22.19 IT Services

By Ravindra Bagale Last updated: 6 October 2026

Project interviews ask utilisation (billable hours divided by available hours), project margin, and SLA on tickets. Hours logged, and tickets closed, are how a loss-making support project looks busy. Projects below are fictional.

KPI	What the number means	Who uses it	Action it drives
Utilisation	Billable hours divided by available hours.	Delivery manager	Low utilisation is a staffing or a contract problem. It is not "the team worked hard".
Margin %	(Revenue minus cost) divided by revenue.	Project manager, finance	A negative margin stops hiring onto that project.
SLA met %	Tickets closed inside the promise divided by tickets.	Support lead	A high ticket count with a low SLA is a queue, not productivity.

Fictional sample rows. One month. Type these rows into a new sheet from cell A1, press Ctrl + T, and name the table tblProjects (Table Design › Table Name).

Project	City	Available hrs	Billable hrs	Revenue	Cost	Tickets	Met SLA
Pune app	Pune	400	300	₹6,00,000	₹4,00,000	40	36
Nashik support	Nashik	400	200	₹2,50,000	₹2,20,000	80	70
Kolhapur app	Kolhapur	200	160	₹3,20,000	₹2,00,000	20	18
Nagpur support	Nagpur	300	120	₹1,50,000	₹1,60,000	50	30
Solapur app	Solapur	160	128	₹2,56,000	₹1,60,000	16	15
Sambhaji support	Sambhaji Nagar	240	96	₹1,20,000	₹1,40,000	40	20

Excel formulas for the whole file (type them in empty cells below or beside the table):

KPI	Excel formula	Result	Number format
Utilisation	`=SUM(tblProjects[Billable hrs])/SUM(tblProjects[Available hrs])`	59.1%	`0.0%`
Margin %	`=(SUM(tblProjects[Revenue])-SUM(tblProjects[Cost]))/SUM(tblProjects[Revenue])`	24.5%	`0.0%`
SLA met %	`=SUM(tblProjects[Met SLA])/SUM(tblProjects[Tickets])`	76.8%	`0.0%`

Calculated columns (one result per row). Click the first empty column of the table, type the header, then the formula. The Table fills every row by itself.

New column	Formula in the first row
Utilisation	`=[@[Billable hrs]]/[@[Available hrs]]`
Margin %	`=([@Revenue]-[@Cost])/[@Revenue]`
SLA met %	`=[@[Met SLA]]/[@Tickets]`

Expected result per row:

Project	Utilisation	Margin %	SLA met %
Pune app	75.0%	33.3%	90.0%
Nashik support	50.0%	12.0%	87.5%
Kolhapur app	80.0%	37.5%	90.0%
Nagpur support	40.0%	-6.7%	60.0%
Solapur app	80.0%	37.5%	93.8%
Sambhaji support	40.0%	-16.7%	50.0%

One city with SUMIFS. Utilisation for Pune only:

=SUMIFS(tblProjects[Billable hrs],tblProjects[City],"Pune")/SUMIFS(tblProjects[Available hrs],tblProjects[City],"Pune")

Result for Pune: 75.0%. Change "Pune" to a cell reference (for example $K$1) and add a drop-down, and the same formula answers for any city.

	Good KPI	Vanity metric
From the same rows	Nashik utilisation 50.0% and margin 12.0%; Nagpur margin −6.7%	Nashik 80 tickets closed
Why	Half of Nashik's hours were not billed. Nagpur cost more than it earned.	The ticket card makes Nashik the busiest project. Busy is not billed, and it is not profitable.

What the manager does. The Pune delivery manager leaves the app team alone this week (75% utilised, 33% margin, 90% SLA). The Nashik manager either gets a change request for the 200 unbilled hours or stops staffing 400 hours for 200 billable. The Nagpur manager does not add a person to a project that lost ₹10,000 in this file. Sambhaji support is the same loss: revenue ₹1,20,000, cost ₹1,40,000, margin −16.7%, SLA 20 ÷ 40 = 50.0%.

Ravindra Bagale's Tip

Available hours are what the company gives; billable hours are what the client pays for. Keep them as two columns and never use logged-in hours instead.