Join Len DiCostanzo, SVP Community and Business Development at Autotask, as he takes you through the key findings of our Metrics that Matter 2014 survey of 1,300+ IT Service Providers and MSPs. In this interactive session, Len will share ideas and advice about how to incorporate this invaluable peer insight to chart a course to profitability, and will ask the audience to chime in on what is happening in their part of the world.
Len discusses in detail:
•Where the opportunities for growth are
•Top demand drivers
•The trends that are changing client priorities
•The ways to improve profitability
•Business health metrics and the importance of benchmarking
Attend this session for a chance to win a 42” Monitor, or stop by our booth for more information.
Steps To Getting Up And Running Quickly With MyTimeClock Employee Scheduling ...
Autotask- Metrics that Matter 2014 - Len DiCostanzo
1. METRICS
2014 THAT MATTER
Results from the IT Service
Provider Benchmarking Study
Len DiCostanzo
Senior Vice President
Community & Business Development
Autotask
ldicostanzo@autotask.com
2. 2014 IT Service Provider Benchmarking Study
Decision Tree Labs conducted the
IT Service Provider Benchmarking
Study in February 2014 on behalf of
Autotask Corp.
More than 1,300 ITSPs responded
globally.
Why?
Industry Insights
Quality Benchmarks
Gain Knowledge
Work Smarter
9. Top Demand Drivers 2014 vs. 2013
3. Always-on environments
2. Mobile connectivity
Self-provisioning from line of business (bypassing IT)
BYOD / Consumerization of IT
1. Expansion of cloud services
Hosted apps
Expansion of cloud / hosted apps
Added demands on network
Other
2014
39.4%
55.3%
14.8%
37.4%
37.3%
n/a
33.0%
3.9%
2013
30.9%
64.9%
18.1%
46.8%
n/a
n/a
41.0%
1.1%
62.8%
73.4%
What is Driving Growth?
10. Trends Changing Client Priorities 2014 vs. 2013
Move from CAPEX to OPEX investments
2. Need to support cloud-based apps
Demand for short-term ROI
BYOD / Consumerization of IT
Data management
1. Increase in security
3. Mobile device management
Other
2014 2013
28.0%
52.2%
26.3%
38.4%
42.2%
54.1%
46.4%
1.9%
32.1%
63.7%
42.1%
49.5%
n/a
n/a
n/a
4.2%
Top Trends
11. Efficiency Drivers
Remote monitoring
management
(RMM)
Managed Other
print
services
Professional
Services Automation
(PSA) Tool
Quoting and
procurement
Security Accounting
Disaster and
recovery
Virtualization
services
Email services
and protection
Backup and Cloud
restore
13. Profit-Improvement Opportunity #1
Optimize Billable Time!
2014
2013
Said their
company’s
optimal
billable time
is 80-90+%
42% 17%
Said their
company’s
actual
billable time
is 80-90+%
Said their
company’s
optimal
billable time
is 80-90+%
58% 23%
Said their
company’s
actual
billable time
is 80-90+%
14. Profit-Improvement Opportunity #2
Reduce Tasks That Don’t Generate Revenue!
How many hours lost each month to . . .?
Data entry into multiple systems
Inaccurate capture of billable time
Inability to schedule optimally
Maintenance of disparate systems
Maintenance of on-prem hardware
Maintenance of on-prem software
64%
55%
53%
52%
59%
56%
50+
15%
21%
22%
20%
16%
19%
5%
7%
7%
6%
6%
5%
0 - 20 21 - 50
17. Business Health Metrics 2014
6.
SLA
performance
4.
Profitability
by service
3.
Profitability
by contract
2.
Profitability
by customer
1.
Customer
satisfaction
5.
Billable resource
utilization
7.
Opportunity
pipeline
18. Customer Surveys 2014 vs. 2013
19.7%
16.5%
21.1%
4.9%
10.4%
Customer Surveys 2014
Most frequently used option
for soliciting client feedback
Email – every transaction
Phone call – quarterly
Automated survey – every transaction
Mail piece – yearly
Net promoter score – yearly
In 2013,
nearly 27% reported
they were not soliciting
client feedback.
19. Key Takeaways
2014 survey knowledge builds on 2013
Revenues up and growing
Multiple opportunities to improve profits
Customer feedback is a must!
Metrics and benchmarking remain key to
maintaining competitiveness
20. Integration Across Business Processes
Autotask helps Generate Revenue Across 4 Critical
Stages to Securing Clients for Life. Gather Data
Along the Way, Analyze Metrics
Consultative
Sales and
Account
Management
Solutions Recurring Managed &
Cloud Services &
Support
Trusted Advisor /
IT Department
CRM
Accounts
Contacts
Quotes
Pipeline
Marketing
Project/engagement
Contract
Manage resources
Phases, Tasks
Time and Billing
On time, profitable
Service Desk
Contracts, profitability
Tickets, Alerts
SLA’s/ITIL
CMDB
Time and Billing
Client Portal
Taskfire
Reporting
Surveys
Knowledgebase
Metrics that Matter
Mission critical data flow
API based Integrations!
21. Turn Information Into Intelligence
Performance Dashboards
• Aggregate data automatically
• Display trends visually
• Track trends and opportunities
• Easily customizable
• 50+ pre-configured charts
<insert Autotask Dashboards Brainshark – slide # 11>
26. GFI MAX Special Show Offer
Connect with Autotask RIGHT NOW! For New Customers
– 10% off Autotask Premium ($95), with standard dashboards
– 10% off Ultimate ($125), with advanced dashboards
– Standard Voucher, $1,000 off new implementation fees
• Apply up to 50% for New Customers
Get more from your Autotask Investment! For Existing Customers
– 15% off any Professional Services Engagement
– 10% off Standard Dashboards
– 25% off Standard and Advanced Dashboards
E-mail sales@autotask.com, www.autotask.com for more info on Autotask!
Subject: “GFIMAX SPECIAL”
Call sales at 518-720-3500 x1 or your Account Rep!
28. METRICS
2014 THAT MATTER
Results from the IT Service
Provider Benchmarking Study
Len DiCostanzo
Senior Vice President
Community & Business Development
Autotask
ldicostanzo@autotask.com
Editor's Notes
We want to congratulate you for taking time out of your busy workday to work on your business, not in it, and attend today’s webinar.
To make your time spent worthwhile, it’s our goal that by the end of our presentation, you’ll have gained insight into industry trends and benchmarks — and be motivated to apply that knowledge to your business and become a stronger company.
We’re going to be talking about the top line, the bottom line, utilization, pricing; and technologies and other trends that are affecting and changing what your peers, clients and prospects are thinking about and what you need to consider as you grow your business.
Let’s get started.
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Why did we conduct this research?
We conducted the study to bring fresh industry insights to our clients and the industry at-large; to encourage the use of quality benchmarking; and to expand our own knowledge as we help ITSPs work smarter with our complete, cloud-based business management platform, Autotask Pro.
Autotask has again provided a free eBook that reports on the results for 2014. You can download it at www.autotask.com/metrics2014.
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Last year we surveyed 229 ITSPs and established baselines for leading metrics and industry parameters. This year our survey grew. We surveyed more than 1,300 ITSPs on multiple continents and have gained deeper insight into what’s happening in the industry and what ITSPs can do to work smarter.
Take a look. Where do you fall?
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This is how our survey pool breaks down by provider type.
The big take-away on this slide: You have to be more than an MSP, which is not a destination, but a practice. You have to offer more. Managed services is one of the of the things you should be doing as an ITSP.
Consider that cloud providers could fall under MSPs, and cloud services is one of the contract types that survey participants ranked as having the highest growth potential.
Pose an audience question: does MS include your cloud offerings? Do you send separate invoices for each, or combine on one invoice to your clients? That could be a key value add in the cloud world of the future, consolidated billing of all services delivered to your clients, whethered owned and operated by you or some 3rd party vendor.
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(SEE NEXT SLIDE TO ADD COMMENTARY)
Speaking of growth, let’s move on to the top headline of the survey results.
The big headline is growth across several key areas. Let’s see where...
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Compared with last year, we have 20 percent—one-fifth—more ITSPs that are earning more than $5 million
And there are nearly 20 percent more companies anticipating 15+% growth, with 55% more with 20+employees.
Why? A combination of factors, some that we can quantify with our research and some that we can’t. We do know that the survey pool was larger this year, and that the companies in the pool had more bigger deals with bigger clients. But whatever the factors, it is clear that this year’s respondents have pointed to very positive trends for ITSPs.
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Here’s more detail on the sales growth %.
15-25% was most popular response for 2014, while 5-15% was most popular response for 2013
Overall, more than 78% of respondents were calling for some sort of growth…are you one of these companies?
59% vs
Question: Anyone here projecting 15-25% growth? More than that? If you are not, you should walk away with key considerations for your business to help you head in the right direction.
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These results show growth potential at the contract level, so as you can see, ITSPs who offer managed services—and cloud services specifically—are in a good position for growth.
Share a thought: While projects don’t appear to show growth, consider projects as the lead in to more managed and cloud services opportunity. Typically, you need or should execute a project to either win new business or upgrade your client’s environment with new technology. This project is what provides the fuel for managed services growth. So, shoot for more project work as a lead in to your MS and cloud services growth. Think about what recurring services you can sell based on the solution/project (storage, security, network…) you deliver and client type (healthcare, construction, services, etc..) you work with.
We’ll have more survey results related to how cloud is changing our industry later, but I can tell you that in both the 2013 survey and this one, as you can imagine based on industry communications, cloud bubbled up as a major trend.
Speaking of major trends, let’s get to the big headline of the survey.
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Taking a look at where the growth is, you’ll see that more growth is coming from larger clients.
The takeaway here is that there’s growth everywhere, so since it takes as much work to serve smaller clients as larger clients, why not go after larger clients? That does not mean to neglect the smaller ones, but make sure you are targeting a mix of clients that can take your business to the next level.
Another key factor to consider more than size, is to work with clients whose business is growing. This way no matter what size they are, they can help you grow as they grow. Ride your clients wave of growth to ensure your own growth. Might also push you to consider profitable verticals to attack (financial, services), or verticals with money from government sources (i.e. healthcare, education)
Here’s a closer look at the trends and technology driving demand for the 2013 survey and this year’s. As you can see, cloud continues to be a dominant demand driver, along with mobility.
A note here about the results—in the 2013 survey, we combined cloud and hosted apps as a single response, and we broke them out in 2014, so the appearance of a downward trends is misleading. But we know from other research and from responses to other questions in this survey that cloud’s status as a demand driver is increasing.
As with any survey, you have to analyze from many angles, so don’t be alarmed that added demands on the network has gone down from last year. As IT folks, we all realize that moving apps and solutions to the cloud is going to drive added demands on the network, and you need to be there to answer that demand and resolve the need. It is an opportunity, again, to think of how to add to your catalog and grow your business. Consider the convergence of telecom and IT and make sure you are grabbing some of that connectivity revenue by looking at how to work with the telecom providers who are seeking ITSPs and MSPs to help drive their own business forward. Don’t leave easy money on the table by letting your clients decide how they want to connect to the internet…
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Here’s a comparative look at trends changing client priorities, but you’ll note that we didn’t have security as a choice last year. We added it this year based on research and feedback we encountered when we were designing the survey.
In addition to security as the top driver, again we see cloud and mobility impacting client priorities. While you have to understand the individual needs of your clients and prospects and make you are solving those problems, it is always easier to sell what your clients want and need, and it looks they all want tighter security, cloud and mobility. Make sure you are able to give them what they want.
We also see some good news in how clients feel about investing in their companies.
Demand for short-term ROI has gone down since last year (26% vs. 42%). So, it appears clients are more apt to invest for the longer term, i.e., they are looking for longer-term partners to support their strategy, not just fix things and keep things running right now.
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Let’s go back to security, which we know is top-of-mind not just because of our survey findings, but because of high-profile breakdowns in security at companies such as Target.
More than just virus protection, email spam filtering
Intruder detection
Content monitoring
Internal data leaks, risks
Background checks for employees
Consider Vulnerability assessment as a key component of your service catalog going forward, either delivered by you and your resources if you have the skill set, or by partnering with other security providers who can work on your behalf, and provide you knowledge of a prospects security posture and lead you to more work providing a range of security solutions.
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So security is something that should be a priority, not just for your clients but also for your business. Security is not only important as a driver for revenue growth in your business, but also as an efficiency driver for yourself as much as your clients. Don’t be the shoemaker without shoes
Why? Beyond the reasons I listed in the previous slide, security drives efficiency because it prevents disruption and downtime to fix security breaches. The last thing you want to do is explain to your clients that you were down due to security breaches. It could be the last time you work for them as their trust and belief in you will be shattered…as they look at their own vulnerability.
While we are focusing on security here, you should take note of each of the efficiency drivers listed here and understand how your business is or should be making use of all or some of them. One of the keys to maintaining and increasing profitability is taking cost out of your business and service delivery models. Automation drives efficiency and process, so make sure you are taking advantage of the tools and solutions available to you and your business, as well as your clients.
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Clients are spending more, and they are more willing to invest for the long term.
What does this mean to you? It means it’s a good time to invest in your own companies to increase profit margin as revenues grow.
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It’s no surprise that profit is No. 1. way customer value is measured again in this years survey, but not by much. And the top 3 customer valuations are the same since last year. So, seems natural you should be understanding these metrics as it applies to your business.
While revenue is good, profitability is better. Are you applying tools to achieve efficiency and automation?
We all have heard, and probably know from real life situations, it is easier to keep clients than win new ones, so renewals should be up there in the top 3. But that is a good reason to make sure we are emphasizing customer satisfaction as a key driver for the top 3. Happy customers stay with you longer, spend more money, and also help you win new business. Make sure you are getting good case studies and references from existing clients, especially in a particular vertical, as you go out to win new business. Well touch on this more later on in this session.
Based on the survey, we saw multiple opportunities to improve the profitability of existing contracts.
Let’s take a look at three of them.
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FYI: Most Valuable Customers 2013
1 Net profit 32%
2 Gross revenue 29%
3 Renewal/longevity 26%
4 Highest satisfaction 10%
5 Other 2%
The first: optimize billable time! Even with a move to managed and cloud services de-emphasizing billable time, it is essential to optimize the billable time you will have to execute in order to maximize profitability. Recall, we discussed the value of projects, typically done on a fixed fee or value pricing model, and always based on executing on time and on budget. And consider break fix will not go away, and billable consulting time should be a key component of your catalog going forward.
Higher utilization rates equal higher profits if you build your hourly/daily rates with realistic utilization rates. If you meet your forecasted utilization rates, you realize the profit you planned for. If you exceed, you increase service profitability. If you go below, you reduce profitability as you increase costs of your services resources and your overhead.
In the 2014 study, 4 in 10 respondents target 80+% billable time; but only 17% actually achieve it. What’s nice is seeing that less folks target that high utilization in 2014 which could mean a more realistic outlook when it comes to billable time, revenues and profitability, and one of the reasons respondents feel good about growth.
Pricing: time by hour, day (highest demand)
Conduct forecasting exercises around utilization, overhead, burden. Keep all in line to meet/exceed profitability targets
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The second: reduce tech time on non-revenue tasks so you have more capacity for revenue-generating work with the same resources.
Having an automated and integrated IT service-management platform such as Autotask is the No. 1 antidote to lost time, but it is not the only integrated solution you should be thinking about.
A single integrated solution like Autotask does reduce double and triple entry maintenance of disparate systems like CRM, Service Desk, Projects and billing, but if you add in integrations with all/most other tools you use in your business and to deliver service to your clients (RMM, BDR, security, accounting, etc…), you can see the continued reduction of multiple entry points for the same data, and a reduction in time wasted and lost or inaccurate information during entry and transfer
Where possible, consider the cloud when deploying integrated solutions for your business. Cloud solutions reduce the need for on premise HW/SW that must be maintained by your billable or in house resources. If you are like most ITSPs, or most engineers, you would rather be servicing clients instead of your own in house infrastructure and related apps. Of course, Autotask is delivered from the cloud, and that is just how we want it!
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The third: Hang on to your customers!
90+^% customer retention rate fell 20% 2013 to 2014
Why? Perhaps because ITSPs/MSPs are not evolving, expanding their catalog to include cloud, security or mobility, so not meeting client needs or wants. Doing business the same way as always. Not informing clients about trends affecting their business and use of technology. Let me ask…why do you think retention would be going down?
More business from existing clients costs less than obtaining new clients for the same business due to overhead increases, so for every client renewal, you are winning business with a higher overall profit margin. Standard measure is that getting a new client costs six to seven times what it costs to expand business with an existing client.
What to do? Perhaps it is to expand your catalog of offerings. Consider increasing account management focus, and how to go deeper and wider into existing accounts. Don’t think because you won the business, that you will keep the business. Keep on earning that business, and strive to keep your client for life!
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Another good investment is to start using quantifiable metrics to benchmark your business against your peers. This is one of the top reasons we conduct this research. Let’s take a look at how ITSPs are measuring business health.
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First, though, these are full findings on business health metrics for your information. We asked participants to rank them 1 to 7, and these are the highest metrics in each of those 1 to 7 categories.
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Here are the complete responses for customer surveys. We had a different question last year, but it’s interesting to note that in 2013, nearly 27% of survey respondents never solicited customer feedback.
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Commentary on why the “gold-standard” benchmarking tool would have all of these vs. anything less
Our benchmarking survey supports best practices in benchmarking, and we plan to conduct the survey again, further develop our survey pool and provide more and better data that you can use as benchmarks.
Customer feedback is a must for continual service improvement, retention opportunity, employee training and reward
Lets take a look at the big picture and how Autotask’s integrated IT Business Management platform helps to automate and optimize the entire client lifecycle while helping generate revenue from what I like to call the 4 critical stages to securing a client for life.
The lifecycle starts with critical stage 1, finding new clients, and you can use autotask’s contact group manager to help you build and schedule html and text emails, service announcements and newsletters to groups of prospects or client contacts stored in Autotask’s CRM application. Once you are engaged, buid quotes using the built in quoting solution, or an integrated 3rd party quoting tool, and manage your pipeline with autotasks opportunity management workflows.
Once you have won a new client, typically with a project such as a remediation engagement to clean up the environment for your managed services support, or delivering a solution based on your core competency or picked up another project from an existing client, you on boarding them via a successful and profitable project, then moving into a service and support role and ultimately ascending into the trusted advisor role where your IT business is counted on by your client to provide technology advice and services to support and deliver the outcomes your client needs and wants.
Tickets, S.L.A.s, project tasks, client feedback, sales leads, billable hours, invoices…
Your business generates thousands of data points every day, and every one provides an opportunity to improve your operations - and your bottom line. But, one of the biggest challenges you face is harnessing all of that information and making it useful to you.
Autotask’s Performance Dashboards automatically aggregate and present your data in more than 50 pre-configured and customizable charts, graphs and tables allowing you to easily analyze the most important aspects of your business and improve employee productivity, increase client retention, and better predict market trends and opportunities.
Let’s look at some of the metrics that matter and how Performance Dashboards can make a difference in your business.
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Why do we need more effective decision Making?
We need a better sense of what is happening in our business because the changes that are happening in the IT Service delivery space difficult to navigate. Every year, thousands of IT Service Providers enter the market, and every year about 10% of them fail. That is why Service Intelligence is critical because failure is just too easy and your competition is growing.
Changes such as: Virtualization, Cloud based software, Virtual organizations with satellite offices, tablets, smart phones, managed Print, security etc. all make the space seem a bit chaotic and difficult to manage. More importantly, it is increasingly difficult to choose the services that translate to the right business value to you and to your customers.
Here are some questions that many of you are probably asking:
How can I tell which technology or service should I embrace and which one should I divest ?
Or which customers are costing me $$ and which ones are profitable?
How about my staff?
Which ones are getting high ratings from customers and which ones need coaching?
Or which techs are highly productive and generate high volume of billable hours and which ones are better suited for hard-to-solve problems?
We believe that if you had the right Service Intelligence system you will be able to answer these and many other key business questions in real time, every day and with minimal effort.
Now that you have a good sense of your service operations as well as your sales pipeline, you need to constantly have an eye on what is ultimately the most critical metric of your business which is: Profitability.
Nothing is more important to the long-term health of your business than maintaining your profitability. If you’re not keeping close tabs on your finances it can be difficult to know exactly where you are making money – and where you are losing it.
Autotask’s Financial Dashboard puts all of that information at your fingertips, so you can tell at a glance which clients are most profitable, which contract types perform the best, and which service types are reducing your margins.
Collecting and displaying your cost and revenue trends in one place enables better fact-based decisions about how to price your products and services, adjust your contracts and refine your workflows, policies and processes to maximize your margins.
An IT benchmarking survey conducted in April, 2013, showed that firms using IT business management platforms, like Autotask, typically bill at higher rates and have more efficient employee utilization - both critical components of profitable, growth-oriented firms.
Firms that are not using data to make informed decisions about their contracts, clients, pricing and utilization may be leaving money on the table.
Here is a top level view of how Autotask can help automate service delivery and help you manage everything in one place…from the time the event or service request is generated through to resolution, billing and analysis.
There are many events that can occur to generate a ticket for your technicians
– an alert from your RMM system
- a client entering a ticket through your Client Access Portal
- an incoming email
- or a telephone call
2. Autotask streamlines and automates ticket creation in most instances, except perhaps, when clients call you
- You can easily automate workflow steps within Autotask to assign tickets, send notifications, survey clients and assign and track against your SLAs.
3. All work and service tickets are associated directly with your customer contracts, by type, so that all time and expenses are properly billed for, and all time entries flow directly through for approval and invoicing.
4. All critical information and metrics are available in real time for you to assess performance and profitability, to demonstrate value to your clients, and to better understand the factors affecting your business.
Lets start with your service delivery operations:
Your service desk is the heart of your IT solutions business, and with Autotask’s Performance Dashboards you can examine every aspect in real time to know exactly where you’ve been - and where you are going.Daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly trends let you quickly and easily see where your operations can be improved…
the times and days of the week that put the most pressure on service delivery
the source and types of tickets that never seem to close
SLA response and resolution times and percentages – and where you are at risk
And, Dashboards make it easy to drill into your service performance at a granular level - by status, time, priority, resource, issue types and more.
Presenter: Len DiCostanzo
We want to congratulate you for taking time out of your busy workday to work on your business, not in it, and attend today’s webinar.
To make your time spent worthwhile, it’s our goal that by the end of our presentation, you’ll have gained insight into industry trends and benchmarks — and be motivated to apply that knowledge to your business and become a stronger company.
We’re going to be talking about the top line, the bottom line, utilization, pricing; and technologies and other trends that are affecting and changing what your peers, clients and prospects are thinking about and what you need to consider as you grow your business.
Let’s get started.
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