How KPI Can Keep You Ahead Of The Competition

I attended Computing Technology and Information Management Conference this year, and I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel with one of educational institution participant who was one of Keynote Speakers and he is working in (Rochester Institute of Technology) to discuss some approach to defining and measuring attribution, a practice that leads to sustain educational sector in terms of different aspects. While we covered a variety of topics, one of the most fundamental attribution challenges that we discussed was that many services in universities do not define, own and measure their key performance indicators (KPIs). It seems that many organizations are thinking about KPIs, but don’t really know how to begin defining them. 

In fact, I have been asked by some of participants there, “What should your organization KPIs be?” As a believer in letting the data drive decisions, the fact that KPI definition is a question scares me to my core. 

I had refreshed my memory and reached a point says whether we are using loosely defined KPIs or established ones or not using KPIs at all, I have talked about reviewing the requests and metrics that drive university IT services was a great exercise and example. Creating IT helpdesk Ticketing System was my input in KPI discussion and the valuable contribution to the bottom line.

What are KPIs?
Key performance indicators are things that we can measure in our business or organization to evaluate the success of either the business as a whole or a component or activity within the business. "KPIs, or key performance indicators, help organizations achieve organizational goals through the definition and measurement of progress. 

Therefore, tracking performance is a vital way for service providers to ensure their businesses are moving in the right direction. However, identifying the right KPIs for your organization isn’t that straightforward. The reality is that there isn’t one single metric that a business can look at to measure success. Further, there are a lot of measures to consider, and no single metric or set of metrics is going to be right for every service provider. I would say considered time, cost and quality as the predominant criteria for measuring project performance.

For instance, at AUS - IT Department and Media Department have developed and created a set of Key Performance Indicators for multiple Information Technology Services areas in order to best provide reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) metrics.  These areas currently include Help Desk, Web Services, Network and Systems Availability, and Educational Digital Media.  

Choosing the right KPIs requires a good understanding of what is important to your business and the customers that you deal with. This latter component is a key because most KPIs are tied to service delivery, and what’s important to internal teams may not matter to the customer. What do you think?

I would therefore say, to push your KPI evaluating in right direction and be effective, managers need to assess the alternatives available and pick the metrics that make the most sense for their business and organization.

Key Considerations for Managing KPIs:-
Tactics for tracking KPIs will vary substantially according to the metrics being assessed and the specifics of the business. However, following are some key strategic considerations that cut across all organizations and KPIs:
 

Consistency. On a consistent basis, whether daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly depending on the metric, service providers need to be gathering performance data and continue to do so over time. It is only by gathering this multi-interval data that managers can start to spot trends and truly understand the trajectory of the business.

Communication. The best KPI tracking is meaningless unless it is communicated to the right audiences. Both with customers and among internal teams, KPI reporting needs to be useful, relevant, consistent and timely. 

Actionable. KPIs need to help identify problems and strengths and inform actions that can improve performance

Customer or Employee Satisfaction and Sentiment

Customer or Employee satisfaction is critical for any business, and is a vital KPI for the service provider to track. Unlike a lot of other KPIs, which are more objective in nature, when it comes to customer satisfaction, the only thing that matters is the customer’s perception of your business and its services. Consequently, it’s critical to do surveys on a consistent basis to track how customers feel about your company. It’s simple, without customers your organization wouldn’t be here. Any organization has customers it has to satisfy. 

In the same time, we can safely say that employees are still the most important ingredients in any business. We all know that companies don’t do well if their employees are not happy and this again applies to all enterprises.

To sum up, we should determine the KPIs that are the most meaningful to our business. Taking the time to identify an organization’s most important KPIs, and tracking those KPIs consistently, is a critical success factor for every service provider. So it can be interpreted internally or used to benchmark the organization against competitors. If done properly, KPI will provide clear results of an organizations performance and strengthen its ability to improve it’s performance