The importance of performance metrics. Measurable data is manageable data

Far too often, a company's performance directly relates to how it measures its success. Conventionally this will include acquisitions and rapid revenue growth. However, these factors can hide inadequate processes and underlying issues in performance and operations. If this continues, it may eventually lead to the erosion of margins and reduced financial performance.

The importance of Databases.

Being able to manage both the top and bottom line means that you need to measure your performance in ways that build alliances across many aspects of your organization. This can by identifying the relationship that exists between your operation processes. Controlling this link allows you to become more efficient and proactive, allowing an organization to manage its underlying interlocking factors better.

An issue that many companies face is how to accurately and transparently measure their performance. Being able to tell the health of your company and what factors are responsible is crucial to success. As well as knowing how these measurements can influence your decision-making process, impact your customers, and ultimately affect your bottom line. The main complication that arises with the analysis of performance is whether the relevant factors are measured correctly. As a result of this, quality performance measurement is the single most difficult service to sell.

The right factors.

Any individual project can measure its success through a variety of factors. However, linking these factors and measurement variables to an organization's corporate strategy can have a far more significant impact on success. If this is done correctly, it can create efficiency and provide your company with a high level of understanding of how value is created for customers. Having a leadership body that can reflect inward on itself, and be self-aware of how their leadership skills may be creating conflicting behaviors is essential. Therefore having the appropriate supporting data allows for more significant analysis to help identify these gaps, allowing a company to excel in this field.

Consequently, the power of performance measurement with an empowered workforce helps fortify all aspects of the company by giving constant feedback and supportive analysis. The benefits that such an approach encompasses allows for more considerable simplification in processes. Ultimately this empowers your employees to be able to do the right thing for your customers. Having coordination between performance statistics and leadership is crucial as leadership is doing the right things, and management is doing things right.

Checklist for measuring your performance.

In the topic of performance management, there are always a few key questions that must be considered, such as:

• How is your business measured?
• Does this measurement link correlate with the corporate vision and mission statements?
• Is there a framework in place that consistently throughout the year reviews performance and projects to ensure that desired results are achieved and that performance is increased?
• What is your reaction to information that was measured today?
• Does every employee know how their work will contribute to the overall strategy?
• How has what you measured changed the behavior or actions of relevant individuals?
• Is this change productive for your organization?
• Has every project been connected to your performance measurement plan?

Creating the correct framework for success

Having the right supporting structure for performance measurement is key to ensuring success for your company, business unit, or project. The ability for companies to establish a strategy that has a simple mission and vision statement is crucial. Additionally, this strategy should evolve as time progresses due to relevant factors such as competition, customers, or product trends. Having such a reaction will allow for longevity and survival in the marketplace.

Measuring your performance and interpreting its alignment to your corporate strategy is essential. Your company's core strategy should remain constant to its core values and underlying culture. Understanding the needs of your customers to be able to respond to market demands quickly should always be a priority. Therefore the need to establish a metrics framework that will stand the test of time is critical. Unfortunately, however, it is one of the most poorly executed aspects of business today.

The importance of measuring all aspects of your company

After establishing the strategic mission and vision of your company, you should translate these concepts into business metrics and workable numbers. That can help you understand similar situations in your organization. This may be assisted by using your organization's end-to-end (E2E) processes when these E2E processes have been taken into account; they allow for a balanced conclusion to be drawn. That will define the overall health of your business. E2E refers to every value-creating or delivering process present in an organization.

Balanced Scorecards or "Score carding" is a constant and frequent way of measuring performance in your organization. A culture of continuous monitoring and improvement should be established through Lean skill sets. Ongoing SWOT analysis leads to what can be considered a truly agile organization.

The Four Aspects of a balanced scorecard

A balanced scorecard consists of four interlocking aspects:

Employees: This is the starting point; without any employees, there can be no company. This category focuses on the most crucial element of a company, its employees. Unfortunately, it is also the most underappreciated asset in many organizations. Many difficulties can emerge when trying to measure employee performance to get meaningful metrics. However, the following data collection methods are efficient and provide useful data:

• Turnover Rates, employee retention
• Performance Feedback and Mentoring
• Development and Learning capabilities
• Employee opinions and feedback

Customers: This specific category is one of the essential aspects of operating a business; it continues to be refreshed and modified based on the current needs of the market. However, five categories help us gain a better understanding of this field.

• Customer Service
• Customer Feedback
• Segmentation of Customers
• (NPS) Net Promoter Scores
• (VOC) Voice of the Customer

Process: Having established key performance indicators (KPIs) for all the essential parts of your End to End processes helps balance out the lagging indicators with the leading indicators. These indicators should help predict and counter issues before they impact customer expectations. Examples of some problems that may occur without necessary procedures include.

• Production Defects for Manufacturing
• Coding Defects for Software Companies
• Turn Around Time (TAT) – the difference between lead times vs. touch times
• Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

It is standard practice to measure in averages; however, customers do not just feel averages they feel variations. It is crucial to look beyond the mean, the range, and the variations, to deliver a quality customer service.

Financials: This final factor is one that every company does; however, very rarely it is done well. Every company, whether it is public or private, conducts financial evaluations monthly; however, very rarely a company does it well. Doing this process well involves using this information to help define and make decisions that are key to understanding and gaining reliable data. That can give feedback on events that have occurred.

• Cost or Expenses
• Margins
• Delivery Times
• Fulfillment Rates
• Revenue (Sales)
• Inventory Levels - Working Capital
• Projects Savings, ROI, NPV or Payback

All the factors above work best in unison and in an environment where they can complement and reinforce each other.

To better evaluate the relevant factors, we can divide the work into three different phases: Define, Measure, and Deliver. These ultimately depend on the current needs of your business, and where you are with your performance measurement maturity. A set of specific steps can be selected to help you get to your desired results. Performance measurement is and always will be a crucial element to any organization. Successfully implementing it can help assure that your business in on track to fulfill its goals.