What is a QBR?

A quarterly business review (QBR) is a meeting a service provider holds with each client every quarter to review results against agreed targets, discuss risks and plan the next quarter. For IT providers it usually covers tickets, SLA performance, backups, security and a technology roadmap with budget.

How it is run

A good QBR is built from the three monthly service reports for the quarter, not from scratch. A typical agenda:

  1. What changed in the client's business this quarter
  2. Results: tickets, SLA, backups, patching and security, with trends
  3. Issues and how they were fixed
  4. Risks: unsupported devices, accounts without MFA, expiring warranties
  5. Roadmap: recommended projects with cost and timing
  6. Decisions and next steps, with owners and dates

The audience is usually the client's owner or manager, so the language should be business, not technical.

Worked example

MonthTicketsResponded within SLAAttainment
July524892%
August474596%
September414098%
Quarter14013395%

Tickets fell from 52 to 41 a month, about 21%, after the old laptops were replaced. That is the story for the meeting: the project paid off, and the next one on the roadmap is the same fix for the remaining desktops.

Common mistakes

  • Reading the monthly reports aloud. Show trends and what they mean.
  • No decisions. A QBR that ends without agreed next steps is a status update.
  • Turning it into a sales pitch. Tie every recommendation to a risk or result from the quarter.
  • No follow-up. Start each QBR with what was agreed last time.

Related terms

  • SLA (service level agreement): A service level agreement (SLA) is the part of a service contract that sets measurable targets, such as how quickly the provider will respond to and resolve an issue.
  • Month over month (MoM): Month over month (MoM) compares a figure for one month with the same figure for the month before, as a dollar change and a percentage change.

Further reading