For data experts, gaining a competitive advantage through data-driven digital transformation is a top objective
Instead of just going with their gut, effective IT solution providers (TSPs) rely on data insights to make critical business decisions. They base their decisions on actual facts, which provides them with the understanding and information necessary to not only enhance their financial and operational indicators also identify areas in which there is opportunity for development.
You need reliable data, which requires looking at the appropriate metrics, in order to make the best judgments. Metrics are the quantitative comparison of data to the object being measured. This indicates that the majority of daily company interactions and operations generate a significant number of records and data. If one can take a step back to harness this data, it can help identify certain trends in running a business. For instance, knowing that a TSP logs ticket after ticket every day creates a wealth of knowledge and insight. As a result, mechanisms must be put in place to track operational indicators using data. The KPIs that you gather and examine may vary from company to company. Depending on the ease of reporting and the complexity of the data systems, you might find value in measuring various forms of operational indicators. To gauge service levels and technological performance, it would be a good idea to start by recording a few important parameters. This would incorporate:
- Endpoints under the managed services (MS) contracts in number
- number of clients for which managed services agreements are in place
- number of tickets produced under the MS contract
- Hours per endpoint on average
- the number of MS contract endpoints each MS engineer manages per MS engineer,
- the number of MS contract tickets
The most useful thing you can do is look for changes and differences in the data. Building on the aforementioned example of an increase in tickets, suppose you observe a spike in tickets from 10,000 to 20,000 the following month without a noticeably larger rise in clients. The gross margin of the business will continue to suffer if any generally profitable clients aren’t able to generate income. You can take corrective action before you notice profit losses in the month-end financials by keeping an eye on operational KPIs in real-time. Longer average hours per ticket also result in a decline in customer satisfaction and a greater chance of losing clients, which will contribute to that loss of earnings. Employee buy-in for achieving goals will increase as they become more aware of the daily outcomes of the metrics within their department. This enables individuals to comprehend how their performance connects to the objectives of the firm and what they should accomplish on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. Employees are also shown via easily available statistics that goals are established using actual data rather than educated guesswork. Accurate data is essential for corporate growth, which involves examining the appropriate indicators to aid in future planning and for workforce requirements. Knowing how many Managed Services (MS) contract endpoints are managed by each MS engineer is a nice illustration of this. Let’s pretend it is 400 at the moment. By the end of the year, your business should have six more clients, or 1,200 endpoints, if it adds a new client every two months who requires support for 200 endpoints. The business should realistically anticipate hiring three more personnel to handle the increased demands of the endpoints, assuming there is no overall loss of clients. Comparing this data to a “feeling” that more personnel are needed provides a more accurate way for estimating the number of new hires.
Managers can utilize analytics to learn more about their direct subordinates in a similar way. The service metrics for the department and each team member, for instance, can be used by managers to develop uniform forms of evaluation. This enables the management and their direct report to have an understanding of expectations for how success is defined and what should be evaluated.
