How successful IT Solution Providers can eliminate guesswork and focus on growth initiatives.

1. CONCLUSION
Getting From
Data to Decisions
How successful IT Solution Providers
can eliminate guesswork and focus on
growth initiatives.
®

2. IMPORTANCE OF METRICS
HARNESSING YOUR DATA
WHAT TO MEASURE
THE IMPORTANCE
OF METRICS
OPERATIONAL VS.
PERFORMANCE METRICS
MAXIMIZING THE IMPACT
Data access and visibility are the keys to understanding why
your business is performing a certain way and to making
better decisions that will improve your operations and
maximize your financial health.
Every year, thousands of IT Service Providers (ITSPs) enter
In its February 2013 IT Service Provider Benchmarking
the market, and every year about 10% of them fail. Often,
Study, Decision Tree Labs found a strong correlation
they lack the tools to effectively manage their operations or
between the use of automated systems by IT Solution
the insight to plan for and achieve success.
Providers (ITSPs) to capture business data and enable
fact-based decision-making, and those with a more
To thrive in today’s competitive economy, it’s not enough
accurate understanding of overall firm performance, market
to simply know whether or not your firm is profitable. Your
opportunities and trends.
CFO needs to understand which clients and contracts are
most profitable. Your service desk manager needs to have
Taking advantage of real-time visibility into the metrics and
the insight to best manage staff schedules and maximize
trends that affect your business takes discipline, but the ROI
employee utilization. The point is, there are dozens of
can be dramatic.
internal and external factors affecting your success
every day.
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ROI OF FACT-BASED
DECISIONS
CONCLUSION
Increasingly, bestin-class providers
actively capture
KPIs to make
more accurate
decisions, meet
internal utilization
goals, and achieve
business growth.

3. IMPORTANCE OF METRICS
HARNESSING YOUR DATA
WHAT TO MEASURE
Harnessing
Your Data
OPERATIONAL VS.
PERFORMANCE METRICS
MAXIMIZING THE IMPACT
ROI OF FACT-BASED
DECISIONS
visibility you need. Many ITSPs are finding that integrated
IT business management platforms with built-in dashboards
and reporting tools make the process easier. Such platforms
automatically aggregate all of your data into a single system,
making it much easier to compile, visualize and use.
Every day your organization creates hundreds, even
thousands, of new data points from dozens of sources
including new tickets created, hours spent servicing each
client, closed sales opportunities, completed invoices
and many more. Some ITSPs use a variety of stand-alone
applications that silo their data in disparate places within
the firm. An integrated IT business management platform
will help you streamline and automate your processes and
ensure the data you need is in one place. The challenge in
both cases is making the data accessible and usable.
Stand-alone commercial business intelligence (BI) and data
Establishing target performance metrics based on past performance (see far right column) allows
you to understand performance capacities, trends and areas for improvement.
mining applications can be configured to sit “on top” of your
systems to help you compile and make sense of your data.
However, they may require significant investment in time
to align your systems and create the type of reports and
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CONCLUSION

4. IMPORTANCE OF METRICS
HARNESSING YOUR DATA
WHAT TO MEASURE
What to Measure
OPERATIONAL VS.
PERFORMANCE METRICS
ROI OF FACT-BASED
DECISIONS
MAXIMIZING THE IMPACT
Look carefully at
the metrics that are
the most important
to your business.
• Percentage of employee hours billed
• Billable hourly rates of various employees
• Average ticket completion time
Every ITSP is unique, with different clients, services,
• Performance by ticket type and priority
revenue models and local market conditions. As you begin
• Service level agreement response and
to harness the power of your own metrics, look carefully at
CONCLUSION
resolution times
those that are most important to your business — especially
where improvements can be made to deliver greater
Tracking these metrics will make it easier to understand your
efficiency or profitability. The following areas are common
trends, balance employee workloads, staff your organization
to most ITSPs and the principles can be extended to the
appropriately, better manage deployments, and make sure
specific metrics that affect your business.
the right employees are working on the right tickets and
tasks. This is where you fine tune your service delivery
Workforce Efficiency
operations and optimize your day-to-day staff management.
Your stock-in-trade is the talent and time of your staff
including engineers, technicians, system integrators and
consultants. To get the most from these limited resources
you need to optimize their utilization, ensure the right people
are working on the right tasks, and capture all of their
billable hours. That means being able to view and assess a
variety of operational and performance metrics against your
At-a-glance visibility into key performance
indicators and trends makes it easier to
quickly spot issues that may need to
be addressed.
target goals, including:
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5. IMPORTANCE OF METRICS
HARNESSING YOUR DATA
WHAT TO MEASURE
Customer Service and
Satisfaction
The IT Service Provider Benchmarking Study found 85% of
respondents ranked customer satisfaction as important to
the health of their businesses, yet only 10% measure it.
This is a troubling disconnect — especially when so many
OPERATIONAL VS.
PERFORMANCE METRICS
MAXIMIZING THE IMPACT
Visibility into your customer feedback can reveal service
delivery problems that need to be addressed in a timely
manner, and will ultimately lead to improved customer
satisfaction, greater value proposition, and higher contract
renewal rates. In other words, by actively monitoring your
metrics for issues and correcting them quickly, you can
stabilize your business and ensure long-term client
renewal rates.
tools are available to help you capture and react to input
from your clients.
Customer satisfaction data can be captured in a number
of different ways — from daily interactions with staff and
tracking call center data, to formal surveys and other
Achieve
methods. Some indicators of client satisfaction include:
• Contract renewal rates
• Post-service survey results
• Change in number of client tickets or service calls
71%
Of companies using a business
management system
submitted over time
• Change in the priority of tickets or service calls
initiated by clients
• Client satisfaction benchmarks against peers
5
90%
Annual contract renewal rates
ROI OF FACT-BASED
DECISIONS
CONCLUSION
Visibility into your
customer feedback
can reveal service
delivery problems
that need to be
addressed in a
timely manner.

6. IMPORTANCE OF METRICS
HARNESSING YOUR DATA
WHAT TO MEASURE
Cash Flow, Revenue and
Profitability
Few data points are as important as your financial metrics.
You need to know exactly what resources it takes to support
OPERATIONAL VS.
PERFORMANCE METRICS
MAXIMIZING THE IMPACT
• Which services are most profitable and which have
the highest costs?
• Where are your revenue shifts over time? For example,
has your firm moved from one-time projects to
managed services?
• Is your sales team closing more or bigger contracts?
your clients and deliver your products and services now and
in the future, and you need to know at a glance where you
Being able to manage your current business is critical, but
are making money and where you are losing it.
to ensure cash flow and plan for the future, you must have
insight into your sales and revenue opportunities. Without
Remember: This is the core of your business and if your
that, you can’t price your services profitably and protect
sales pipeline isn’t flowing and your services aren’t
your margins. Such visibility is critical to the future health of
profitable, the future of your business is at risk. Pay special
your business.
attention to the following:
• Which clients are most profitable?
• Which clients are least profitable?
• Which contract types provide the best revenue and
profit margins over time?
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ROI OF FACT-BASED
DECISIONS
CONCLUSION
If your sales
pipeline isn’t
flowing and your
services aren’t
profitable, the
future of your
business is at risk.

7. IMPORTANCE OF METRICS
HARNESSING YOUR DATA
WHAT TO MEASURE
OPERATIONAL VS.
PERFORMANCE METRICS
MAXIMIZING THE IMPACT
ROI OF FACT-BASED
DECISIONS
CONCLUSION
Operational vs.
Performance Metrics
Operational Metrics help you understand
Performance Metrics help you see trends,
what’s happening right now to better manage
predict the future and set goals to actively
your day-to-day functions. Some of these data
manage your operations, by compiling
points include:
and displaying data over time. Examples
include:
• Number of tickets added this morning
• Current project status and tasks
Performance Metrics compile and track changes in key performance
indicators over time — allowing you to spot and act on trends
more quickly.
in progress
• Changes in ticket backlog over a
week, a month or a quarter
• Changes in client survey results
• Open and closed sales opportunities
• Changes in employee utilization
• Current employee workload
• Changes in sales productivity
and availability
• Clients that need a reply within the next
four hours
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and revenue
• Changes in profitability by client,
by contract, or service type

8. IMPORTANCE OF METRICS
HARNESSING YOUR DATA
WHAT TO MEASURE
OPERATIONAL VS.
PERFORMANCE METRICS
MAXIMIZING THE IMPACT
ROI OF FACT-BASED
DECISIONS
CONCLUSION
Maximizing the
Impact
Two things are critical to ensuring you get the most out of
your business data:
1. The data entry interface must be intuitive and userfriendly for employees.
2. The data must be easily accessible, easily parsed and
easily understood.
Today’s best-in-class business management platforms will
provide robust reporting and dashboard features that make
it easy to view and analyze your data quickly. Metrics and
trends — from individual employee utilization to overall
Integrated IT business management platforms that include operational and performance dashboards
provide easy access to the metrics and trends that affect your business.
firm profitability — are instantly accessible, and you can
drill down from summary and aggregate information to a
granular level with a few clicks.
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9. IMPORTANCE OF METRICS
HARNESSING YOUR DATA
WHAT TO MEASURE
The ROI of
Fact-Based
Decision Making
With real-time access to your critical metrics and trends,
you will immediately begin to see your businesses
differently. Suddenly, the most profitable customers and
service offerings will be clear. You’ll have real insight into the
bottlenecks and challenges that affect your employees and
their time. Customer demand and sales trends will expose
new market and service opportunities that might have been
OPERATIONAL VS.
PERFORMANCE METRICS
MAXIMIZING THE IMPACT
• Increased employee utilization and effectiveness
• More consistent service delivery and higher
client satisfaction
• Greater cost control and more accurate allocation
• Shorter sales cycles and more reliable
revenue projections
Adopting a data-driven approach to managing your
organization can fast-track your growth. When you add
business intelligence tools, like integrated dashboards
to instantly access and analyze critical operational and
performance data, you also introduce a new level of
employee and managerial accountability, and data-driven
decision-making will become the norm.
overlooked. Other bottom-line benefits include:
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ROI OF FACT-BASED
DECISIONS
CONCLUSION
Adding business
intelligence tools
like integrated
dashboards
introduces a new
level of employee
and managerial
accountability.

10. IMPORTANCE OF METRICS
WHAT TO MEASURE
HARNESSING YOUR DATA
®
OPERATIONAL VS.
PERFORMANCE METRICS
MAXIMIZING THE IMPACT
ROI OF FACT-BASED
DECISIONS
About Autotask
www.autotask.com
Autotask Corporation provides the world’s leading hosted IT business management software to streamline and optimize business
sales@autotask.com
processes for technology solution providers. The software integrates a broad range of critical business systems, including customer
Telephone +1 518 720 3500
relationship management (CRM), service desk, tech scheduling, project management, billing and reporting and provides real-time
service delivery intelligence to help users understand the factors that drive their business and their profitability.
Autotask is accessible from virtually any computing or mobile device connected to the Internet and features a world-class API that
seamlessly integrates with the other systems and tools that providers rely on to run their businesses. Learn more at autotask.com.
Performance Dashboards
with Autotask
Autotask Performance Dashboards are powerful business and service intelligence tools that give you instant insight into the critical
business data, metrics and trends that affect your service delivery, sales opportunities and profitability.
To find out more about how Autotask helps IT service providers use their data and automation to increase efficiency, productivity and
profitability through continual customer service improvement, please contact sales@autotask.com.
If you already use Autotask software to manage your technology solutions business and would like a demonstration of Autotask
Performance Dashboards using your own data, please call +1 518 720 3500 Ext. 1 or visit www.autotask.com.
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CONCLUSION