BrightGauge 101: 7 Essential Tips for User Success

In a world of information overload, businesses must make data dashboards work for themselves and their users. User-friendly dashboards and business intelligence reporting are necessary to help businesses run smoothly and make the WFH situation more efficient. In fact, many MSPs have switched from data-displaying conference room television screens to at-home data dashboard solutions. Here are seven tips on how to use BrightGauge to increase efficiency for a business and make life that much easier. 

Consolidate into a Single Source of Truth

Gone are the days of logging in and out of various software solutions to view all of the data and information most important to a business. BrightGauge serves as a master view of where businesses stand, becoming their one source of truth. 

Is your company working with ConnectWise solutions like ConnectWise Manage, ConnectWise Automate,  ConnectWise Command, or ConnectWise Sell? BrightGauge integrates with over forty products, including these ConnectWise solutions and other tools that businesses are already using. This allows users to display data from multiple sources into one easy-to-read dashboard or automated report. 

The beauty of having data all in one place: users can easily identify and take action on activities that will affect customer satisfaction and the overall health of their business. No need to dig through multiple spreadsheets of information nor waste hours every month generating reports; users can leave the heavy task of sifting through the most important metrics to BrightGauge.

Motivate Teams

Remote work has taken away most face-to-face time, but businesses have gotten creative in how to inspire their team members. With BrightGauge, users can set goals, identify room for improvement, and even encourage some healthy competition across the team with leaderboards. BrightGauge also allows managers to fully grasp what teams are working on without having to micromanage. A win across the board. 

Through scheduled reports and utilizing team and individual dashboards during meetings, teams can set expectations for the work that needs to be done. With a longer tail view of each metric, users can move past reactive work to see where there are gaps that need to be filled in or processes to change altogether. By exposing them to the information in a more visualized view, BrightGauge enables teams to be more inspired to enact change and pick up the slack where they are currently lacking. 

Another unspoken BrightGauge benefit: it helps audit data entry. While this may not seem initially like a motivating factor, it certainly helps teams save time in the long run by making improvements today. Consistency, efficiency, and transparency -- these are key to a happy and empowered team.  

Reporting

The reporting feature helps foster really strong client relationships by promoting trust and transparency. Users can set reports to automatically send to their clients daily, monthly, quarterly, or whichever cadence works best. Reports pull from metrics a company is already tracking, which saves time and energy while showing value to clients. 

Users can also utilize reports as a guide for having better conversations with clients. This can be done by sending the report before or after a meeting for reference. Then users can have these reports open during the meeting to lead discussions on the need for more training, updates to workstations, and to review the overall services provided. 

Reports are also great for daily or weekly team standups. Reports give everyone a visual of what is going on. They also allow users to drill down into each stale ticket, see where an item is passing through too many hands, or conduct a quarterly business review to check the company’s overall health. 

Public Dashboards & Gauges 

Clients and team members do not need a BrightGauge license to view some dashboards or metrics. Users can embed a public dashboard or a single metric onto their marketing website to show off KPIs to entice new clients or in their support docs to provide instant updates. 

Be Proactive 

The threshold feature is an excellent tool for staying on top of goals. This feature can set an alarm to go off when the numbers get too close to missing the mark. With a real-time dashboard, teams can make sure all new tickets are assigned, avoid tickets turning stale, and rejoice when a new agreement is signed. 

Another way to use this tool is visually. When a dashboard is full of numbers, it can be hard to see when goals are falling behind. Using the gauge builder design section, you can set your sound alerts, color thresholds, and icons to show. This method allows users to color-code for each numerical or date range they’d like to highlight. 

When it comes to goal setting, you can follow the basic principles of stoplights. If a number is in green, the goal is on track. If a number is yellow -- it’s time to check it out and take caution. And much like a traffic light, if the number is in red -- it is time to stop and investigate the KPI in question. 

Utilize Filters

With a few clicks of a mouse, users can set filters to identify metrics to a specific business, team, person, or by date. They can also narrow down results and select only what is important for the end viewer. 

Not sure of what to filter for first? A lot of our metrics are interactive! Click any number to drill down into the details. On charts, users can add or remove results from view by clicking their label in the dashboard key. There’s also an option for global filters to be applied across the board, saving time from having to make sweeping short-term changes. 

BrightGauge offers many options for viewing information and sharing it with others. With filters, users can take what we have pre-built and customize it to fit their end audience.

Design & Customize 

Populate dashboards with the exact metrics needed or work with one of the many reports or dashboards that are pre-built. From there, it is a matter of changing things up visually to make the most important information stand out. We recommend mixing it up between charts, leaderboards, number gauges, and funnel views depending on your desired result. Then, users can change the colors, limit the range of information being shown, and ensure time entries or financial metrics are not rounding up with a quick formatting change. 

Another neat feature, users can upload images and text boxes to dashboards and reports. For example, users can personalize a client’s dashboard by uploading their logo or incentivize the team with a photo of the end-of-quarter prize. This is a simple way to make everyone feel more motivated and personally connected. 

Conclusion

Easy enough, right? For more useful tools and tips, check out the BrightGauge blog - each month BrightGauge has a dashboard spotlight that goes deeper into specific features. Do not forget to head over to the BrightGauge Facebook and follow the page to gain helpful insights on how to get the most out of this solution.