, companies can benchmark their performance and progress towards important business goals. KPI tracking can be invaluable for identifying your biggest opportunities for improvement, motivating employees, and driving long-term success for the business. However, that’s only if you’re tracking the right business KPIs. Relying on poorly-chosen key performance indicators can cause more harm than good. One question that some business managers and owners have about KPIs is: “What are the worst KPIs to track for my company?” There are a lot of bad KPIs out there that, if used, can actually have a negative effect on employee engagement and overall business performance. Here’s a short list of some of the worst KPIs to track by type, which can help you spot a bad KPI in general. When reviewing this list, it’s important to remember that not all KPIs are equally good or bad for all businesses—some KPIs might work for one company but not another because of inherent differences in how the two operate and what their goals are. Worst KPIs to track: KPIs that are too easy to manipulate Most people want to have their performance recognized and KPI tracking makes for an easy way to get recognition. However, when a KPI is too easy to manipulate, it can lead to people abusing the KPI to artificially inflate their performance. For example, say your business has a call center that dials out to people to make cold sales calls or to follow up with customers who recently made a major purchase. One employee performance metric such a call center might track could be their number of outgoing calls. While this sounds like a good way to track call center activity, it may lead to some employees trying to inflate their numbers by making quick “dial and drop” calls that would never make an actual impact on the business’ goals. This scenario can be mitigated somewhat by tracking related employee KPIs for call centers, such as average time spent on the phone, successful close rate, and revenue per deal. Using these secondary employee performance indicators can help contextualize even a “bad” KPI that could be easily manipulated on its own. Worst KPIs to track: KPIs that are too vague Every KPI used in a business should have an objectively measurable value to go with it. If an employee performance indicator is too vague, employee engagement can easily suffer as your people struggle to meet their goals. For example, say your business had a KPI along the lines of “make the workplace neater” or something else similarly vague. In this instance, employees might clean up their desks and make their workspaces nicer, but still fall short of the goal because there’s no measurable standard. Worse yet, because the criteria for meeting or missing the goal is purely subjective, there’s the risk that some employees might see the evaluation as discriminatory, leading to reduced employee engagement and a whole mess of other problems. Instead, it’s better to set employee performance metrics that have a specific and measurable outcome that creates a clear pass or fail assessment that everyone can understand. This makes KPI tracking easier and more effective in the long run. Worst KPIs to track: KPIs that aren’t relevant to your business or industry Tracking business KPIs should never be a waste of time and effort. In most cases, even a “bad” KPI can at least provide some type of insight into your business operations, even when the data isn’t super useful—though it’s better to focus on better performance metrics whenever possible. However, one of the worst KPI tracking mistakes that a business can make is tracking metrics that aren’t relevant to its operations or industry. This is a mistake that can be easier to make than you might assume. For example, a team leader may accidentally add a KPI to a list without noticing, or decide they want to test out a metric, only to forget about it later. When you’re tracking numerous data sources across multiple dashboards, it’s easy for an irrelevant KPI to slip through the proverbial cracks. One or two of these won’t do much to slow operations. But, over time, they can lead to unnecessary data bloat that makes it harder to track your most important business KPIs. The best solution is to periodically check your KPI lists to identify irrelevant employee performance metrics and remove them. How can I spot bad KPIs? When you’re creating or cleaning your KPI lists, it can help to ask yourself the following questions: Is the KPI relevant to my team or business’ goals? Is the KPI necessary for some kind of regulatory compliance standard? Do my employees have any control over the employee performance metric? Can I easily measure the KPI? Could the KPI be easily abused to twist performance evaluations? Does the KPI establish a specific and easy to understand performance goal? Does this business metric indicate what I really want to know better than other related KPIs? Can I set goals with this KPI that can be met in a reasonable amount of time? If the answer to most of these questions is “yes,” then odds are it’s a good KPI. If the answer to all of these questions is “no,” then you may want to reconsider using that performance metric. Need help optimizing and tracking your KPIs to improve employee motivation, engagement, and productivity? Reach out to the BrightGauge team today to learn more!

As a BrightGauge user, you probably have multiple datasources you connect with. Many MSPs use a PSA like ConnectWise, an RMM like Datto, and a financial tool like Quickbooks to stay on top of all their important metrics. BrightGauge simplifies the way you monitor your data by putting all these metrics in one easy-to-access place. But did you know that, with BrightGauge, you can actually combine data from your different integrations into one super-powered gauge? It’s called data mashup and it’s pretty good if we do say so ourselves. What is a data mashup? The data mashup feature allows you to combine multiple sets of information and display them together for easy comparison. The first thing you should know is that this feature is only available to our users on the Enterprise Plan (if you want to upgrade your plan, here’s how to do it).  The second thing to note is that there are two types of mashups: dataset and datasource. How do I create data mashups? The method for making a data mashup varies depending on whether you're mashing up datasets or datasources.   Dataset mashups let you combine two or more datasets into a single gauge by layering the datasets together. For example, perhaps you’d like to see how many tickets each technician is resolving and how much time is being entered by that technician. That’s a dataset mashup that puts those metrics side by side.   Here's an example of a dataset mashup:   Datasource mashups are really similar to dataset mashups, but are pulled from two or more sources. Let’s say you use ConnectWise Manage and SmileBack. The data mashup feature would allow you to pull in metrics from both of those tools into one seamless gauge. When monitoring something like Tickets Resolved and CSAT by Tech, this feature is essential.   Here's an example of a datasource mashup:   BrightGauge makes it easy to create both dataset and datasource mashups by allowing you to easily define different datasets and/or datasources to combine. Simply select the datasets or datasources you want to use and plug them into a single data dashboard.   The bar charts shown above are only one type of data mashup display. Depending on your needs or preferences, you can also create funnel charts, dials, circle graphs, or many more displays. What are the benefits of the data mashup feature? Combining your datasets or datasources will allow you to gain more powerful insights than if you were to track each piece of data separately. In some instances, it can even give you insights that you would not have seen without mashing up your data. Anything that makes your dashboards even stronger is going to help you make better business decisions that impact your bottom line. Above, we showed you what it would look like to see tickets resolved versus hours entered by technician. As a business manager, imagine using this gauge to make decisions about your team’s performance. You could use it to track multiple aspects of an employee's performance, then use that information to help them improve their productivity. For example, you could pull some ticket statistics and member data to create a technician utilization chart:  An example of how to use a data mashup You may discover that one technician’s ratio of hours entered to tickets resolved isn’t adding up. They’re entering way too much time but not resolving many tickets within that time frame. Armed with this insight, you could approach that technician to see if something is going on that’s preventing them from answering more tickets. Or, if this is a pattern that’s developed over time, you may discover that this technician is no longer a right fit for your team. Or, you may even find that your team is overloaded and you need to add another member to your team. It's possible that this particular employee is being made to handle extra-complicated issues because that's their field of expertise and others can't handle it—leaving them to handle more time-consuming tasks than their peers. These are insights that you simply may have missed had you been tracking the data separately. By combining data in a data mashup, you can more easily identify these kinds of issues. This allows you to take the appropriate action to improve your team's efficiency, productivity, and results. BrightGauge data dashboards were designed to help you make sense of your KPIs and to help you make better and faster business decisions. Data mashups are like a dashboard superpower that make you an even stronger business leader.   You can upgrade your plan today to gain access to this great feature.  

Modern enterprises need modern solutions to their business process workflow challenges—at least if they want to remain competitive. Business management software represents a major opportunity for enterprises to smooth out their process workflows. However, what is business management software, really? There are many kinds of business software programs out there for managing different types of processes, such as: Sales Finance Human Resources (HR) Service Supply Chain These broad categories of business processes can be broken down into hundreds of different specific items, and some functions can even have a bit of overlap. This, in turn, means that the list of business management software that a company can use is virtually endless. So, which types of business management software should your organization use? Here are a few examples that you can start with, though this is not a comprehensive list by any stretch of the imagination. 1: Business Invoicing Programs Being able to effectively manage billing/collections is a necessity for any business. After all, if your business doesn’t get paid, the budget for funding projects, payroll, and maintenance is going to run dry fairly quickly. Business invoicing programs help companies with this basic financial task. While the specific capabilities of these bookkeeping solutions will vary from one vendor to the next, some common ones include: The ability to create new invoices—sometimes even automating the billing process. Online payment portals that can accept credit cards or other online payment platforms such as PayPal. Customer recordkeeping to help verify what amount of money is owed on each account. Tax data collection to automate filing processes for the business so customer payments are accurately reported. These are just a few of the potential features a business invoicing program might have. The big benefit of this software is that it helps to minimize late or missed payments while increasing the accuracy of financial records and projections. 2: Asset Management Software Managing the supply chain is an enormous task—one that only gets more difficult as the organization grows. Asset management software programs help to track and manage inventory, automate ordering processes, and provide critical insights into spending patterns. Of these capabilities, tracking spending patterns and invoices can be surprisingly important. Largely because it: Makes it easier to identify wasteful spending; and Helps to spot anomalous orders and invoices that indicate fraud. With asset management software, businesses can ensure that their supply chains operate efficiently by minimizing waste while avoiding shortages of critical resources. 3: Project and Task Management Software Keeping employees on task and helping them prioritize their efforts is crucial for ensuring efficiency and productivity. Project and task management software solutions, like Basecamp, JIRA, or Teamwork help companies do just that. The capabilities of these project and task management software programs do vary, but some of the basics include: Tracking total time spent on specific tasks; Logging which tasks are waiting to be worked on, in progress, or have been completed for a specific work period; and Displaying project details or requirements for an assignment to be considered complete. Project-oriented teams in an organization frequently use these features to review progress and identify issues on a daily or weekly basis. For example, if the time estimates for a given project aren’t matching actual time worked, that could be an indication that the project was under-scoped and needs to be adjusted. Data from these project and task management software solutions could potentially be fed into a key performance indicator (KPI) tracking dashboard for use during employee evaluations, as well. This would help you track employee performance and improve your human resources management. Speaking of which… 4: Human Resources Management Solutions HR is at the core of many modern organizations. Being able to effectively manage, train, and reward employees can mean the difference between having a strong, highly-engaged workforce and struggling with disengagement and poor-quality work. Human resources management solutions come all kinds of flavors, depending on the HR workflows you want to improve. Examples of HR solutions include: Employee training platforms; Benefits tracking solutions; and Employee assessment solutions. The specific benefits of human resources software can vary from one solution to the next depending on their features. However, common advantages of using HR solutions effectively include improving employee retention, productivity, and engagement throughout your organization. One type of business software that can be used for your HR processes—specifically to help track and improve employee performance—is KPI tracking software. Platforms such as BrightGauge make it easy to visualize and study your employee performance metrics so you can help your people realize their full potential. With employee data dashboards, you can easily identify opportunities for improvement and recognize/reward top performers in your organization. Want to get started on maximizing the potential of your people? Reach out to BrightGauge today!

Question: How much time does your business lose every month on redundant tasks? The cost varies from business to business, but IT service providers know downtime translates to lost profits because it diverts resources away from revenue-generating tasks.    There are several ways companies can reduce the amount of lost time their teams experience on a weekly or monthly basis, such as tracking time to non-profitable tasks or time lost due to insufficient planning. However, one of the most simple changes a company can make is to use technology built for their needs.    For instance, MSPs and IT providers require software that can manage tickets, equipment requests, and various recurring or one-off bills. If a business is using software not designed with those features, then the tools limited functionality is going to impede teams and create time-sucking manual workarounds that eat into their revenue-driving activities.   Since decreasing the amount of time a business loses every month can impact their bottom line, here are a few things to do to limit the time spent on non-productive activities.   Find software that automates manual tasks   Time sunk on administrative tasks comes in several forms, from equipment breaking or failures in technology, but it can also include employees spending time and energy on internal tasks.    MSPs fall victim to manually completing tasks instead of working with software to automate repetitive processes for them. Many times they even hire interns or spend weekends on manual tasks, instead of using a tool to automate those tasks.   Why pay someone to do a task that could be automated? It saves time, and time is money, and $10/hour x 8 hours a day adds up quickly. Spending a little money every month to automate those pesky tasks that eat up one’s day is a great way to decrease costs as a business and will usually be cheaper in the long run.    Make sure tools integrate with one another  Business tools must be compatible and integrate to automate as much work as possible. Anytime tools do not integrate with each other; someone is going to have to have to bridge the gap and manually transfer the data; otherwise, there is a risk of something being missed.    For example, if a business is using a specific CRM or PSA tool to track work via service tickets, the details from that ticket must be carried over from CRM or PSA to the software used for billing clients. But if using a billing software designed for retail, or even a different service-based industry, details between the two systems may be lost if they can’t transfer data between one another.   Working with tools designed for IT professionals and MSPs means better integrations, which saves time and money by automating more data and requiring less hands-on management. Final thoughts on saving time   Several things cause businesses to lose time every month on non-profitable tasks, and some are unavoidable. But automations and integrations are big ones and relatively easy to fix. Everything that increases operations and internal management of a team translates to better customer service, better response times, and people being able to get their tasks done as much as possible.   To learn about the right tools to use, read more here.   Ryan Goodman is one of the Founders of ConnectBooster and serves as its President. He primarily focuses on working with the sales team to develop their process and partners with MSPs to help them with their cash flow issues.

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial for a business to measure and enhance success. Data dashboards help to make tracking important performance metrics easier for leaders who want to improve their company’s competitiveness. What is a data dashboard? Which types of data dashboards should you use in your organization? Here’s a quick explanation, followed by some data dashboard examples you can use for your business: What is a data dashboard? A data dashboard is a collection of important KPI information that is assembled into one convenient display. The specific performance metrics will vary between different types of data dashboards and the goals of the organization—a data dashboard for a sales team will be very different than the one used by a service delivery team, after all. Data dashboards can double as a motivational tool for some organizations, especially when those dashboards are put up in a display that everyone can see. Dashboards can also be incredibly useful for managers in their one on one meetings with team members—providing easy access to important performance data for assessing employees. What types of data dashboards should I use? There are many different types of data dashboards that you could create for your organization. Naturally, not all data dashboards are going to be useful for all organizations. Your company may need a specific type of data dashboard to track information for a particular goal or initiative. So, when looking at the following list of data dashboard examples, keep in mind your own business’ goals and needs, then use that information to determine whether each of these dashboards can benefit you: Data dashboard example #1: Employee dashboards This is one of the most common types of data dashboards used by every business—employee performance dashboards. However, while virtually any business can use employee dashboards, the specific KPIs that they track may vary from one company to the next. Even employee dashboards within the same company might differ depending on the employee’s specific role in the company. Two examples of KPIs that you might track on an employee dashboard include: Ticket Close Rate. For a service team member or call center employee, you might track how many service tickets that employee closes in a given week to benchmark their performance compared to their peers. Billable Project Hours. For project team members, measuring how much time each team member spends on a project helps with accurately billing projects and estimating employee efficiency. Data dashboard example #2: Sales team dashboards The sales team plays a key role in your business’ success by closing sales deals and building relationships with customers/clients. Tracking sales team performance metrics helps you identify strengths and weaknesses so you can improve their skills as a team. However, instead of tracking an individual employee’s performance, sales team data dashboards provide a broader scope of information, focusing on the team as a whole with metrics such as: Overall Sales Funnel. This performance metric helps to visualize the count of opportunities created as well as closed/won deals. Looking at the last 30 days, you can see how your sales team is performing and compare it to their yearly averages and goals. Total Pipeline Dollars. How much money is sitting in your pipeline, waiting to close? Tracking your total pipeline dollars, as well as how far along each deal in your pipeline is, can help you predict how much revenue your business can expect in the next month. Tracking the rate at which you close deals on top of this metric can help to further refine your income estimates. Data dashboard example #3: Client services dashboards For B2B (business to business) service-oriented companies, being able to meet contractual service level agreements (SLAs) with clients can mean the difference between sustained success and losing market share. Tracking KPIs related to these SLAs is a must for B2B companies. While the specific KPIs you will track on your client services dashboard will vary depending on the nature of the services you provide, a couple of potential performance metrics you might use include: New Tickets. A measure of the number of unresolved tickets that have not been responded to yet. Can be combined with tickets currently open to showcase how much work is being generated, which helps to put response time and other metrics into perspective. Tickets Waiting on Customer. A measure of how many open tickets are waiting on input from the customer before they can be worked on. Putting this into a report for your clients helps encourage them to respond to inquiries more quickly, which allows your team to provide faster service. Data dashboard example #4: Financial performance dashboards Rather than measuring the performance of any one team or team member, financial performance data dashboards help you get a picture of your company’s financial health at a glance. This can be crucial for spotting issues that threaten the future viability of your company. A couple of financial performance metrics you might track for your company include: Past Due Receivables Amount. Accounts receivable is critical because it helps you set an expectation for your income from clients within a set period of time. Past due accounts receivable highlights which clients you need to increase your outreach with. Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. Abbreviated EBITDA, this metric helps establish your overall profitability and is often used to calculate things such as employee bonuses. Do you need help creating comprehensive and effective data dashboards to help your business achieve maximum performance? Reach out to the team at BrightGauge to learn more!

  When we added Calculated Metrics, we wanted to bring the ability to easily calculate formulas to our Gauge Builder. Using this tool, you can create powerful MSP Metrics like Support Kill Rate, Tickets Per Endpoint, and Service Gross Margin.   This video shows you how to easily add layers and create calculated metrics. If you have questions about doing this within your BrightGauge, reach out to our support team.   For more tutorial videos, check us out on YouTube.

Even though BrightGauge can be easy to use, data is a complicated matter, so we know there will be times when you need a helping hand. Our Support Team’s got your back.   Support is at the very core of what we do because our founders come from an IT Support background and they know how important it is to have a solid structure in place. In fact, it’s not all that uncommon for Brian, our CEO, to spend time in Support, responding to tickets himself.   We’ve got a lot of resources to help you when you’re in a bind, but we’ve rounded up our top Support FAQs to make things a bit easier.   Top 14 BrightGauge Support questions   Is BGS GDPR compliant? Yes. We’ve adhered to the compliance regulations set forth by the EU as of May 25th. Read more about our GDPR update here and by visiting our security page.   Why am I receiving a "No Access" error after logging in? This error can occur in two cases: You have tried logging into the wrong subdomain You have logged in directly to a dashboard that you don’t have access to within your account To address both scenarios, please ensure you log in directly to your company’s subdomain: “https://yourcompany.brightgauge.co”   Why is my statement missing from the billing portal? A statement may sometimes not generate within the billing portal if the payment was submitted late. In these cases, the payment will be reflected in the next statement cycle. But, if you need a copy before then, just reach out to our Support Team and we’ll send one over.   How often do gauges sync? When a gauge is placed on a dashboard, that sets off the dashboard sync frequency for the dataset that the gauge is built from. This will continue as long as that dashboard is up and active in a web browser. A dataset’s dashboard sync frequency can be viewed under the Dataset settings page, or by clicking the “vertical ellipsis” icon on the top left hand corner of any gauge up on a dashboard and selecting “Gauge Info”.   Gauges will also sync automatically when placed on a scheduled report. 1 HOUR prior to the report being generated, the datasets powering those gauges will be synced.   If you want to do an off schedule sync, you can go to the Dataset settings page, click on the dataset, and hit “Sync”. Read our Dataset Syncing doc for more info.   Why is my gauge showing incorrect data even though my datasets are syncing correctly? This is the most common question we receive via our Support Desk! The vast majority of the time, these data discrepancies are due to missing filters or incorrect filters being applied. BrightGauge pulls in raw information from your database and must be filtered down to represent the exact metrics you are looking for. For example: with PSA integrations, all boards/queues are pulled into BrightGauge by default. If you are specifically looking for a metric just from a ‘Support’ board/queue, you have to apply a filter stating that.     Filters exist for date, text, number, and boolean fields. Given the large number of fields and possible filter configurations for them, we understand it may be tricky to remember how to use them, so check out this Filters Explained doc that breaks it down.   Filters can be applied on all BrightGauge gauges, dashboards, reports, and goals.   Why am I receiving an error for my Agent/Datasource? One of the hiccups our users encounter when connecting to BrightGauge using an on-premise datasource is setting up our agent within their unique network environment. As all of us within this industry know, no two networks are identical. Due to this, there are a few common errors that tend to arise during this configuration process. We’ve put together and are constantly updating this Common Agent/Datasource Connectivity Issues doc to help you troubleshoot these common errors.   Are there different permissions that can be assigned for BrightGauge users? Certainly! Our 3 different user types are Admins, Analysts, and Viewers. Admins and Analysts are paid users with hands-on ability to create content within our app, while Viewers are essentially read-only users that are free and available with all subscriptions. Our User Accounts knowledge base article outlines the differences in more detail.   When setting up a client report, must one report be created per client/customer? One of the neatest and most convenient features of our client reports is the ability to create a “one to many” report for your clients. In just a few simple steps, you can create one report and select a desired list of clients who will receive a personalized email with a copy of the report filtered down to only their company’s data. Taking advantage of this feature not only saves time when creating/configuring the reports, but also when editing or tweaking them. Changes only need to be made in one spot, but it will be reflected on what all clients see on their individual report.   Check out our Client Reporting 101 doc or watch our free Client Reporting Best Practices webinar for more information.   Why are my client reports blank? If all the gauges pertaining to the same datasource are blank within a specific client report, chances are the Client Mapping for that customers datasource is incorrect. Client Mappings are what we use to automatically filter client reports, but they need to be configured correctly in order to work. When configuring a mapping, the client’s name must be entered EXACTLY as it appears in the corresponding datasource database (this includes spaces and icons). Any small difference will result in the gauge being filtered incorrectly.   To ensure the correct name is entered, we advise using the search function within the mapping. If you’d like to double check clients name in a database, you can check it directly within the datasource itself, or create a gauge within BrightGauge using a dataset for that datasource, and set the dimension to use the corresponding company name field.   Read more about Client Mapping here.   How are Feature Requests handled? Earlier this year, we removed our Feature Request Forum (for good reasons!). Here’s a detailed blog post all about it: https://blog.brightgauge.com/removing-our-feature-request-forum   What has just been released?  You may have noticed that we’ve recently added in-app messages highlighting our new and exciting releases. But we also cover them in much more detail in our Knowledge Base under Product Updates.  We release constantly (daily) so we just summarize the customer impacting features on a weekly and monthly basis.   What other datasources are being integrated into BrightGauge? ALL of them possible :)  Okay, that was a broad statement but 2018 is the year of massive integrations. We have already released 7 new ones and we are only halfway through the year. All the data that matters to your business is what we’re interested in integrating.   Check out our full list of integrations.   Can I speak with someone live about support? Yes, of course! We just ask that we schedule it ahead of time to allow us to fully assess the issue and gather as much information as possible via the ticket. We have a slim (but awesome) support team supporting 1,000s of users so we prefer to schedule something so that we’re all fully focused and prepped.   What are your typical response times for support? During normal business hours, which are 8:30am - 6pm EST on weekdays, we are usually pretty quick to respond because the team is actively monitoring the queue. But we know we have an awesome global user base working outside our support hours and when you average all ticket responses, even including nights and weekends, we’re still averaging 2.8 hours (significantly below the industry average of 20.3 hours).   Have a question we haven’t covered? Make sure you’re taking advantage of all our awesome support resources or reach out to our team for more!  

Motivating your employees can be the secret to achieving lasting success as a company. A workforce that is actively engaged with their work is more likely to go the extra mile, be more productive, and want to stay with the company for longer (improving employee retention). All of these factors can contribute to the success of the business and make it more competitive. However, mastering employee motivation can be difficult at the best of times. There are any number of variables in the workplace culture that can impact employee performance and motivation. So, here’s a list of simple tips and tricks for how to motivate employees. 1: Consider how leadership actions impact workplace culture The actions of leaders in an organization can have a massive impact on workplace culture and employee motivation. For example, if you’ve ever been told “Do as I say, not as I do,” odds are good that you know how frustrating it is to be held to a higher standard than others unfairly. So imagine how your employees might feel if they see leadership team members getting away with behaviors that they would be reprimanded (or even terminated) for. A workplace culture that seems to encourage double standards can quickly create actively disengaged employees. On the other hand, having leaders exemplify the behaviors that you want your employees to model, and showing employees that everyone will be treated equally when it comes to both rewards and consequences, can help to improve employee engagement. 2: Take some time for 1:1 meetings with employees How leaders communicate with their teams can also have a major impact on employee motivation and performance. As Kevin Plank, the founder of Under Armour, said in an article for Inc.: “I listened to everyone’s opinions, and, without fail, they’d bring up things I hadn’t thought of. More important, my team members knew they were part of the process and that their voices mattered… Employees are more motivated when they feel needed, appreciated, and valued.” By taking employee suggestions and implementing them, Plank was able to influence his company’s workplace culture. This created an environment where employees were encouraged to share their thoughts—helping them to be more engaged and motivated. Holding 1:1 meetings with team members to provide feedback and collect ideas can make employees feel more appreciated—making these meetings an invaluable tool for motivating your employees. 3: Use visible data dashboards to encourage healthy competition Creating some data dashboards featuring employee performance statistics and putting them where all employees can see them can help to create some healthy competitiveness. When your teams see these “leaderboards” of who is doing what the most effectively, it can spur them to try harder and be more competitive so they can reach the top spot. This trick for motivating your employees borrows from the concept of online leaderboards in video games—making this a type of “gamification” strategy. By providing open recognition for strong employee performance, and attaching a “score” to employee efforts, you can increase employee engagement and create a workplace culture that promotes excellence. However, it’s important to employ this tactic carefully. Making sure that the performance metrics tracked on the public data dashboard are both relevant to your business’ goals and are within your employees’ ability to control. Otherwise, employees may waste effort on worthless activities to boost the wrong numbers or become demotivated. 4: Create opportunities for employees to learn new skills for the company Many employees are looking for opportunities to move to a new role or get promoted. However, they may not currently have the right skills to move into a new position. Without education opportunities, these employees will stagnate and, eventually, leave to find new opportunities in a company where they’ll be given such opportunities. Providing an employee training program that can give employees new skills that allow them to take on different roles can be an excellent way to motivate them. This not only lets employees try new things, it creates a chance for your company to find promising talent to promote from within. When employees feel as though their employer is willing to invest in them, they’re more likely to stay—increasing employee retention. To maximize the effectiveness of an employee training program, it helps to: Ensure interested employees have the time to pursue the training—people who are already working full time may not be able to squeeze in extra time for training. Provide incentives to complete the optional training—such as providing pay increases or other bonuses to people willing to learn skills the company needs. Publicly recognize employees who learn vital skills—doing so helps advertise the learning program and reward employees who complete a course. Motivating your employees can be difficult. However, using a few simple tricks can help increase employee engagement. Have questions about how you can pick the right employee performance metrics to track for your public data dashboards? Reach out to the team at BrightGauge for advice!

Whether you’re a small business or an enterprise company, generating a steady (and improving) gross margin for your services is essential to a healthy business. When starting or managing a business, there are many KPIs to track. At BrightGauge, we always recommend you lean towards simple as too much data can be overwhelming. An often overlooked but essential KPI to watch is Services Gross Margin. So, why is gross margin so important for MSPs? Simple. Services Gross Margin represents cash being generated to cover all those operating expenses. Your sales team, the office space, marketing efforts – all covered by Services Gross Margin. Higher gross margin means more money to invest in your business and accelerate growth. Calculating Services Gross Margin Here are some definitions to keep in mind when calculating Services Gross Margin: Total Services Revenue is any and all revenue your services team delivers. This would include both Managed Services Revenue and Professional Services (consulting, project). You can calculate different margin rates per type of services (more on that later). Cost Of Services is the total direct costs associated with delivering services, which not only includes the obvious base salary, incentives of your services team, but also all the direct costs. That includes, parking, mileage, laptops, software, benefits, etc. Over the years we’ve heard different variations for how to calculate Services Gross Margin. For the purposes of this post we are going to use this formula: (Total Services Revenue - Cost of Services) / Total Services Revenue   An example of how to track Services Gross Margin in BrightGauge Using Services Gross Margin at Our MSP Before we formed BrightGauge, we had our own Miami-based MSP, Compuquip. Our typical Services Gross Margin hovered around 42% - 48%. This was well below industry best practices according to most. We were a Technically Led Sales Organization. Therefore, our cost of engineers was higher than normal and our margins tended to be lower. When we broke out the services by line item, we usually ended up with an average margin on Managed Services of approximately 40% - 45% and Project or Professional Services at 50% - 60% range. To see a more detailed breakdown of the types of revenue please visit: Revenue By Category. We believe anything above 50% is a great target margin and if you can move the percentage up to 60% you are best in class. If this number starts to trend downward, you could be approaching a cash flow problem. That’s why it’s important to start measuring and tracking these types of financial KPIs on a regular basis. Once you decide on those metrics that matter to you, start setting goals to guide you and your team. Interested in More? To learn more about gross margin and other metrics that matter for MSPs, download the full white paper here. If you already know what KPIs matter to you but you’re struggling keeping track of everything, reach out to us and we’ll help.     Note: This post was originally published in August 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

We’re excited to welcome Christopher Turpin to the team as a Customer Support Specialist! Join us in learning more about the newest member of our growing BrightGauge family…   In the beginning   Christopher calls Plantation, Florida his hometown, but was lucky enough to experience the best of both worlds - splitting his childhood between New York and Miami and getting a taste of what few native Floridians do: seasons.    While in New York, Christopher also spent a lot of time with his grandparents, up in Syracuse.    When it came time to choose a university, Christopher opted for warmer weather and stayed put in South Florida, attending Florida International University, making him a proud Golden Panther.    In 2017, Christopher attended Wyncode (like many other BrightGaugers!) in an effort to better understand how apps work behind the scenes and in hopes to one day build his own app.    Most recently, he put what he learned at Wyncode to work as a Junior Developer at a local startup company called Wahii.    Joining BrightGauge   Through his peers from Wyncode, Christopher learned of an opportunity at BrightGauge and was drawn to the idea of working closely on an app.   The entire interview process proved to be such a great experience, making him eager to join the team. In his words, “Everyone made me feel at ease and the atmosphere was so down to earth, it was like everyone was family.” Yeah, we feel that way, too!    Christopher is looking forward to helping out BrightGauge customers, as well as expanding his SQL knowledge.    Out of office   *in case you couldn't tell, this is a throwback photo! :)   When not in the office, Christopher entertains himself with his many interests, like discovering new music, watching a great movie, or binging on an addictive series. You can also find him playing video games and soccer.    Heads up: Christopher is a self-proclaimed sneakerhead, so if you know of a good spot to check out, let him know!