Turn your CRM up a notch

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 and reporting can provide data visualization to help MSPs with this challenge. To illustrate, we sought to feature the work of a partner who has become a pro in project management.   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)