How to Measure Your Performance Against Peer MSPs

Written by Joe Panettieri 1
April 28, 2009

Chances are, you closely track your service levels and key business metrics. And you try to improve against those internal metrics each month. But what if there was a way to measure your performance and your customer environments against hundreds of other managed service providers? That scenario may soon be possible for Ingram Micro Seismic's partners. Here's how.

Ingram Micro Seismic Business Intelligence Dashboard Chances are, you closely track your service levels and key business metrics. And you try to improve against those internal metrics each month. But what if there was a way to measure your performance and your customer environments against hundreds of other managed service providers? That scenario may soon be possible for Ingram Micro Seismic’s partners. Here’s how.

This is part II of my Ingram Micro Seismic partner conference preview. You’ll find part I here.

Now, let me paint the bigger picture. For decades, VARs have wondered how their businesses are performing (gross margins, profit margins, revenue growth, revenue per employee, etc.) vs. peer VARs and industry norms. In recent years, many VARs and managed service providers have joined peer groups such as HTG Peer Groups and True Profit Groups.

The closed-door meetings allow VARs and MSPs to benchmark their businesses against each other, inspiring each group member to achieve better business performance before the next meeting.

More Data, More Intelligence

Those peer groups remain valuable. But Ingram Micro’s Seismic team is now taking that peer approach and adding online business intelligence to the mix. The result is the Seismic Business Intelligence Dashboard, which is designed for partners that use the Seismic Hosted RMM (remote monitoring and management) software. Ingram will announce the Dashboard sometime next week during the Seismic partner conference in Dallas (here’s a preview of the event).

Ingram Micro Seismic VP Justin Crotty and Director of Sales Jason Beal described the BI dashboard to me a few hours ago. The dashboard will allow Seismic MSPs to see how their end-user environments are performing. It will also help to pinpoint key areas where MSPs can recommend customer equipment refreshes.

But that’s not the really important part. The real magic — the secret sauce, as Crotty put it — is the ability for a Seismic MSP to measure his or her performance vs. the broader universe of Seismic partners. It’s sort of like measuring your individual company’s stock performance vs. the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s performance.

Are you beating the overall managed services industry or trailing it? Finally, an MSP will have his or her answer — at least when it comes to competing against the overall Seismic universe.

The BI dashboard sounds powerful. But I haven’t actually “seen” it in action. Nor do I know what type of reports it will generate for Seismic MSPs.

Still, Ingram appears to be onto something here. By rolling up all of that Seismic data, Ingram is empowering MSPs to better understand how they’re performing against a large universe of peer MSPs.

I expect we’ll hear more about the Seismic Business Intelligence Dashboard at the Seismic partner conference next week (May 4-6, Dallas). Plus, Ingram is working on a separate tool — a portal of sorts — that allows MSPs to more easily manage multiple Seismic services from a single dashboard.

I’ll try to pull together more details about that portal this week. But other deadlines are calling right now.

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