Brightmetrics ShoreTel Reporting Services

Wow have things changed over the last year for Brightmetrics. Finding our footing and what we wanted to be when we grow up has been a journey but here we are and we’ve landed on something amazing.

Throughout the buildout of Brightmetrics, we’ve always known that what we were creating was going to be a leading business intelligence service that can provide companies with the power to make better decisions from virtually any data held within their network. But that’s an incredibly tall order and it takes time to get there.

In the meantime, we’re building plugins for different data sources. Some will be relevant to a large audience and some are custom built for customers that need to access data from their systems in their own ways.

Our first plugin is our ShoreTel Reporting Services, and the feedback we’re getting from our first users is nothing short of incredible. Read the rest of this entry »

No Comments » | Posted by Jim Lewis |

Gain a Competitive Advantage Through Upstream Reporting

In an earlier blog we covered the topic of pushing information down to customers through downstream reporting. Now we’re going to think about pushing information up to franchisers, parent companies, and other people who are not necessarily on the front lines but require information from multiple sources to make strategic decisions. Read the rest of this entry »

No Comments » | Posted by Jim Lewis |

4 Core Financial Disciplines to Track in Your Company

In previous blog posts I’ve written about why an Executive Support System (ESS) is important in helping CEOs to make forward-thinking decisions. I’ve also explored some of the detailed metrics and ratios that an ESS tracks, like the three types of profitability metrics.

Now I’d like to give a quick overview of the four core financial disciplines that every CEO should be monitoring in their companies. Read the rest of this entry »

No Comments » | Posted by Jim Lewis |

Why CEOs Should Pay Greater Attention to Financial Metrics

When I started an IT services company, I was an IT expert but not necessarily an accounting expert. I was so busy working with my partners to get the company up and running that I didn’t have the time or interest to dig down and get deep into the financials.

Just starting out as the CEO, I remember managing the company’s financial standing by looking at basic monthly accounting reports like balance sheets, income statements and profit and loss statements. Financial metrics seemed pretty black and white to me at the time, and as long as the monthly reports looked good and there was money coming in, I thought we were in good shape.

It didn’t take me too long to realize that I wasn’t getting the whole picture. I soon recognized that those monthly reports were really just snapshots in time and did not reveal any important trends or insight into the future health of the business. Read the rest of this entry »

No Comments » | Posted by Jim Lewis |

Using Color in Data Visualization

Andrew and I spent three days last week at a workshop on Data Visualization. It was given by Stephen Few of Perceptual Edge. Stephen is a recognized expert in the design of information displays and he definitely earns that recognition. I would highly recommend to anyone who has job responsibilities of communicating any kind of data to others to take this course or, at a minimum, purchase his books. It is more than worth it to hear what he has to say about the topic and I can almost guarantee that it will change the way you do this.

There were many “Aha” moments for me over the three days, but one in particular really stood out. That was where he spoke about using color in data visualization. Read the rest of this entry »

No Comments » | Posted by Jim Lewis |

UI is hard

I assume that a lot of the people that are reading this blog know that we are developing a new service around data visualization for small and medium sized businesses. It’s really exciting for us. Especially because, as a lot of you know, I recently exited a company and this is a product that I really wish I would have had. It would have made a big difference in a lot of my decision making. But that’s not what this post is about. This is about designing a user interface (UI). And it’s really hard. Read the rest of this entry »

No Comments » | Posted by Jim Lewis |

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