How to Find Real-Time Time Entry Information You can Depend On
Danger: (Will Robinson!)
If Advanced Global has written and scheduled any Live Report in your Autotask database, they're set to expire on Dec 31st. The reason is to force a year-end exercise where all scheduled reports are reviewed, and a proactive decision is made as to whether they stay or go.
It used to be that Live Reports would stay active until the scheduled end date. Now they disappear after the last time they run. "You dastardly fiend! (Robin) So, we recommend doing the review in November, not December.
This is just a heads up and an opportunity to say we’re happy to write a Customer Live Report for you – the cost is $450 per report.
When it comes to getting information out of the PSA software, no PSA does it better than Autotask. Autotask provides three levels of information reporting:
1) Standard reports that come with the software
2) Data warehouse where a SQL writer has full access to the data
3) Live Reports, a novice can learn to write reports over a period time.
Even with a great report writer like Live Reports, you may find:
· Knowing where to locate data you can trust is a struggle
· Knowing how your results stack up against your peers is a struggle
· Knowing what the numbers are trying to tell you is a struggle
· Knowing how to apply the information to drive Service Delivery improvements is a struggle
Though unfortunate, and likely of small consolation to you, we want you to know you’re not alone.
I remember the day a Service Manager turned to me and asked me, “With all that data in front of me, (Dashboards and Live Reports), how do I know which was the important data that merited my time and energy to do something with?”
I was dumbfounded. I had no idea! Looking at the dashboards, there was a lot of nice-to-know info, and the Live Reports provided a lot of data, but it was just that – data, not information. I saw no actionable Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that merited his attention. Can you relate? Is this your situation? Are you looking at the "nice-to-know" info in the dashboards, or the mounds of data in Live Reports, with eyes glazed over, not knowing what to do?
The KPI process for IT Managed Service Providers
Never fear... Advanced Global is here! We'll guide you through how to:
· Find the KPI data
· Benchmark your practice against industry standards
· Analyze the data to see what it’s saying about the performance
· Apply the information to drive Service Delivery improvements
The One important Metric:
Several months ago, four MSP Owners each pushed me to answer the same question: "What’s the one thing I need to look at to know things are operating as they should be?" Once again, I was stumped. Though we’ve gained a lot of significant KPI info over the last five years, and Advanced Global has developed a portfolio of Advanced Live Reports that’s second to none, we hadn’t boiled it down to One Thing.
As I wrestled with the complexity of the MSP’s world, looking for the One Thing that mattered, it finally dawned on me! It depends on the following:
1) The MSP’s Service Delivery maturity level
2) The role of the MSP employee
3) The department in question (Accounting, Sales, or Service Delivery)
Not all metrics are created equal
To make matters worse, we’re tripping over hundreds of data points. We just don’t realize some reports exist to help make Strategic Decisions, while some are tools we use to manage the noise, and some others still are performance indicators. But which ones?
KPIs by Role:
So, let's look at some KPIs for different Roles in the Company:
· Owner – Profitability
· Sales:
o Business Developer - # of new customer logos
o Account Manager - % of MRR per Year
· Operations Manager – Mean Time To Resolve or MTTR (process throughput)
· Project Manager: earned value
· Service Manager:
o Resource Utilization (Inventory of Billable Hours Available)
o Reactive Hours per Endpoint per Month or RHEM (Operational Efficiency)
· Service Coordinator: SLA Performance
· Techs: Real-Time Time Entry performance
6 steps to successful Autotask Live Report writing:
Here are the six steps I use when writing any Live Report:
1) Start with a mockup.
2) Find the needed fields, so I know I’m in the right category
3) Write as much of the report as an express report
4) Convert the express report to a standard report when needed
5) Finish the report
6) Publish and schedule the report to run when needed
Mockups:
Each step presents its own challenge. Step 1, for example: "Start with a mockup," comes down to not knowing what you don’t know. It’s hard to start with the end in- mind if you can't envision the final output. For that, Google comes in handy as well as asking your peers, or looking at the Autotask System Reports that come with the Live Report software.
Categories:
The hardest part of writing Live Reports is this second step, knowing what category to write them in. Below are some suggestions for the key metrics listed above:
· Profitability: billing items
· # of New Customers: contacts and accounts
· % of MRR: recuring services contracts
· MTTR: service desk
· Earned Value: tasks
· Resource Utilization: resource productivity
· RHEM (requires three reports merged together)
o # of Managed Service tickets & Total Worked Hours: service desk
o Device Endpoints: configuration items
o End Users: contacts and accounts
· SLA Performance Report: service desk
· RTTE: resource productivity
Express Reports:
I start all reports as a express report for one simple reason: The speed at which you can explore and make changes is simply faster at the express level. You need to pick from drop-downs at the standard report level and then wait until the Live Report view refreshes. At the express report level, it's just a matter of clicking on a tab – no-refresh wait.
Using this process of starting all reports at the express level is amazing how complicated the Live Reports can be. Many of the same features found in standard reports are available in express reports; they’re just a little bit hidden—things like grouping, functions and formulas. Even calculations in blank columns can be added if you know the final layout or the field syntax.
Converting to Standard Report:
Converting an express report to a standard report is easy, and I’ve never had a conversion fail and leave me in a lurch. However, it’s a good idea to save a copy as a safety, not in the event the conversion fails, but if you screw something up, it’s a good rollback point (last known good).
A standard report offers many more features. Plus, it’s more of a WYSIWYG view. More features include grouping by calculation, two-pass calculations, and much, much more. One thing to know about the standard level is don’t shy away from using Excel formulas. Live Reports is not Excel, but so many of the Excel formulas work, even if they’re not listed as such.
Finishing:
Raw data dumps are one thing, but format the report once you have the data, just to make it easier to read. And my favorite is to highlight using conditional formatting any data that’s out of tolerance. While the graphs and charts in Autotask won't look like a ‘Monet', they certainly won’t look nearly as surreal as they would be without basing it on real data that actually makes real sense.
Scheduling and Publishing:
Writing advanced reports is one thing, but automating the process so the reports run automatically, or semi-automatically, is just awesome. You can even send individual reports to members of the team, so they become self-managed.
Summary:
Yes, we’re raving fans of Autotask Live Reports for one simple reason: Autotask Live Reports find the data that we need to drive the MSP business, Service Delivery, and individual performance.
· Advanced Effective Labor Rate
· Advanced RTTE
· Advanced SLA Performance
· Advanced Tech Balanced Score Card
· Advanced Resource Utilization
· Advanced RHEM
· Advanced ___________________ (fill in the blank of what data you would like to find)
We’re happy to hear your Live Report needs and point you in the right direction to write your report or to talk about Advanced Global writing the report for you. Just reply to Info@AGMSPCoaching.com and schedule some time with us.
-Steve & Co
