Case Study: Live Report Writing
Many moons ago, I interviewed for the Customer Experience Manager position at Systems Engineering. The interviewer told me that finding and relying on information in Autotask was a pain point for them.
I said I didn’t think it could be THAT bad. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Shortly after being hired in, my team discovered the SLA data we were making critical strategic decisions on was far from accurate.
As we worked to solve the problem, we became frustrated with the Autotask standard reports. While standard reports are a step in the right direction, they are not flexible, and how the information was being gathered was unknown.
No problem, we had discovered Autotask Live Reports and figured we could quickly craft the reports to provide the accurate information we needed.
Autotask Live Report Writing Ain’t Easy…
Boy, was I shocked to find out just how difficult Live Report writing was. It took me months to get my first report to run right, and it took years before I could write reports with confidence.
You see, there are several things about Autotask Live Reports that are not covered in the documentation. Such things as:
Live Report software was not written by Autotask - it was purchased and therefore not fully understood by Autotask developers.
Sort does more than sort the report; it also links the SQL lookup tables.
The reason for Categories is to prevent an Autotask Live Report writer from calling for data in tables that do not connect – sending your report into an endless loop.
Autotask Live Reports is a bottom-up report writer, which means you need to think from the lowest report element up, not drill down from the top of the report.
There is a great divide in the Autotask software (and our MSP culture) between Financial (Sales, Accounting, Etc.) and Service Delivery, which makes writing reports with information from both sides very difficult as there are very few Live Report categories that bridge the gap.
We’re Not in the Stone Age: We’ve Got Widgets
“That was the Stone Age,” you say. “We’ve got these things called widgets now that do all we need.”
Autotask teases us by providing dynamic, proactive dashboards that look like they should provide all the information we need. However, they are also lacking in several areas:
They are even more categorized, and the fields available are even more limited than Live Reports.
They provide real-time information without the capability of auditing or storing information.
They are not available off-line; therefore, they are hard to share or markup.
However, if we cannot find the data and organize it in a format that makes sense (not to mention trust where the data is coming from), how can we run our businesses?
Without good reporting, we do not know the true performance of the:
Company (profit)
Team (SLA or Opp Close Probability)
Projects (On-Time or On-Budget)
or even an Individual (Real-Time Time Entry or Win/Loss)
And without Customization, we cannot highlight the fields that are out of tolerance. In other words, we could be wasting thousands ($386K per year for the average size MSP) just because we do not have good data. The bottom-line is without good dependable data; we are managing blind.
Why Should any MSP Bother Writing a Live Report?
“Other than potentially saving me thousands of dollars, what other reasons make it worth the time and money to write a Live Report?”
Besides all that money, personnel problems could be running rampant. For instance, even when you do know you need to terminate an Employee, without clear data, you leave yourself wide open for a lawsuit.
A good example of this is a client with an employee that needed to be terminated, but the MSP was leery to do so. Once an Advanced Global report showed that their average engagement time was 6 minutes, escalation rate was 56%, and their Tech Balanced Score Card was 20, it made the decision easy, and the MSP was well-protected with good defendable data.
“Great!” you say. “Where’s the Autotask Live Report Writing YouTube video I need to watch for 10 minutes so I can get started?” I wish you luck, my friend.
If Only Autotask Live Report Writing Were That Simple…
When I started to learn how to write live reports, it took me months (260 hours to be more accurate) just to get reports to run. Truth be told, it was a painful process.
Getting all excited thinking of some valuable information that we knew was in Autotask.
Writing the first draft only to find out a field we needed was not in that category.
Finally, getting the report the way we needed it, only to find out some fields selected were empty; even though we knew they contained data. (Hint: it turned out to be a Sort linking problem, not an empty field problem.)
Getting all the data to appear, only to run into calculation errors. (Hint: Autotask Date fields are stored as text fields)
Having reports running and serving us well for years, only to have them stop working one day or suddenly start running on Greenwich Mean Time because of a maintenance release.
It took even longer to learn how to write Advanced reports. I am sure you can add to the list based on your own experiences with Autotask Live Reports.
So, what did I learn in this process? Live Report writing is HARD and takes a LOT of time to master. If I had been an MSP owner, I would have literally wasted tens of thousands of dollars (at least!) in lost revenue and opportunities messing with them. Or almost as bad, taking a valuable engineer away from clients to learn report writing skills they would forget as soon as the work was done.
The Cost-Effective Solution to Autotask Live Report Writing:
So, what is the solution? It is far more economical to outsource Autotask Live Report writing needs to a group of Autotask Live Report writers who work full-time writing reports.
Advanced Global MSP Coaching is a group of Autotask Live Report writers with 31+ years of experience writing reports. We compete with each other every day, challenging each other on how to get to data that others, including Datto, say is impossible. We bring our unique Autotask Live Report writing together into collaborative sessions, and some of our work on writing new and improved Live Reports on a full-time basis.
We are the best group of Autotask Live Report writers on the planet. I dare anyone to prove me wrong.
Our outsourced reports have several advantages:
Affordable: $450 per report is less than 3-4 client billable hours
Modern: Writers with an advanced skillset are up-to-date with Autotask changes
Quality: Writers who work with MSPs from around the world, so they have the knowledge to write better reports than any one MSP could dream
Quick: The report will be done in weeks, not months
Outsourcing Live Report writing to Advanced Global means quickly having the data you want in your hands so that you can make timely, informed decisions. Information that automatically comes into your inbox or can be pulled on-demand with the click of a mouse.
For more information on how Advanced Global can help you with writing the reports you need, email us at Info@AGMSPCoaching.com and feel free, but not required, to attach an Excel Spreadsheet Mockup of what you want the report to look like.
Information like:
Per Customer profitability
Per Tech Real-Time Time Entry
Advanced SLA performance
Advanced Resource Utilization
Reactive Hours per Endpoint per Month
Tech Balanced Score Card
And many, many more options
The information will be delivered:
By Excel or CSV spreadsheet
Highlighted showing which metrics are out of tolerance and need attention
Sorted or filtered by Customer, Team, Project, or Individual
Data and Time Stamped for later review
With embedded advanced calculations
With Graphs, Charts, and Gauges
For more information on how Advanced Global can help you with writing the reports you need, email us at Info@AGMSPCoaching.com and feel free, but not required, to attach an Excel Spreadsheet Mockup of what you want the report to look like.
Back in the Stone Age, when I was spending years learning to write Live Reports, I wish I could have hit the “Easy Button” and paid someone a few bucks for quality reports.
But that experience, and similar experiences of other Advanced Global team members, means the best group of Autotask Live Report writers on the planet, Advanced Global, can cost-effectively provide the data you need when you need it.
For you, there is an “Easy Button” for getting all the Live Report data you want from Autotask. All you have to do is PRESS HERE