Which metrics are important for today’s IT service providers (ITSPs)?

A new survey of more than 1,100 ITSPs conducted by professional services automation (PSA) platform provider Autotask revealed “different roles prioritize metrics differently.”

The survey, titled “Metrics That Matter 2016,” indicated executive management is most concerned with profits, while project technicians track service-level agreements (SLAs). In addition, the survey showed finance is most concerned with billable resource utilization. 

So what does this mean for ITSPs?

Autotask offered the following recommendations for ITSPs based on the survey results:

Seven percent of survey respondents said they do not currently use KPIs. And when ITSPs were asked which success metrics they tracked, billable resource utilization was the top metric they cited, followed by overall profits and SLAs.

Customers demand endpoint and security support

Autotask pointed out endpoint growth and the high demand for security services are two of the biggest trends affecting ITSPs.

The survey revealed 55 percent of ITSPs reported a steady or significant increase in the number of endpoints they manage. 

Meanwhile, 80 percent of ITSPs noted that cloud delivery was the “norm” to both manage and secure endpoints most effectively. 

“Networks are changing structure from client-server to client-device-cloud. The endpoint growth is happening outside office walls,” Autotask CEO Mark Cattini said in a prepared statement. “As the home becomes a technology hub, security at the endpoint becomes more relevant.”

Other survey results included:

Autotask added that today’s business customers “are looking to IT service providers to help them manage increasingly extended networks of communication, commerce and data exchange enabled by a growing number of endpoints.”

What are your thoughts on the Autotask survey? Share your thoughts about this story in the Comments section below, via Twitter @dkobialka or email me at [email protected].