AxioTech was struggling to gain actionable insights from HaloPSA due to a lack of in-house SQL reporting expertise.
By adopting SquaredUp as a real-time dashboarding layer, AxioTech bridged its reporting gap and reinvented how it monitors operations and communicates with clients.
Today, AxioTech’s leadership enjoys instant executive dashboards, their service team tracks key performance indicators, and clients receive interactive, data-driven QBR updates. The result is greater executive visibility, more efficient operations, improved billing accuracy, and stronger customer trust – all achieved with SquaredUp.
Background: an advanced MSP with a broad scope
Founded in 2015, AxioTech grew out of the convergence of telecom, audio/visual (AV), and IT managed services.
The company now has around 25 full-time employees and 50 contractors serving clients across the United States from its Fort Worth, Texas headquarters. AxioTech’s specialty is “AV/MSP” solutions for highly regulated and infrastructure-intensive environments.
This broad service portfolio meant AxioTech had massive amounts of operational data – from helpdesk tickets and project hours to device metrics and client satisfaction scores.
Challenge: unlocking deeper insights from HaloPSA data
In early 2023, AxioTech switched from a legacy PSA tool to HaloPSA to better support their growing business. The transition went smoothly, and they were live on HaloPSA within a couple of months. However, Rob Brewer (AxioTech’s CEO) quickly discovered a new challenge: extracting useful reports and dashboards from HaloPSA’s data was easier said than done.
HaloPSA gives MSPs access to operational data, but unlocking deeper insights often requires advanced querying or custom data views. AxioTech didn’t have the in-house SQL expertise or bandwidth to fully tap into Halo’s data model.
Rob explains it simply:
“Halo has an incredibly flexible reporting engine, but it relies on SQL to get the most out of it — and we didn’t have that capability internally.”
For nearly two years, AxioTech relied on team intuition and experience to steer the business. Without easy access to real-time insights, key questions remained unanswered:
- How satisfied are our customers right now?
- Are we consistently delivering against our SLAs?
- Which recurring issues need prioritizing?
- Are we billing accurately for all work delivered?
Rob knew that to level up their operation, AxioTech needed a way to democratise their HaloPSA data, without hiring a full-time SQL developer. That’s where SquaredUp came in.
Solution: bridging the gap with SquaredUp
Everything changed when AxioTech discovered SquaredUp for HaloPSA. SquaredUp is a lightweight dashboard and reporting platform that could connect directly to HaloPSA’s API and data, without complex configuration. For Rob and his team, it was immediately clear that this was the missing piece:
“We were very excited when we found SquaredUp and the ability to bridge that gap between what we were used to and what we currently have.”
AxioTech swiftly formed a leadership task force to evaluate and implement SquaredUp. Given that the HaloPSA integration was relatively new, AxioTech essentially became an early adopter – and they embraced a close collaborative partnership with SquaredUp’s team to tailor the solution to their needs. Rob highlights the integration process as a high point:
- Close partnership: “Some of [what we needed] was not out of the box… They really worked hard during the integration to help us create what we were accustomed to. The team I had working with their team has said nothing but great things.”
- Fast and efficient set-up: SquaredUp’s support was exemplary and made the rollout painless:“When it came to this integration, almost nothing got escalated to me – which means everything was fantastic. You guys really made my team happy, which makes me happy.”
Within a short span, AxioTech went from having no easy HaloPSA dashboards to deploying a rich array of real-time reports, all without writing a single SQL query themselves.
Key dashboards & reporting capabilities
Using SquaredUp, AxioTech rebuilt and expanded the reporting they had been missing. Some of the key dashboards and capabilities now in use include:
- Executive summary dashboards: In weekly leadership meetings SquaredUp provides the dashboard that clearly displays open projects, service backlogs, top problem areas, and key performance indicators. As Rob says, “I want to quickly walk through what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, and next steps. SquaredUp lets us do that in minutes, with all the data right there.”
- Customer insight dashboards for QBRs: AxioTech conducts regular quarterly business reviews (QBRs) with major clients, and SquaredUp has transformed these meetings. Instead of static slide decks, account managers pull up live client-specific dashboards in SquaredUp. With one click, they can switch the dashboard view to any client, thanks to SquaredUp’s dynamic filtering. It’s an interactive conversation, not a monologue. “We’ve created dashboards for client QBRs so we can look at what’s working well, using the ITIL model – identifying problem vs. issue trends – and really dig into tickets that are repetitive versus one-off issues,” Rob explains. “It’s really helped us showcase what we’re doing well to our clients.”
- Financial & billing tracking: SquaredUp has given AxioTech end-to-end visibility into their financial workflows that was nearly impossible to achieve before. Their dashboards link HaloPSA’s ticket data with invoicing and time entries, enabling them to track the full lifecycle.
- Open vs. Closed tickets – to see how many requests are unresolved vs. completed in a period.
- Billable work vs. invoiced vs. paid – ensure that every billable ticket or project is invoiced and then paid.
- Project hours vs. quoted – compare hours worked on projects to the hours estimated or included in fixed-price quotes, to monitor scope creep and profitability.
- Profit & loss metrics – high-level views of how service activities translate into revenue and costs.
Rob emphasizes the importance of this financial insight: “There’s nothing worse than doing something and not billing for it. If you don’t have good visibility, that is a reality. Now we can walk all the way through the lifecycle – from hours going into a project versus hours quoted, to the profit/loss scenario.” This clarity has helped ensure no revenue falls through the cracks, and it surfaces any disparities between effort and billing before they become problems.
- Service level agreement (SLA) monitoring: Rob can quickly check the “health” of service delivery. “You just can’t be in the ticketing system all day… It’s nice to click a button and see from a 10,000-foot view how your team’s doing – how they are delivering on client satisfaction, what their NPS looks like… all those great things,” says Rob. This bird’s-eye view means leadership can catch negative trends (like a slipping response time or a dissatisfied big client) early, without wading through raw data.
- KPI tracking and trend analysis: AxioTech’s key performance indicators are now tracked in SquaredUp with charts and gauges that update automatically. Rob believes this is crucial: “If you’re not watching a KPI, you can’t improve it. The visibility makes it imperative – if you don’t see it today and you want to grow; you’ve got to have it. [SquaredUp’s dashboards] make it visual and easy to digest.” By making metrics visible to everyone, SquaredUp has helped instill a performance-driven culture in the organization.
- Customer-specific workspaces: In addition to dynamic filters, AxioTech set up dedicated workspaces in SquaredUp for each of their major clients. These act as shared, permissioned dashboard views where clients can log in and see live metrics about their own environment and service health. This kind of transparency had been a long-time goal for AxioTech. “We used to have that capability a long time ago; we missed it a lot. Now we have it back – and we’re super happy,” says Rob. Clients appreciate the openness, and AxioTech’s account managers save time by letting the data do the talking.
- Cross-platform data integration: Beyond HaloPSA, AxioTech uses a variety of specialized tools – from marketing automation to network monitoring. SquaredUp’s Web API integration has allowed them to bring data from these platforms into certain dashboards. This unified approach to data was previously unattainable without extensive BI development.
Results & impact: new visibility powers growth and efficiency
By implementing SquaredUp, AxioTech has achieved significant improvements across their business:
- Restored executive insight & time savings: What used to be blind spots are now illuminated in real-time. Rob and his executives can quickly get answers during meetings without digging through reports. This means shorter, more productive management meetings and confident decision-making based on live data, not gut instinct.
- Data-driven customer conversations: QBRs and client meetings have been transformed from static presentations to interactive discussions. AxioTech can show clients exactly how they’re performing and the value being delivered. This transparency has strengthened client relationships and trust, as clients see factual evidence of improvements and challenges.
- Improved financial control: With better tracking of billable hours and ticket-to-invoice conversion, AxioTech has tightened up its billing process. They can easily spot unbilled work or project overruns and address them before they affect the bottom line. In short, no more revenue leakage due to missed or late invoices.
- Operational efficiency & proactive service: Technicians and managers now use SquaredUp’s dashboards daily to monitor their own performance. Issues like recurring outages or high ticket counts in a specific category are identified and resolved faster. The team spends less time manually compiling reports and more time focusing on service delivery.
- Unified view across toolsets: The ability to include data from other systems (like marketing, sales, or monitoring tools) on the same dashboards as HaloPSA data provides a more complete picture of the business. Different departments are now literally on the same page, looking at a “single source of truth” for key metrics.
Rob Brewer sums up the value of the partnership with one final thought:
“I appreciate the partnership, and I’m excited to take it to the next level with you guys.”
Key takeaway:
AxioTech proved that even with a powerhouse platform like HaloPSA, unlocking the full story behind your data takes the right visualization tool.
SquaredUp supercharged their HaloPSA insights by transforming raw information into instantly clear, beautifully visual dashboards without needing a BI team.
With tight collaboration between AxioTech and SquaredUp, the results were immediate: sharper visibility, faster decisionmaking, and a step-change in service performance.
Want results like this for your MSP?
Discover how SquaredUp can unlock the full potential of your HaloPSA data — book a demo.
