ICYMI: the latest Pax8 Platform features

Lori Robinson, Pax8 Internal Operations Director
Pax8 Platform Latest Features

Learn more about Executive Dashboard and its customizable widgets.

If you’ve ever watched a cooking show, you’ll notice the chefs using the term “mise en place”, which directly translates to “putting in place.” This term refers to the organization and arrangement of all the ingredients and tools needed to cook the dishes during the competition or a work shift. As Managed Service Providers (MSPs), you are the chefs of the cloud kitchen, organizing and piecing together various cloud software for your clients. But instead of a big countertop to spread ingredients out on, you’ve got the Pax8 Platform at your fingertips.

The Pax8 Platform is a free cloud marketplace that addresses the main three pain points of our MSPs — support, billing, and provisioning.

We help solve over 85% of issues in house without having to escalate it to vendors. And when it comes to the complicated task of billing each client for their specific stack of cloud tools, the Pax8 Platform allows you to efficiently service and manage all clients and their subscriptions in a single location. Most partners use the Platform to quickly buy and provision new licenses and products; since we built these integrations with Professional Service Automation (PSA) tools, our Platform acts as a mini Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software.

Executive Dashboard

When you first log on to the Pax8 Platform by clicking the Login button on our website, you’ll see the homepage or the Executive Dashboard.

It’s the countertop where all your tools, utensils, and ingredients are laid out. You’ll have access to:

  • Companies – Add, edit, and delete your clients
  • Subscriptions – View, cancel, and modify client subscriptions
  • Vendor Catalog – Learn more about cloud products and pricing
  • Quotes – Create, view, share, edit, and delete quotes, then easily turn them into orders
  • Any Trial Software – View all trial products and their end date
  • Past and Present Orders – View past orders and other details, such as additional steps you need to take after placing an order
  • Billing – View current and past invoices, even at the client level

Just like how some recipes call for sea salt and others need pink Himalayan salt, the Admin and Tools section of the Executive Dashboard allows you to manage the finer details of your business. For example, did you know that you can enable rate plans for particular clients? And if you have self-service clients, you can manage the products they see. There are also marketing tools that alert you to promotions and provide ways for you to enhance solutions you already have with Pax8.

Other Cool Dashboard Features

Since you’ll be using the Executive Dashboard quite a lot, we’ve made it customizable. You don’t just have to work off one dashboard — you can name, add, and delete multiple ones. And of course, there are different themes and colors to choose from. But by far the most distinctive dashboard feature is the widgets. These work with any theme and can be moved, resized, and renamed.

Widgets

You can’t properly mise en place ingredients or information without containers; consider the Pax8 Platform widgets the containers of our cloud kitchen. Our widget library is constantly growing and covers everything from support tickets to trending vendors to Microsoft license consumption. You can get an aesthetically pleasing, yet informative, picture of your clients, financials, and sales. There are also widgets that act more like tools and give you the latest Pax8 news.

Client Insights

These widgets give you information about your clients. You can see how many new clients were added each month and that in turn may give you some ideas on how to tweak or change up marketing and sales strategies. These widgets also allow you to keep track of which clients are active and inactive. But don’t forget to always delete the inactive ones so that they don’t skew the data. You can use a widget to track Microsoft license consumption by a particular client, helping them save money and allowing you to better advise them on future purchases.

Financials

Financial widgets show you just how much money is coming in and how it is being spent. You can compare the usage of each type of cloud solution you’ve purchased. And if you’re using Microsoft products, the Microsoft Spend widget shows you how your spending compares with other partners across the Pax8 ecosystem with the same number of employees.

Financial widgets also provide a quick snapshot of your revenue history, growth, attrition, and net. The more data that you have on the Platform, the more accurate the picture will be of your company’s growth. And finally, there is yet another widget to track the exact dollar amounts you’ve spent per vendor versus total spending across all Pax8 vendor categories.

Pax8 Insights

A delicious dish tends to sell itself, but that can’t be said for cloud products. Pax8 insight widgets give you access to Pax8 news, release notes, new vendors, and even targeted marketing. We push important information to you via news banners, so scroll through them to stay on top of what’s happening!

Sales Insights

Trying to figure out which products are the most useful for your clients? Our sales widgets sort products that you’ve sold into categories and vendors. For example, you can open the Stax utilization widget next to the vendor utilization widget to see which clients are missing security products. If they are, check if those same clients would benefit from on of our leading security vendors.

Tools

Like a bowl with a rubber bottom, our tools widgets add that special touch of convenience to the entire Pax8 Platform experience. Got a website that you visit frequently? Use the i-Frame widget to display it on your dashboard.

Next time you need to go there, just click on the widget. Need help with an already-submitted support ticket? You can keep track of these with the support tickets widget. And finally, there’s a widget that shows you how many unsynced subscriptions you have.

Mise En Place Your Business

Whether you’re looking to cook up an 8-course dinner for friends or manage 80 small and medium-sized businesses all by yourself, making sure you have all the necessary ingredients (or data) is key to success.

The Pax8 Platform shows a clear, big picture overview of your business. By utilizing Executive Dashboard and its customizable widgets, the Pax8 Platform helps you make better decisions about the future of your business. Ready to take a test flight on the Pax8 Platform?

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