CASE STUDY
Beat Yourself, Not Your Peers
Imagine IT uses Contribution per Hour to build an honest, moving baseline instead of chasing a peer group number.
HEADQUARTERS
Minneapolis, MN
MSPCFO USER
One of MSPCFO First Clients 10+ Years
FEATURED VOICE
Rich Anderson
CEO
5 Quintiles
All clients get stack-ranked by how much profit they bring per hour; sorted into 5 groups.
Portfolio View
No client names until you drill in – forcing a portfolio view first.
One Target KPI
Using one benchmark allows Imagine IT to look at their personal benchmark across clients.
THE PROBLEM
Getting Stuck on the Squeaky Client
It’s easy for MSP leadership to get pulled into the one account everyone already knows about. The client requesting constant support, running under water, demanding a repricing conversation. Zooming out from that single relationship to see the health of the whole book is hard to do without data to back it up.
We think we know where the high performing or low performing clients are, and we’re probably 80% right. But that 20% – when you see that outlier that you didn’t expect to be there, high or low – that is where the value really comes in.
Rich Anderson
CEO, Imagine IT
This is the report that tells you what’s your normal. My goal is to get better and healthier as an MSP.
Rich Anderson
CEO, Imagine IT
How MSPCFO Changes the Process
Imagine IT looks at their entire portfolio and stack-ranks each client by Contribution per Hour using the Segments Report. Contribution per Hour is their single measure that nets out revenue and cost, regardless of whether it came from a fixed-fee agreement, a project, hardware, or a recurring product line.
Rich likes that client names stay hidden until they drill in, which forces a portfolio-level view instead of a single account reaction.
Imagine IT quickly can see their own average, floor, and ceiling in one view – and treat that as the number to beat.
The Outcome
The Imagine IT team has a consistent way to look at the portfolio and spot outliers.
- →Their book is sorted into five quintiles by Contribution per Hour, replacing anecdote with a portfolio-wide view.
- →Client identities stay hidden until drill-down so pricing decisions start from data, not the loudest account.
- →Rich now tracks his own floor and ceiling – a number he controls – instead of a peer benchmark he can’t.
