June 4, 2013
Monitoring business metrics can help channel partners improve their operations, but many companies find the multi-faceted task a difficult pursuit.
Resellers, systems integrators and managed services providers (MSPs) interested in keeping the business score must identify the appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs), which will vary by department and job category. They also need automated tools for collecting performance data and displaying KPIs for management review. Finally, the solution provider or VAR business needs to interpret the data, cull out the actionable insights and make appropriate adjustments.
Lawrence Cobrin, director at MSP CFO, an Englewood, N.J., financial services management firm that specializes in MSPs and VARs, said that an interest in metrics comes naturally to service providers.
"They have a dashboard they use to manage client systems and want a dashboard to manage their own businesses," he said. "That is the easy part. The hard part is to effect change based on KPIs."
The channel, for the most part, has stumbled when it comes to business metrics, industry executives say.
"Organizations that have concentrated on this are ... getting better and improving," said Dave Sobel, director of partner community at Level Platforms Inc., an Ottawa, Ontario-based company that makes remote monitoring and management (RMM) software for MSPs. "But as a whole, the industry isn't getting better."
Sobel cited time -- or the lack thereof -- as the primary obstacle to getting a grip on KPIs.
"Most solutions providers are small to mid-sized organizations and they are pulled in so many different ways," noted Sobel, who was previously CEO of Evolve Technologies, an IT management company. "They are ... struggling to figure that all out."
Channel companies that have stepped up to the VAR business metrics challenge find the process valuable.
J. Michael Drake, chairman and CEO of masterIT, an IT services provider based in Memphis, Tenn., said tracking KPIs provides "real-time information to make decisions from, rather than looking in the rear view mirror at the end of the month or quarter."
