MSP Business
MSP tips: Five important metrics to keep your eye on
13 November, 2013
If you wish to accurately track how well your MSP business is doing, it’s important to collect some genuine facts and figures. You should be able to extract some from your call logging and finance systems.
In this article, we list five important metrics, all of which are key to keeping track of your business success, both in terms of how you are doing financially and how well you are serving your customers.
1. First-time fix percentage
Your “first-time fix” number represents what percentage of user issues are resolved after the first contact with your company. This contact is usually a helpdesk phone call or email.
A high first-time fix percentage is a valuable promotional tool for new customers, as it proves you get the job done fast.
2. Average response time
This is another metric that can show off the efficiency of your helpdesk, if, of course, you manage to maintain good figures!
When calculating your average response time, you should take into account your firm’s operating hours, and ensure you only include business hours. If you use software to track SLAs, it can probably work all of this out for you.
3. Outstanding issues
You should always know how many issues are outstanding across your client base. When the number creeps above an expected amount, it can alert you to the fact your team is “up against it,” or that they may need high-level help to clear up some long-standing issues.
4. Monthly turnover
How much your company invoiced in the previous month is a figure you should always be aware of – and you should really know how it compares to the previous year as well. If you don’t know this information, then how can you truly know how well your company is performing? How do you even know if you are moving in the right direction?
Obvious though this seems, a surprising number of businesspeople plod along from month to month, and never really know how their business is performing until the accountant does the annual figures. Keeping a more constant eye will automatically make you more target-driven.
5. Total outstanding invoices
It’s good to always have at least a rough idea of how much money is owed to you. On a simplistic level, this figure (less any credit facilities available to you) represents the size of cash flow problem you could potentially experience!
This is particularly important when your MSP business is small and lacking a dedicated accounts person. It’s very important to be consistent when it comes to credit control, and not allow late payments to go “un-chased.”
Obviously there are many other metrics you can keep an eye on in the course of running your business, but the five listed above should be constantly in your sights. All of them are key to the success of your company.
What metrics do you recommend keeping track of? Let us know with a comment below!
You might also like...
Categories:
- Business Growth (360)
- Tips & Advice (343)
- Managed Services (294)
- Best Practices (253)
- Cybersecurity (207)
- Business (205)
- Security (190)
- IT Support (99)
- Backup & Disaster Recovery (87)
- ITSM (69)
- Data (68)
- Cloud Computing (52)
- Product (39)
- Mail (37)
- Marketing (35)
- Risk Intelligence (32)
- Customer Service (29)
- Remote Management (22)
- Networking (21)
- Service Desk (16)
- Services & Support (16)
- Research & Trends (12)
- Business Risk (12)
- Internet of Things (10)
- PSA (10)
- Mobile (9)
- Operations (7)
- Training (6)
- LOGICcards (4)
- Machine Learning (3)
