Simplex-IT Report Card for Q3 18 Goals

Q3 is over.  For those paying attention (hello out there<g>?), it’s time for us to review how we’ve been doing.  In a separate post I’ll share what goals we have set up for Q4.  Spoiler alert:  As I’ve said before, I’m fine with not reaching 100% of our goals.  If we did I’d say our goals were too conservative.  And when it comes to making progress here, that’s one thing I don’t want to be accused of.This quarter (and all moving forward), members of the Executive Team each presented me with a preliminary review of their goals, and then we reviewed the result together as a group.  That’s the core model moving forward.

Executive Goals

1. Implement Goal sharing.  These goals were pretty much created by the Executive Team (representing Tech Services, Marketing, Sales and Executive).  So I’ll give that a thumbs up!
2. Improve Cash Flow.  Thumbs up!  Better tools, better communication, better accounting.  Back to the basics!
3. Confirm some CoMITs (Co-Managed IT services).  You know, two out of three ain’t bad.  We’re making progress internally, but we weren’t ready to go to existing customers with a new support model just yet.  Thumbs down, but we’ll get there.

Technical Services:

1.  Onboarding Process.  We’ve got the new Onboarding Process in place, so good on that.  We weren’t able to test on a new customer.  So let’s give that an incomplete (but we’ve just kicked off the first test last week, so by end of October we should be done).
2. Increase management structure in Technical Services.  We’re getting better in terms of creating better metrics to measure efficiency.  We’re reviewing numbers with more consistency.  But we’re not where we need to be yet.  Another incomplete.
3. Operational Metrics/Procedures.  Improved many of our KPI’s, including time spent on tickets, closure rates, etc.  Thumbs up!
4. Client Maintenance Process.  Another incomplete.  We’re seeing improvements in several areas of Client Maintenance.  But we didn’t complete the redefinitions of the procedures to the level we wanted.  So progress, but not enough.

Marketing Goals

1. Three mailing campaigns and follow-ups at once.  A thumbs up on this one.  Throughout the 3 months we ran 3 separate mailing/calling campaigns.
2. CyberSecurity Seminar.  Mixed bag on this.  The seminar was great, and the folks who attended got some great value.  That said, we didn’t have the attendance we’d like to have (versus the work/cost to put it together).  So thumbs up, but…
3. Secret Project:  Our latest “are you sure that’s a holiday?” event, celebrating “National Play-doh day”.  It was still under way when we had our quarterly review, and I was giving it an incomplete because we waffled way too much on the holiday selection (ok, I waffled way too much).  But the response we got from the contest was the most we’ve ever seen (Alex did a great job driving that), so a thumbs up here.
4. Client appreciation party.  Boy, was this fun.  About 60 people joined us at the Quarter Up video arcade bar.  Huge thumbs up!

Sales Goals

1. 3 new MRR Clients onboarded with new process.  Nope.  Made some definite progress on these fronts, but not this level.  Thumbs down
2. Create initial Playbook and Sales Playbook.  Ditto, thumbs down.
3. Rehash project.  This one was a success, thumbs up!

If you ask me how we did in Q3, I’d say it was a good quarter.  Like I said, I like my goals high.  Q4?  Yup, probably higher still.  You'll see that in a separate post.