Unlock the power of data-driven decision-making for your MSP. Dive into our blog packed with 99 essential MSP metrics and formulas, providing you with actionable insights to fuel your success.

Frankly, there are many such metrics to track, and there is no simple answer. Knowing what type of data to track depends on your services and customers, along with a multitude of other Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). 

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Nailing your KPIs is not an easy task, and therefore, we bring you a list of metrics that must be tracked in the zone for MSPs to set better KPIs, which in turn will help your teams be aligned, productive and efficient. 

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Financial metrics for MSPs

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#1 Cash on hand

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Keeping track of the cash flow is always better and helps you stay out of trouble. Cash flow is an essential metric in any business, and firm control over it will help you manage your accounts better. 

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#2 Months of cash

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Months of cash is the metric to analyze how long the cash on hand will last. This metric needs to be analyzed to understand how the cash on hand should be managed and handled every month. 

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#3 Accounts receivable

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Monitoring the accounts receivable will help you understand the upcoming cash flow in the next 30 days. You can also keep track of customers who are not paying on time. 

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#4 Profit 

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This is the most common metric that an owner would track. But remember, profit isn’t a real-time metric and only provides you an outlook of your business’s past performance. 

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Formula, 

Profit = Revenue - COGS (Cost of Good Sold)

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#5 Unpaid invoices

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Unpaid invoices let you track and identify clients whose subscription needs to be canceled or paused. An unpaid invoice is a metric that needs to be tracked closely and must always be less when compared with the number of paid invoices. 

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#6 Overhead

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The operating costs give you insights into how much revenue you must bring in and your operating margins. 

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Formula, 

Sum of all your indirect costs (fixed and variable costs)

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#7 Labor costs

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Keeping in mind the overhead calculation, the labor cost will help you understand if you are spending the right amount on the manpower.

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Formula, 

Sum of all expenses related to hiring employees

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#8 Debt/Asset ratio

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This metric provides input on your business’s financial leverage. The debt-to-asset ratio helps you analyze the number of total assets financed by creditors instead of investors. 

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Formula, 

(Current liabilities + Long-term debt)

-------------------------------------------- = debt-to-asset ratio

(Current assets + Net fixed assets)

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#9 Utilization

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Utilization provides you information on how productively employees are using their work hours and helps you identify opportunities for change. 

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Formula, 

Utilization rate = Hours on client work 

                        ---------------------------

                            Total hours worked 

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#10 Client concentration

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This metric helps you understand the percentage of profit every client is responsible for. 

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Formula, 

Client concentration = Revenue by account 

                                    ------------------------- x 100

                                             Total revenue 

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#11 Service gross margin

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This metric helps you monitor your profit margin and the effectiveness of your business. 

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Formula, 

 Total Revenue - Cost of goods sold (COGS)

--------------------------------------------------- = Gross Profit

                            Revenue 

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#12 Revenue by category

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Breaking down the revenue as per the categories will help you identify whether you need to diversify your sources of revenue or not. 

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#13 Service team W2 ration

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This metric is similar to the service gross margin, which monitors the profit margins and effectiveness of your business. 

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Formula, 

Service team W2 ratio = Service revenue

                      ----------------------------------

                         W2 expense of services team

#14 EBITDA Margin

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EBITDA is a measure for your company’s profitability and financial health that tracks earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. 

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Formula, 

EBITDA (Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                             Revenue 

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#15 Total customers

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Monitoring the total number of MSP customers will help you have a quick look at your business’s health, thus analyzing growth or loss.

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#16 Customer lifetime value

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This will help you look at raising your rates and how and when you must focus on increasing your total number of customers. 

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Formula, 

Customer lifetime value = revenue from the customer - the cost of acquisition

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#17 Sales expense as % of revenue

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Your sales expense as a percentage of revenue will help you understand the effectiveness of your sales and marketing processes. 

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Formula, 

Expense ratio = Operating expense 

                       ----------------------- x 100

                                  Net sales

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#18 Revenue per end-user

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This metric shows you which contracts are paying you the most and will help you crack deals accordingly. 

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Formula, 

Revenue per end-user = Total revenue

                               ---------------------------

                                  Number of customers

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#19 Cost per end-user

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This is similar to the revenue per end-user metric, but it calculates how much each user has cost your business. 

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Formula, 

Cost per end-user = Total expenses

                           --------------------------

                              Number of customers

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#20 Effective hourly rate

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The metric helps you analyze how profitable your contracts are and make changes to the amount of effort put in each. 

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Formula, 

Effective hourly rate = Total cost of a contract

                           --------------------------------------

                           Total hours worked on a contract

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#21 Return on investment (ROI)

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This is a popular metric to track if a particular contract or customer is worth pursuing. 

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Formula, 

Gain from the investment - Cost of investment

----------------------------------------------------------- = Return On Investment (ROI)  

                          Cost of investment

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#22 Gross profit margin

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Again, your company’s health analyzer metric. 

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Formula, 

Total Revenue - Cost of goods sold (COGS)

----------------------------------------------------- = Gross profit  

                 Total Revenue

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#23 Net profit margin 

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Your company’s health analyzer metric. 

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Formula, 

Net profit margin = Net profit

                            ---------------

                              Total revenue

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Sales and marketing metrics for MSPs    

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#24 Sales growth 

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Sales growth is an effective metric to track the growth of your business. 

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Formula, 

Sales growth = (Current period’s total sales - Previous period’s total sales)

                   --------------------------------------------------------------------- x 100

                                                 Previous period’s total sales

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#25 Sales opportunities

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This metric helps you analyze the number of potential customers that might come into your business pipeline in the future. 

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#26 Quote to close

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This metric analyses the average number of quotes sent before one is closed. This helps you identify potential issues with the quote, pricing, time, or some other factor. 

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Formula, 

Quote to close ratio = Number of quotes sent to qualified prospects 

                              ------------------------------------------------------- x 100

                                                    Prospects who converted 

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#27 Age of opportunity

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The age of an opportunity allows you to recognize patterns for identifying the ideal time to prioritize an opportunity. 

Look at the number of days an opportunity spent in a specific stage.

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#28 Response time

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Monitoring the response time of your sales representatives will help you analyze if the sales process requires any changes or not. 

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#29 Market growth rate

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Monitoring the market growth rate will let you know if you can pursue more customers or the market has reached its peak. 

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Formula, 

Market growth rate = Current market size - Previous market size

                            ----------------------------------------------------- x 100

                                                    Previous market size 

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#30 Market share

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This metric lets you decide when it’s time to move on to acquire new customers or keep pursuing the older ones. 

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Formula, 

Market share = Your total sales revenue

                     ----------------------------- x 100

                           Industry’s total sales

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#31 Total pipeline dollars

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Tracking the number of dollars in your pipeline will help you understand the amount of cash flow in the coming future. 

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#32 Website visitors

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This is an important metric to track, which, when used along with other metrics, can provide you with valuable insights. For example, when website visitors are tracked along with the average conversion rate, you can predict the number of leads coming in next month. 

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#33 Bounce rate

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This metric helps you understand if customers coming on your website find the information useful, their exit pattern, and heat maps. 

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#34 Leads from website

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This metric helps you understand the number of leads coming through your website and the changes that might be required to implement on your website. 

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#35 Unique blog page views

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Monitoring the number of viewers on your blog will help you understand the people who visit the blog and check the worth of the channel. 

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#36 Newsletter views and clicks

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When you send an email newsletter to your customers, you can identify the value of the newsletter by viewing the number of people viewing and clicking on the emails. 

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#37 Social media mentions

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Having a presence on social media is necessary, but monitoring the engagement and tracking the mentions are crucial to have a better performing social channel. 

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#38 Brand equity

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The measure of the value of your brand is difficult to track but is very important for your business. Keep track of how important your brand is to MSPs and what impact it has made. 

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#39 Cost per lead

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Cost per lead helps you analyze the platforms which are viable and if you need to charge your customers something different, less or more. 

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Formula, 

Cost per lead = Total marketing spend

                      ----------------------------- 

                              Total new leads

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#40 Conversion rate

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The conversion rate always helps you determine if your marketing or sales efforts are worth continuing or needs improvement.

Formula, 

Conversion rate = Total sales

                          ---------------- x 100

                         Number of leads

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#41 Audience growth rate

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The change in the number of your customer base will help understand if the social media efforts are going in the right business direction. 

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Formula, 

Audience growth rate = Current audience size - Previous audience size

                              --------------------------------------------------------- x 100

                                                          Previous audience size 

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#42 Average engagement rate

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This metric tracks the effectiveness of different messages and platforms you use to reach your audience. 

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Formula, 

Average engagement rate = Total engagement

                                             ----------------------

                                                   Total followers

                              ----------------------------------------

                                           Total number of posts

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#43 Acquisition rate

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Monitoring this important metric will help you understand if your sales and marketing efforts proceed in the right direction. 

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Formula, 

Acquisition rate = New customers in a given period

                       --------------------------------------------- x 100

                            Total customers in a given period

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#44 Potential reach

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The number of people who will see and follow your posts to understand the audience on a channel for future marketing. 

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#45 Inbound qualified lead velocity

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This metric helps to pinpoint the rate at which the qualified, inbound leads grow. 

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#46 Adaptation to client’s demands

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This simple metric will help you analyze the number of times you have adapted your products or services as per the client’s requirements. This way, you can note the trends that are expected by a customer from an MSP. 

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#47 Number of revenue streams

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In this current world of competition, the addition of revenue streams is vital. Keeping track of multiple revenue sources month-on-month will help you analyze the prosperous stream and your attempt towards growing it. 

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#48 Track of referrals

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You may get your referrals from various sources, and keeping track of all these contacts is important. Accordingly, you can retarget the sources in the future for more referrals or customers. 

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Email metrics for MSPs 

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#49 Total opens

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Keeping track of your email opens during your email marketing campaigns are very important. It helps you analyze which subject lines work best, the content which works best, call-to-actions that intrigue users, and many more. 

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#50 Unique opens

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Unique opens is the list of people who opened your email, irrespective of the number of times they opened your email. This helps to analyze the actual number of opens out of the total opens and their further actions. 

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#51 Total open rate

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The percentage of your total opens. 

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Formula, 

Open rate =        Email sent

      ---------------------------------------

          Number of emails sent - Bounces 

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#52 Unique open rate

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The percentage of your total unique opens. 

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Formula, 

Unique open rate = Number of unique user email opens

                        ---------------------------------------------

                             Number of emails delivered - Bounces

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#53 Click Through Rate (CTR)

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This metric lets you know the number of people who clicked on the link provided in the email, if any. 

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Formula, 

CTR = Total measured clicks

          -------------------------------- x 100

          Total measured impressions

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#54 Conversions

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This metric tells you the number of people who clicked on a given link and performed the given action required. 

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#55 Conversion rate

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The percentage of your conversions. 

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Formula, 

CR =       Total attributed conversions

        ------------------------------------ x 100

                   Total measured clicks

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#56 Unsubscribes

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The metric helps you understand the number of people who are disinterested in pursuing your services or product. 

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#57 Unsubscribe rate

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The percentage of your unsubscribes. 

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Formula, 

Unsubscribe rate =     Number of unsubscribes

                              --------------------------------

                                Number of messages delivered

Ad campaign metrics for MSPs   

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#58 Cost per click

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The metric lets you know the cost of each click of the user on your ads.

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#59 Cost per lead 

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The metric helps you analyze the cost of every lead that comes your way through your online advertisements.

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#60 Landing page conversion rate

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When you run an ad, you create a landing page where you intrigue users to take action. This metric lets you understand the rate at which your users take action on your landing pages. 

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#61 Sales page conversion rate

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This metric helps you understand how many visitors to your sales page are buying your product or services. 

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#62 Average order value

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This metric helps you understand the worth of your client and also to analyze the average order value from each client. 

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#63 Cost per acquisition

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CPA is the cost you give to acquire a new client for your business. 

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Service metrics for MSPs  

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#64 Technician utilization 

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This is an underrated metric but directly contributes to your business’s health. Technician utilization helps you understand how effectively you have taken your technician’s help and how wonderfully they have performed at their tasks. 

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Formula, 

Utilization rate = Number of billable hours 

                       -------------------------------- x 100

                        Number of total hours worked

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#65 SLA Adherence

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Complying with your SLAs is important for MSPs, and one way this can be measured is to calculate the number of incidents resolved within the contracted time set in the SLA. 

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Formula, 

% of incidents resolved within the SLA = Total number of incidents resolved within the SLA

                                                         -------------------------------------------------------------

                                                                                      Total number of incidents 

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#66 Customer satisfaction

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Customer satisfaction is a measure to analyze how happy your customers are with your service. 

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Formula, 

Customer satisfaction = Number of satisfied customers

                                   ------------------------------------- x 100

                                    Total satisfaction survey responses

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#67 Tickets opened today

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Monitoring this metric will help you understand the priorities you have for the day, and the spikes in real-time are. 

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#68 Tickets closed today

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This metric helps you understand if your team is ahead or falling behind the given time and the number of tickets closed or open today as per the SLAs. 

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#69 Assigned tickets by technicians

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Assigning tickets to your technicians will help you understand the top performers and the rest who might need a little help or coaching. 

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#70 In progress tickets

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This metric helps you understand if your technicians are falling behind or keeping up with the tickets. 

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#71 Resolved tickets

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This metric helps you understand how the team is performing at the customer level and how soon or not, so soon are they resolving tickets as per the SLAs. 

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#72 Unassigned tickets

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MSPs assign their tickets depending on the complexity of the topic. If tickets are left unassigned, you can track metrics, the severity of the tickets raised, and the willingness to accept challenges by your team. 

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#73 Customer responded tickets

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One of the most excellent metrics is this, where you are able to track the time in which your customers are responded. It helps you analyze the effectiveness of your team.  

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#74 Waiting on customer tickets

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Tracking the number of these tickets will help you understand how often you must follow-up with your clients. If the client does not respond on time, the effectiveness of your team goes down. Therefore, a proper flow needs to be set so that the delay can be covered at maximum. 

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#75 Tickets past due

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This metric helps you ensure that you are not falling behind your ticket load. 

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#76 Open tickets by client

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Monitoring tickets opened by the clients will help you understand their concerns and make changes to your subscription or charges. 

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#77 Tickets opened by type

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This metric helps you understand the types of tickets that are opened regularly and the time taken to resolve the tickets. 

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#78 Stale or old tickets

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There are certain tickets that go without an update for an extended period of time. These tickets are normally lost, and keeping track of these past tickets will help you attend to all of the tickets in a timely manner. 

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#79 Average time to acknowledge

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It helps you understand if you are hitting your SLAs or not. 

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Formula, 

Average time to acknowledge = Total time to acknowledgment 

                                               -------------------------------------- x 100

                                                                    Total tickets

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#80 Average time to respond

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Responsiveness is one of the important factors to convert your customers into an advocate or against. Keeping track of this metric will help you monitor the performance of your team and how effectively they respond. 

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Formula, 

Average time to respond = Total response time

                                          ------------------------- x 100

                                                    Total tickets

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#81 Average time to the resolution plan

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This metric also helps to keep track of your SLAs. 

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Formula, 

Average time to resolution plan = Total time of resolution plan

                                                   ---------------------------------- x 100

                                                                  Total tickets

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#82 Average time to resolution

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Yet another metric to track the SLAs. 

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Formula, 

Average time to resolution = Total time to resolution

                                            ---------------------------- x 100

                                                       Total tickets

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#83 Opened and closed tickets in the last 14 days

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Tracking the number of tickets opened or closed in the last two weeks will help you analyzed the effectiveness of your team. 

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#84 Top ticket closers for the week

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Use a leaderboard to analyze and exhibit the top performers to bring a healthy little competition between your team members. 

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#85 Kill rate

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Kill rate lets you understand that your team is closing more tickets than which are opened. 

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Formula, 

Tickets closed

------------------ x 100 = Kill rate

Tickets opened

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#86 Service backlog

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This metric will help you management predict resource needs. 

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#87 Customer satisfaction

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This metric helps you analyze whether your customers are happy with the company, product, and services. If not, you have opportunities to improve your business.

Formula, 

  Number of satisfied customers

----------------------------------------- x 100

Total satisfaction survey responses 

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#88 Workstation and server status

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A server or workstation that is outdated results in a higher volume of tickets than the ones which are up-to-date. Security is also a factor to consider updating your workstations and servers and to keep track of the updates. 

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#89 Hours entered today

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If you let your team input their work hours, they might forget and enter the incorrect hours. Monitor the hours they have worked and maintain a daily report to decrease any forgotten hours. 

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#90 Top 10 tickets per endpoint

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Identifying your problem customers will help you analyze the customers who need additional training or an increase in cost. 

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#91 Tickets via Medium

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Tracking the tickets with respect to their sources can help you understand your client’s most popular ways of getting in touch and improve the process of communication. 

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#92 Number of touchpoints

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Touchpoints are the number of times a customer had to get in touch with you to resolve their query. The number of touchpoints matter as it directly affects customer satisfaction. 

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#93 Net Promoter Score (NPS)

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Similar to CSAT, NPS is a customer satisfaction measure that would let you analyze if the customer will recommend your product or services to others or not. 

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Formula, 

Percentage of promoters - Percentage of detractors/adversaries = Net Promoter Score

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#94 Net customer satisfaction score (NCSAT)

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Like the NPS, NCSAT measure the customer’s satisfaction with your service or product. 

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Formula, 

Net CSAT = Percentage of positive reactions - Percentage of negative reactions

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#95 Time taken to resolve without service desk

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If you are active on forums or groups where your customers might interact, keep track of the conversation of handling an issue, and the time is taken for resolution without contacting your service desk. This will help you maintain certain self-help options, guides, product documentation, etc. 

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Human resource metrics for MSPs 

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#96 Revenue per employee

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This metric helps you understand how efficiently the company is using its employees. 

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Formula, 

      Total revenue

------------------------- = Revenue per employee

Number of employees 

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#97 Employee churn rate

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The metric will help you make better hiring decisions and improve the company’s culture. 

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Formula to calculate the average number of employees,

The average number of employees = Active employees at beginning period+Employees today

                                                     ---------------------------------------------------------------------

                                                                                                            2

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Formula to calculate the employee churn rate,

Employees who left during the period

-------------------------------------------- x 100 = Churn rate

    The average number of employees 

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#98 Employee satisfaction

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This metric helps you understand how happy your employees are with the company’s policies and work culture. And to analyze the same, the best way is to conduct regular surveys and evaluations. 

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#99 Employee engagement

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Employee engagement is similar to employee satisfaction, and this metric helps you understand how much effort an employee is willing to put for the organization. Again, this can also be measured by conducting regular surveys and evaluations. 

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Takeaways 

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I hope you find useful outputs and better insights after implementing these metrics and will be able to make decisions that would help you grow your business in the right way. The adaptation of these metrics can be different depending on an organization’s services and requirements. It is not mandatory to implement all the metrics listed above. However, analyze the ones which would give you maximum benefit and implement them in your day-to-day routine until it becomes a habit. Metrics are important and the simplest ways to analyze situations related to your business’s present and future. 

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In case you think I missed on a few, just drop a message at papia[at]zomentum[dot]com. As a Managed Services Provider, you might have heard your acquaintances or at times yourself, questioning about ‘What are the metrics that I should be tracking regularly?’