Vancouver, BC – Produce8, a leader in digital work analytics, today announced the launch of Essential Insights, an innovative reporting system designed to empower businesses with real-time data on employee digital workflows while enabling Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to deliver unprecedented value to their clients.


In today’s fast-paced digital workplace, organizations struggle to understand how employees interact with technology, manage their time, and collaborate efficiently. Essential Insights simplifies this challenge by providing real-time, anonymized analytics that drive data-driven decisions, improve productivity, and support overall workforce well-being.


“Essential Insights was designed to seamlessly provide organizations with real-time business data,” said Marco LaVecchia - CRO of Produce8 “With its ability to reveal patterns in productivity, collaboration, and technology usage, businesses can create better workdays for employees, while MSPs can elevate their role as trusted strategic partners in driving digital efficiency.”


Unlocking Workforce Productivity with Essential Insights

Essential Insights delivers four key reporting dimensions that provide organizations with an in-depth understanding of their digital work environments:

Quality of Work Life – Tracks digital working hours, focus scores, and employee sentiment, helping businesses balance productivity with well-being.

Collaboration Time – Analyzes time spent in meetings and calls, identifying opportunities to improve communication efficiency.

Application Discovery & Usage – Provides insights into app usage, interaction patterns, and shadow IT risks, ensuring businesses maintain secure and efficient digital environments.

Team Benchmarking – Enables comparative analysis of departments and teams, identifying trends and disparities to optimize resource allocation and collaboration.


A Game-Changer for Managed Service Providers (MSPs)

Essential Insights is not only a powerful tool for businesses—it also presents a transformative opportunity for MSPs looking to expand their value proposition and service offerings.

Deepen Client Relationships – MSPs can move beyond traditional IT support by delivering actionable insights that make them indispensable business advisors.

Drive Growth & Revenue – By offering DWA-powered insights, MSPs can expand into HR and operational analytics, opening new revenue streams.

Differentiate Services – Essential Insights helps MSPs stand out in a crowded market, delivering next-generation analytics that drive business success.


MSPs have traditionally provided IT expertise, evolving from network management to cloud adoption and cybersecurity. The next logical step in their evolution is Digital Work Analytics (DWA)—a fast-growing sector that helps businesses optimize workflows and retain top talent.


“Organizations invest 8-10% of their OPEX budget on IT, but up to 75% on human resources,” Janice Siddons - President of Produce 8 added “Essential Insights enables MSPs to bridge the gap by showing clients exactly how their technology investment impacts their most valuable asset: their people.”

Seamless Integration and Adoption

Produce8 has made integrating Essential Insights into MSP service offerings effortless. The tool can be deployed in just three simple steps:

Show Clients the Report – Demonstrate how DWA analytics uncover productivity patterns and inefficiencies.

Easily Deploy Essential Insights to Client Base – No complex integration is required—Essential Insights works seamlessly with existing IT infrastructure.

Incorporate Reports into QBR Meetings – Use insights to fuel quarterly business reviews (QBRs) and strengthen strategic conversations with clients.


To support MSPs, Produce8 offers an MSP Partner Program with dedicated resources and training, helping them scale Essential Insights as a core business offering.

Unlock the Power of Digital Work Analytics


Essential Insights is available now for businesses and MSPs looking to enhance workplace efficiency, illuminate new growth opportunities, and drive data-backed decision-making.


Join the Essential Insights Launch Webinar


Date: January 30, 2025 | Time: 2 PM ET
Register Here: Produce8 Essential Insights Launch Webinar
For more information, book a live demo or learn about our MSP Partner Program


Produce8 Launches Essential Insights, a Breakthrough Digital Work Analytics Reporting Tool for Businesses and MSPs

Produce8 is proud to announce the launch of Essential Insights, our new Digital Work Analytics (DWA) Report System designed to empower knowledge workers, enhance business efficiency, and support Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in driving growth.

The modern workplace is increasingly digital, making it essential for businesses to understand how employees interact with technology, manage their time, and collaborate. Essential Insights brings clarity to these areas, offering detailed, anonymized reports that enable data-driven decisions to optimize productivity, foster well-being, and scale operations.

Transforming the Workplace with Essential Insights

Essential Insights Reporting leverages real-time analytics to deliver a comprehensive view of the employee digital experience across four critical dimensions:

Quality of Work Life: Tracks digital working hours, focus scores, and employee sentiment to balance productivity and well-being.

Collaboration Time: Analyzes time spent in meetings and calls, highlighting areas for communication efficiency.

Application Discovery & Usage: Provides insights into app usage, interaction patterns, and shadow IT risks.

Team Benchmarking: Enables comparative analysis of teams, identifying trends and disparities to align resources effectively.

“Essential Insights was designed to easily offer organizations real-time business data” said Janice Siddons, President, Produce8. “With its ability to reveal patterns in productivity and collaboration, businesses can create better workdays for their teams, while MSPs can elevate their role as trusted strategic partners.”

A Game-Changer for Managed Service Providers

For MSPs, Essential Insights represents a transformative opportunity to expand their value proposition:

Deepen Client Relationships: By offering actionable insights, MSPs can transition from being IT providers to indispensable business advisors.

Drive Growth: The tool opens doors to new services, enabling MSPs to tap into HR and operational challenges.

Differentiate Services: Essential Insights helps MSPs stand out in a competitive market with next-generation analytics capabilities.

Key industries such as technology, professional services, healthcare, and financial services are poised to benefit significantly from these insights, making Essential Insights a versatile solution across sectors.

Seamless Integration and Adoption

Produce8 has made adopting Essential Insights Reporting easy for MSPs, requiring just three simple steps: introduce the tool to clients, deploy it easily, and incorporate insights into regular business reviews. The platform also offers a Partner Program to provide MSPs with the resources and training needed to maximize their impact.

Unlock the Power of Digital Work Analytics

Produce8’s Essential Insights is now available to help businesses and MSPs illuminate opportunities, improve efficiency, and foster sustainable growth. To learn more, book a live demo at Produce8’s website.

For additional information, contact Produce8 at info@produce8.com and join our launch webinar on January 30th (2pm ET): Essential Insights - Introducing Digital Work Analytics Reporting for MSPs.

Find out more about Essential Insights reporting

Produce8 Launches Essential Insights: Revolutionizing Digital Work Analytics for Businesses and MSPs

At Produce8, we believe that meaningful change starts with intentional action. That’s why we’re excited to introduce our latest feature, Organization Challenges, designed to help you drive and measure impactful change across your business.



Driving Transformation, One Challenge at a Time



What do we mean by challenges? Whether you’re revamping meeting culture, tackling email overload, or reducing distractions from messaging tools, Organization Challenges empowers your organization to set company-wide initiatives. 

This feature brings visibility to the link between change efforts and impacts to everyone in your business using the Produce8 app, ensuring that your team is involved and engaged with not only their contribution, but to the overall outcome for the business.



Measure What Matters



Understanding the impact of your initiatives is crucial. With Organization Challenges, you can track before-and-after anonymized metrics that show the impact on the average employee. This allows you to see the percentage changes in work habits, helping you gauge the success of your challenges.



Support for Change Champions



No matter who’s leading the charge—internal teams or external experts—Challenges offer a robust toolset to socialize the initiative, engage your workforce, and report on progress. The Produce8 personal dashboard makes it easy to monitor and communicate the results of your efforts.



Stay Connected and Informed



We’ve made it simple to keep track of active and completed challenges. The new Challenges homepage, accessible from your user menu, displays all ongoing initiatives. Plus, the new Challenges resource center on our website offers guidance on maximizing the impact of your productivity and wellness initiatives.



With Organization Challenges, Produce8 is giving you the tools to create lasting, positive change in your organization. Ready to start your first Challenge?

Engage Your Entire Business in Productivity Initiatives 

Managing email overload has become a critical skill for professionals seeking to maintain efficiency and sanity in the workplace. According to Microsoft, some employees dedicate approximately nine hours every week to emails. That’s more than a full workday!

While some roles necessitate responding to incoming emails promptly, many workers check their inboxes impulsively even when their focus should be on other tasks. There are several reasons why knowledge workers feel beholden to their inboxes, including FOMO, the instant gratification of small accomplishments, and poor time management skills.

Constantly checking emails interrupts workflow, making it difficult to maintain concentration on important tasks. This leads to a loss of time and energy. Additionally, this habit can increase stress and anxiety in workers, especially when anticipating new messages and feeling the pressure to respond quickly.

If your team is seeking a way to improve employee well-being and recover time from the inbox, then this article is for you.

Identifying Email Overload

It’s essential to recognize the signs of email overload before tackling it. Here are some indicators that you or your employees might be overwhelmed by emails:

High Interactions in Email App: Regularly checking emails indicates that workers are disengaging from their tasks to attend to messages.

Increased Work Hours: Spending excessive time outside of regular work hours dealing with emails suggests that email management is intruding on personal time.

Insufficient Time Spent on Main Tasks: A decline in productivity occurs when time is spent managing emails instead of focusing on primary tasks.

Want hard data to help identify your team’s email overload problem? Get Produce8. We can show you crucial data and help you fix the issue before it gets worse.

Ready to make some changes? Here are a few approaches you can use to improve email management across your organization.

Improve Email Management

1. Email Batching

Email batching involves grouping your email tasks into specific intervals rather than constantly checking your inbox. This technique can significantly reduce distractions and increase your focus on important tasks. Here's how to implement email batching effectively:

Designate specific times during the day to check and respond to emails. Batches could be first thing in the morning, after lunch, and before the end of the workday.

Disable email notifications to prevent interruptions outside of your designated batch times.

Commit to your email-checking schedule and avoid the temptation to check your inbox in between these times.

2. Time Blocking

Much like email batching, time blocking is a time management technique where you allocate fixed blocks of time to specific tasks or activities. This method can help you manage your email more efficiently while ensuring you have dedicated time for other important tasks. Here's how to use time blocking for email management:

Schedule specific time blocks in your calendar dedicated solely to checking and responding to emails. For example, you might allocate 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon.

Focus on high-priority tasks outside of your email blocks. Do not allow for email distractions.

Measure your productivity and adjust these time blocks if necessary. The goal is to find a balance that works best for you.

3. Implement the Two-Minute Rule

The two-minute rule is designed to streamline your email management process and minimize time spent on each email. Here’s how to integrate this rule into your daily routine:

Take Immediate Action for Quick Emails: If an email can be responded to in two minutes or less during your designated email blocks, address it immediately. This approach prevents small tasks from piling up. Quick actions might include confirming meeting times, forwarding information, or providing brief answers to straightforward questions.

Schedule Time-Consuming Emails into Your Calendar for Dedicated Time Blocks: Some email responses take more than two minutes. If you don’t want to forget about them, schedule them into your calendar using apps like Gmail and Outlook.

In Gmail, open the email and click on the three-dot menu at the top right corner. Next, select “Create event” to open Google Calendar, where you can set a specific time block for responding to the email.

Similarly, in Outlook, you can drag the email to the Calendar icon to create a new event or appointment. This method allows you to allocate dedicated time to address complex emails, ensuring they receive the attention they need without interrupting your workflow.

4. Manage Your Email Process

Adjust your email management processes to streamline your inbox. This ensures you spend less time organizing and sifting through emails. Here are a few methods you can try:

Use Filters and Labels: Gmail and Outlook both offer filtering and labeling options. Set up filters to automatically sort incoming emails into categories such as urgent, important, and low priority. Labels and folders can also help you identify and manage different types of emails.

Unsubscribe from Unnecessary Newsletters: Over time, your email can become cluttered with newsletters and promotional messages. Schedule a time block to unsubscribe from emails that no longer serve a purpose. This will reduce the volume of emails you receive daily.

Use Templates for Common Responses: For frequently asked questions or recurring topics, create email templates. This saves time, ensures consistent responses, and prevents you from having to write the same message repeatedly.

5. Leverage Email Management Tools

Consider using email management tools and apps that integrate with your email system. These tools can help you track, prioritize, and automate email tasks.

Here are a few email management tools to test:

Superhuman offers a streamlined, minimalistic interface that boosts email efficiency by using features like fast keyboard shortcuts, snooze options, read receipts, and advanced search.

Spark allows team members to discuss emails privately and work together on responses.

SaneBox filters and prioritizes emails, automatically sorting less important messages into separate folders.

Boomerang allows you to schedule emails to be sent later, set follow-up reminders, and temporarily archive emails until you need them.

Clean Email helps you organize and declutter your inbox by grouping similar emails together and then archive or delete them in bulk.

6. Inbox Zero

Inbox Zero is a productivity approach aimed at keeping your inbox empty or near empty at all times. This method helps you stay organized and ensures that no important emails are overlooked. Here's how to achieve Inbox Zero effectively:

Set Up a System: Organize your emails into folders or label them for easy access and sorting. Use categories like “Action Required,” “Waiting on Response,” and “Reference.”

Process Emails Regularly: Dedicate specific times each day to process your emails. During these times, sort your emails into the appropriate folders, delete what’s not needed, and respond to or delegate actionable items.

Use Email Management Tools: Use tools or features like filters, rules, and templates to automate and streamline your email processing.

Maintain the System: Regularly review and clean your inbox to keep it organized. Ensure that new emails are processed promptly to avoid backlog and maintain your Inbox Zero status.

Measure the Effectiveness of the Change

Email overload can be managed with the right strategy. By implementing productivity techniques like email batching and time blocking or making changes to your email management processes, you can significantly reduce interactions with your inbox, allowing you to focus on important tasks and maintain a healthy work-life balance.

However, it’s also possible that productivity hacks for managing emails might not work. For example, Inbox Zero may heighten your email interactions.

Whatever changes you choose to implement, it’s essential to measure their effectiveness. Regularly assess whether these changes are actually helping you manage your inbox more efficiently. Remember, the objective is to find the approach that works best for you and your team.

Use Produce8 to track your progress, measure the impact of your changes, and continually refine your approach to keep improving.

How to Prevent Email Overload at Work: Email Management Tips

Is your team managing time efficiently?

As organizational leaders striving to enhance team performance, it's essential to recognize that not all meetings are created equal. Unfortunately, some are more likely to disrupt the workday and cause employees to lose valuable focus time.

This article explores the traits of disruptive meetings. This knowledge will assist you in establishing the changes necessary for better time management and empower your employees to improve collaboration.

By understanding which types of meetings negatively impact your team, you can implement strategies to minimize these disruptions. Addressing these factors will enable your teams to maintain focus, improve productivity, and foster a more efficient and engaged work environment.

Meetings that cause interruptions

Frequent interruptions in the form of meetings can significantly disrupt an employee's focus and productivity.

Ad hoc meetings, often scheduled spontaneously to address immediate issues, can cause interruptions in the workplace. These unscheduled sessions break the flow of planned work and force employees to shift their focus abruptly, leading to a significant loss of time. By minimizing ad hoc meetings and finding alternative ways to address urgent matters, organizations can preserve the focus of workers.

By identifying these meetings, addressing whether they are a problem, and implementing strategies to manage their frequency and timing, businesses can help employees maintain better time management throughout their workday.

Consider introducing asynchronous collaboration or having a meeting-free workday.

Produce8 is a digital work analytics platform that enables you to understand how you are currently running meetings and whether the changes you’ve made are having the desired outcome.

Poorly scheduled meetings

Poorly scheduled meetings — especially recurring meetings or cross-functional meetings — can significantly disrupt productivity. If not regularly reviewed, these meetings can become habitual and hinder peak productivity periods.

Many recurring meetings, such as daily stand-ups, team huddles, and regular check-ins, while brief, interrupt the start of the workday and impede focus during an employee’s most productive working hours. These meetings act as anchor points that employees anticipate, preventing them from getting into a flow beforehand and requiring time to mentally refocus afterward.

To resolve these scheduling issues, teams and organizations can establish clear guidelines for meeting scheduling, including preferred times and notice periods. Because everyone has different productive work times, encourage employees to block out focus time on their calendars and set meeting-free zones during specific times or days to minimize disruptions.

Additionally, reviewing the necessity of recurring meetings and canceling or combining those that are no longer essential can prevent unnecessary interruptions. We challenge your organization to take the Great Workdays Kickoff for Organizations to identify how scheduled meetings are impacting productivity.

Meetings that run over time

Brainstorming sessions, project kickoff meetings, and strategic planning meetings are prime examples of meetings that extend past their scheduled time, as they involve sharing extensive details and engaging in open-ended conversations.

A common cause for meetings running over time is not having a clear goal at the start or failing to set a time limit to reach that goal. Even with well-defined objectives, relying on a committee to reach a consensus can be challenging. Ensuring that all discussions and decisions stay aligned with the meeting’s objectives can help, but sometimes reducing the number of participants is necessary to streamline discussions. We will go into more detail about this in the following section.

How often do meetings run over in your organization? Analyze the data in the Produce8 workspace timeline.

By recognizing lengthy meetings and implementing strategies to keep discussions focused and time-boxed, businesses can ensure that their employees’ time and energy are spent in the right place.

Meetings with too many participants

If we all know that having too many participants in a meeting can be detrimental, why does it keep happening? Because of over-inclusiveness, unclear roles, and a fear of missing out. Hierarchical pressure and ambiguous meeting objectives can also lead to excessive invitations. But most often, it simply occurs out of habit.

To manage participant numbers effectively, businesses must first understand the average sizes of their meetings and decipher how many hours are spent in meetings with a large participation list.

Produce8 allows you to see how much time is spent in meetings by size — and the average cost to the business:

After you’ve identified the problem, you can have more efficient discussions with your team by keeping meetings to a manageable size. Segment meetings, use representatives, and leverage technology for asynchronous work to help streamline discussions.

Recovering focus time from meetings

Meetings are affecting employee focus time and well-being. We cannot ignore that fact any longer — especially when gathering a group of people together is easier than ever. We must come to understand how we conduct meetings and determine whether changes are actually improving the workday.

By gathering data on current meeting practices, you can pinpoint specific issues such as excessive participation, poor scheduling, or lengthy durations. With this data in hand, bring the team together and come to an agreement on necessary changes. Then implement strategies tailored to address these issues.

By continuing to measure and analyze meeting data, you can assess the effectiveness of these changes. And by committing to data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement, your organization can optimize meeting practices and better support team performance.

We encourage your teams and organizations to measure the time they spend in meetings and start improving their workdays by starting the Great Workdays Kickoff for Organization. Reach out to Produce8 if you’re up for it. We can get your whole organization set up and feeling empowered to take back control of the workday.


Types of Meetings Affecting Focus Time

Understanding the impact of meeting overload on business efficiency is crucial. Meetings are essential for collaboration and decision-making, but excessive and poorly managed meetings can significantly drain an organization’s resources and hinder productivity.

Struggling to help your teams have better workdays? You’re not alone! In this article, we will analyze some of the most shocking statistics around meeting overload and help you examine your organization's current meeting culture. Armed with this knowledge, you can make changes to improve employee satisfaction and overall operational efficiency.

1. There Are Too Many Meetings

The average employee participates in at least eight meetings each week, which equates to more than one meeting per day. This number only increases with seniority, as the average executive manager attends at least 12 meetings per week.

This data underscores the need to evaluate how these frequent meetings impact your workday.

2. Meetings Are Expensive

Unproductive meetings are a significant concern, with an estimated $37 billion lost annually in the United States due to inefficient meetings, according to Flowtrace.

Understanding the financial cost of these meetings can help businesses realize the importance of streamlining their processes. Enter Produce8, which can show you the organizational cost of meetings.

3. Meetings Are Draining

One in four employees suffer from “Zoom fatigue” during meetings, according to Pew Research. This emphasizes the importance of considering the mental and physical toll of excessive meetings on employees.

4. Scheduling Meetings Is Work

Office workers waste an average of one hour and 42 minutes per week scheduling and rescheduling calls. This suggests that improving scheduling efficiency could free up significant time for more valuable work.

5. Meetings Are Getting Longer

Time spent in meetings has been rising by 8% to 10% every year since 2000. Recognizing this trend can help businesses implement strategies to curb the increasing length of meetings.

Produce8 allows your team to easily see the scheduled block for meetings in their Calendar. This enables your organization to have a better grasp on how long meetings are lasting.

6. Meetings Have Too Many Attendees

More than 22% of meetings have at least eight attendees, according to Fellow. This results in over 15 hours of meetings per week on average, leaving little time for execution.

This data shows that smaller, more focused meetings could be more effective.

7. Unscheduled and Ad Hoc Meetings

Sixty-six percent (66%) of 1:1 calls are unscheduled, according to HBR. This means that employees’ workdays are often interrupted with spontaneous video calls on apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams. These interruptions disrupt their workflow and focus.

8. Meetings Cause Delays

Seventy percent (70%) of meetings cause delays in completing essential work, according to research from Bloomberg. This aligns with findings that indicate 92% of workers feel meetings keep them from their regular work duties.

Such disruptions highlight the need for more efficient meeting practices, which can ensure that essential tasks are not sidelined.

We Can Fix This

While meetings are a vital aspect of business operations, their overabundance can be a significant drain on time, resources, and employee morale.

Here’s one last stat for you: A Harvard Business Review study found that when companies reduced meeting time by 40%, worker productivity increased by 70%. But we know that the solution is not as simple as cutting out meetings from your schedule. After all, your team still needs to collaborate. Instead, we’re suggesting you stop running initiatives without data.

Produce8 helps the whole team get on the same page regarding the current meeting culture. By linking their calendar and meeting apps, teams can address meeting issues with data-driven insights, allowing everyone to measure the effectiveness of changes.

Interested in seeing how meetings are impacting your organization? Book a live demo with our team.

Too Many Meetings? Here Are 8 Stats You Need to Know About How Meetings Cost Businesses

For decades, managed service providers (MSPs) have worked behind the scenes to support businesses and ensure uninterrupted access to essential tools and resources for troubleshooting technical issues.

As knowledge work evolved from local area networks (LANs) and on-premises, MSPs transformed their businesses to optimize employee digital experiences. Today, clients look to MSPs both for technical support and strategic guidance.

There’s a huge opportunity available today. We believe the future of MSP work requires a shift from solely providing technology products and services to becoming advisors on the impact of technology on productivity (and people). For customers who want to understand how technology is consumed, MSPs can help.

Organizations with knowledge workers allocate a significant portion of their budget—75%—towards salaries, HR, and productivity initiatives. This directly impacts employee effectiveness and satisfaction.

In contrast, technology products and services provided by MSPs typically constitute only 5% of the budget. This disparity underscores the need to prioritize investments that enhance employee digital experience and improve overall performance and employee well-being.

By focusing on enhancing overall business productivity, MSPs can deliver greater value. The employee digital experience is integral to every aspect of work life, and MSPs will ideally be positioned as indispensable partners in driving productivity and organizational success.

What is the employee digital experience?

Employee digital experience refers to the overall digital interactions and experiences employees have within their organization. It highlights the integration of digital tools and platforms into the broader employee experience framework, ensuring that technology enhances rather than hinders employee productivity, satisfaction, and well-being.

Employee digital experience encompasses various dimensions of how employees interact with digital tools and the environment within their organization. It integrates employee experience (EX), which covers overall employee interactions and engagements across the workplace, with digital employee experience (DEX), which focuses specifically on the quality of digital interfaces and the tools workers use.

Additionally, it encompasses digital experience (DX), which extends beyond internal systems to include all digital interactions employees have, whether through websites, mobile apps, or external platforms.

Together, these frameworks ensure a holistic approach to enhancing productivity, satisfaction, and well-being by optimizing digital workflows and interactions throughout the employee journey.

A good employee digital experience is seamless, secure, and intuitive. However, for many workers, constant distractions and an overwhelming array of collaboration apps and tools often mar the experience.

Instead of empowering employees, these digital tools provided by MSPs lead to frustration and decreased productivity as workers spend more time in virtual meetings, navigating broken workflows, or searching for files rather than performing their core tasks.

But here’s the good news: MSPs are equipped to help them fix this.

The role of MSP vCIOs

Creating better workdays starts by empowering workers with data to properly optimize daily workflows and improve productivity. This allows them to identify the root of problems, make informed changes, and measure whether they are achieving the desired results.

MSP virtual Chief Information Officers (vCIOs) are well-suited to help their clients acquire advanced work analytic tools like Produce8. These tools offer clients insights into the factors that may be impairing worker productivity.

By leveraging this data, they can point to areas for improvement and collaborate with vCIOs to strategize. Overall, they can get recommendations to create a more efficient and satisfying work environment.

MSPs' clients are increasingly eager to learn about productivity as they recognize the role it plays in achieving business success. Clients are open to exploring new solutions and leveraging data-driven insights to understand work patterns, eliminate bottlenecks, and enhance overall performance without compromising work culture. They are ready to embrace digital work analytics, and MSPs that embrace it too can position themselves as advisors, differentiate themselves in a competitive marketplace, and create a new revenue stream.

MSPs and the evolution of digital work

To properly advise your customers regarding how technology impacts productivity, you must adopt the same mindset and approach used when initially developing your business application services or establishing your MSSP cybersecurity practice. Like RMM/PSA, work analytics is a platform investment, not just another tool in your tech stack.

We have watched MSPs successfully evolve for years, and we foresee the next phase of transformation being in the productivity and employee digital experience space. To put all this in context, allow me to share some historical milestones and the trajectory of digital work for MSPs.

Distributed Workplaces (1995–2000+): MSPs started by rolling out web-based tools like email and LAN networking, which helped boost collaboration and connectivity within organizations. As workplaces spread out, MSPs stepped up by adding WAN and VPN solutions, along with email servers, to keep communication smooth and reliable for remote teams.

Cloud and Mobile Transformation (2005+): MSPs provided their clients with tools to improve communication and schedule management. They introduced early collaboration platforms like SharePoint and VOIP-based telephony applications, making it easier to work flexibly and efficiently across different locations. And by integrating cloud business solutions and strong mobile device management, MSPs ensured data security and compliance while supporting the increasing mobility of the workforce.

Web-Based Communication (2015+): MSPs added several cloud solutions to their services, which changed how businesses operated. Essential to this shift was collaborative messaging tools and virtual meeting setups, which ensured smooth communication and teamwork among remote teams. Through cloud-based platforms, MSPs offered scalable solutions that went beyond traditional physical limits, allowing for real-time collaboration and information sharing across any distance.

Remote Worker Infrastructure (2020+): As remote work took off, MSPs introduced virtual calling apps to support remote collaboration and communication. They also started focusing on solutions to better understand employee dynamics, marking a big shift in their role. However, their clients were just starting to understand the complexities of productivity and well-being in the workplace, highlighting the need for nuanced tools that go beyond mere employee monitoring. This is where we noticed the increasing demand among MSPs and their clients for digital work analytics. Thus, Produce8 was born.

Managed AI and the Future of the Employee Experience (2023+): As AI becomes more common in the digital work world, both leaders and employees must come to understand its impact on organizational success. With AI-driven applications and digital work analytics, MSPs can help their clients use data-driven insights to navigate new technologies and workflows. MSPs are uniquely positioned to guide businesses through these changes, offering the tools and strategies needed to boost productivity, streamline operations, and support sustainable growth in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

As the role of MSPs further evolves, their historical expertise and ability to devise forward-thinking strategies aligns them perfectly to improve the employee digital experience, making them invaluable partners in shaping the future of work.

Join the Produce8 MSP Partner Program

Now is the perfect time for MSPs to equip their clients with productivity and work analytics tools like Produce8. As the digital work landscape continues to evolve, organizations need deeper insights into their workflows to enhance efficiency and drive success.

By joining the Partner Program, MSPs gain access to a comprehensive suite of tools and resources designed to implement these advanced solutions effectively. This empowers MSPs to offer unparalleled value to their clients, positioning themselves as leaders in the industry while opening up new revenue streams. Joining the Partner Program ensures MSPs have everything they need to support their clients in achieving operational excellence.



Evolving MSP vCIO Services: Shaping the Future of Employee Digital Experience

Produce8 provides digital work analytics to help the clients of MSPs measure and fix the impact of technology on employee productivity and wellbeing.

Vancouver, BC, Canada (June 19, 2024) – Produce8, a leading work analytics software vendor, today announced the launch of its new Managed Service Provider (MSP) Partner Program. This initiative is designed to enable MSPs to offer their clients Produce8’s advanced work analytics tools, enhancing productivity, optimizing operations, and improving employee experience.

Produce8 offers detailed insights and analytics for organizations to make data-driven decisions to help them address the challenges that impair productivity and empower individual employees with tools to manage their workday more effectively.

“MSPs have been supporting the entire stack of collaboration and communications technology for their clients for years,” said Marco La Vecchia, CRO at Produce8. “These same technologies are now implicated in impairing the productivity of employees with notifications, meeting overload, messaging distraction, context switching, and too much time spent responding to emails. We think MSPs are ideally suited to help their customers understand the impact of technology on the productivity and wellbeing of their knowledge worker employees.”

Differentiation and Strategic Value for MSPs

The Produce8 MSP Partner Program offers MSPs significant value by differentiating their business, offering a new recurring revenue stream, and increasing the value they provide to their customers. It allows MSPs to move from advising purely on technology-related investments to providing strategic input on factors that impact employee-related costs, which are four times higher than IT-related expenditures. The overlap between people and technology is something MSPs have not yet been able to address with their vCIO consulting practices.

“All businesses are facing increasing demands to address the productivity and engagement of knowledge workers and to address the increasing frequency of employee burnout that is at least partially driven by the way we now work,” said Joel Abramson, CEO of Produce8. “Our partner program is designed to equip MSPs with a unique offering to help their clients meet these challenges head-on. By joining our program, MSPs can enhance their service offerings and help their clients overcome the challenges of the modern digital workplace.”

Key Features of the Produce8 MSP Partner Program:

Technical Support and Resources: Comprehensive technical tools and support to ensure seamless integration and implementation for MSPs' clients.

Marketing and Sales Resources: Access to go-to-market strategies and sales support to help MSPs effectively promote and sell Produce8 to their clients.

Educational and Training Materials: Ongoing training to keep partners updated on the latest features and best practices.

Partner Tiers: Flexible tiers (Select, Premier, Elite) to cater to different levels of partner engagement and business needs.

To learn more MSPs are invited to visit www.produce8.com/msp-partner-program and to register to join an upcoming partner webinar.

Produce8 Introduces Partner Program for Managed Service Providers 

For years, MSPs have received requests to find solutions that aid their clients in enhancing productivity and performance. However, constrained by limited options, they frequently default to recommending products primarily geared toward employee monitoring.

You and your clients have decided to avoid employee monitoring and traditional productivity tracking tools. The main reason is simple: These tools often violate employee trust and fail to address the underlying issues that hinder workplace productivity.

However, the challenges of optimizing work efficiency and ensuring effective collaboration still persist. So, what’s the next step?

What factors of work are impairing productivity?

First, let’s understand the ongoing challenges of digital work!

We spend a lot of time discussing employee productivity but often overlook the biggest factors that impair it. Distracting communication tools, excessive time lost in meetings, and the high costs of context switching significantly undermine knowledge worker productivity.

These issues create a fragmented work environment, where constant interruptions and shifting focus prevent teams from achieving deep, meaningful work. To truly enhance productivity, we must address these underlying challenges and implement strategies that minimize distractions, streamline communication, and reduce the inefficiencies caused by frequent context switching.

1. Excessive time wasted in meetings and collaborations

Scenario: Your clients don’t realize how much time is being lost via unproductive meetings and excessive collaboration. Without clear data, it's difficult to identify and eliminate these time sinks.

Solution: Rather than using monitoring tools to micromanage team interactions, focus on gathering data to understand the discrepancy between planned activities and actual occurrences. This will help your client’s team identify and reduce ad hoc meetings, which often unexpectedly consume significant portions of the day. Providing MSP clients with this insight allows them to regain control over their schedules and prioritize their tasks.

2. Distractions from messaging apps and emails

Scenario: Your client’s team struggles to stay focused due to constant interruptions from messaging apps and email notifications, which can severely impact productivity.

Solution: Empower your clients to understand their work habits and make informed decisions about managing their time and applications. Encourage them to adjust notification settings and plan their day to minimize distractions. By fostering a culture of self-awareness and personal accountability, they can develop strategies to maintain focus and enhance their productivity.

3. Time spent on work about work

Scenario: Your client’s team spends significant time on "work about work," which leads to productive time leaks. This includes context-switching between multiple tasks, searching for information across numerous apps, and using tools that do not align with organizational goals.

Solution: Help your client gain a clear understanding of how workflows are costing them time by providing them insight into their workday. Analyze how they switch between tasks and identify tools that cause inefficiencies. Encourage the use of applications that support the organization's objectives and facilitate focused work on high-impact tasks. This approach ensures the client’s team’s efforts are aligned with overall goals, thus maximizing productivity and effectiveness.

A new approach to productivity

To address these three factors impairing the workday, help your clients implement a solution that provides actionable insights without compromising employee trust. Digital work analytics platforms like Produce8 offer a comprehensive view of how work is being done, enabling you to make informed decisions that benefit both the organization and its employees.

Produce8 differentiates itself from monitoring tools in three distinct ways:

Empowerment through transparency: Produce8 provides employees with visibility into their work patterns and productivity metrics. By giving individuals control over their data and insights, Produce8 enables them to actively participate in the optimization of their work habits and performance by running personal productivity challenges.

Insightful analytics for actionable solutions: Instead of inundating users with raw data, Produce8 distills complex metrics into clear, actionable insights that empower organizations to make informed decisions. Whether it's identifying bottlenecks in workflows, detecting trends in collaboration patterns, or optimizing resource allocation, Produce8 equips businesses with the knowledge needed to drive meaningful improvements.

Focus on collaboration and engagement: By providing visibility into collective work patterns and collaboration dynamics, Produce8 encourages communication, knowledge sharing, and synergy among team members. This collaborative approach enhances productivity and cultivates a sense of camaraderie and cohesion within the workforce.

What’s the difference between employee monitoring tools and work analytics?

Unlike employee monitoring tools, which may focus solely on surveillance and compliance, a digital work analytics tool provides deeper insights into how work is performed.

Ultimately, a digital work analytics tool identifies productivity challenges while equipping organizations with the insights they need to make impactful changes and take control of their workday.

Join the Produce8 Partnership Program

If your goal is to maintain trust and morale, avoiding employee monitoring and traditional productivity tracking tools is a step in the right direction. However, the need to address productivity challenges remains.

By leveraging digital work analytics, you can empower your clients and their teams to understand and improve their work habits and align their efforts with organizational goals. This approach ensures that they have the tools and insights needed to work more efficiently and effectively — without the invasive scrutiny of monitoring tools. Embrace this solution to drive meaningful change and enhance productivity across your organization.

Reach out to our team of productivity experts and we can get you set up in the Produce8 Partner Program. This way, your MSP will have everything it needs to empower your clients to take back control of their day.

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Challenges to help you build better habits and get things done

Time blocking is a time management method that involves dividing your day into blocks of time, with each block dedicated to accomplishing a specific task or group of tasks. This technique helps in organizing your day more efficiently, ensuring that you allocate time to important activities without the day slipping away into less productive tasks.

Effective time blocking will manifest as a well-structured timeline, fewer distractions from low-priority apps, and a higher focus score, demonstrating better productivity and focused work. These KPIs are crucial for assessing the effectiveness of your time management approach.

Time Blocking Challenge Outcome 

Want to have better workdays? We can help!

Time Blocking Challenge

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. It breaks work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. These intervals are known as "pomodoros," the Italian word for tomatoes, named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer Cirillo used as a university student.


Your timeline will distinctly show each Pomodoro work block and break. Engagement with distracting apps should decrease, and when used, it should be more purposeful. Enhanced focus from dedicated work sessions should result in a higher focus score.


Pomodoro Technique Challenge Outcome 

Want to have better workdays? We can help! 

Pomodoro Technique Challenge

Monk Mode is a productivity approach where you deeply focus on your work by minimizing distractions, akin to the focused and minimalistic lifestyle of a monk. This mode involves dedicating extended periods to work intensely on a single task or project, often in isolation, to maximize productivity and quality of output.

With successful Monk Mode application, anticipate extended periods of focused app usage, minimal distractions from irrelevant apps, and better digital intensity and focus scores, all signaling increased productivity.


Monk Mode Challenge Outcome

Monk Mode Challenge

Want to learn more about improving your focus, teamwork and digital wellness?

Wether you are collaborating with your team or solo tackling your day we can help you recover the most valuable asset, time.

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Register for the our next webinar 'The Future of MSP Work Episode 3: The Next Generation of MSP Software'

Great Workdays Kickoff for Organizations

Monotasking, also known as single-tasking, is the practice of focusing all your attention and effort on one task at a time, rather than trying to accomplish multiple tasks simultaneously. This approach stands in contrast to multitasking, where individuals attempt to manage several tasks at once, often leading to decreased productivity and increased chances of errors. Monotasking is about deepening focus, enhancing the quality of work, and improving mental engagement with the task at hand.

You should observe longer durations in productive apps, fewer interruptions from non-essential apps in your timeline, and an enhanced focus score, reflecting improved monotasking efficiency.

Monotasking Challenge Outcome

Monotasking Challenge

The "Eat the Frog" technique is a time management strategy that encourages tackling the most challenging or crucial task of your day first thing in the morning. The concept is derived from a quote often attributed to Mark Twain, suggesting that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that's probably the worst thing that's going to happen to you all day.

Successfully adopting the Eat the Frog habit will be evident through early and focused engagement in productive apps, reflected in your heatmap, timeline, and top apps report within Produce8.

Eat the Frog Challenge Outcome 

Eat the Frog Challenge

Episode 4: Is a 4-Day Work Week for MSPs a Fever Dream?  The Future of MSP Work is a monthly thought-leadership series discussing strategies for growth and what's coming next in the Managed Services industry. This month we are talking with Joe O'Connor, CEO and Co-founder of Work Time Reduction, a consulting and research organization that specializes in reduced-hour, outcomes-focused work models. We will be discussing the possible fever-dream of a 4-day work-week for MSPs and touching on:  How would a 4-day-work-week even work for MSPs?  Are your clients adopting it?  What would need to happen to enable it?

The Future of MSP Work: Is a 4-Day Work Week for MSPs a Fever Dream?

The Future of MSP Work: The Next Generation of MSP Software

Why Produce8 for MSPs?

Are you ready to supercharge your productivity and unlock your full potential?

It doesn’t have to be all synchronous or all asynchronous. Find the balance for your team. Measure what is or isn’t working.

It’s also worth repeating that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You can blend asynchronous work with synchronous work.

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