Using KPIs to Monitor Usage and Make Improvements

Below is the continuation of the transcript of a Webinar hosted by InetSoft on the topic of Best Practices for Key Performance Indicators. The presenter is Mark Flaherty, CMO at InetSoft.

Mark Flaherty (MF): Even at a simpler level that tracking usage by person, you should be asking questions about usability of your KPI software. Are the ways that these dashboards are presenting these key performance indicators, are they being presented in a useful way? It’s one thing to do a short survey or just talk to your dashboard users, it’s another to create metrics on them. How many clicks does it take to for somebody to get to a particular metric?

Are people spending more time really looking for information rather than using the information. That’s a great indicator of a well-designed performance management system. Are people trying to refresh their metrics to get the latest data, and then they are giving up and close the dashboard because it takes too long to load. So all sorts of very specific BI usage metrics about the use of the metrics software can be used to make their dashboards more effective. We’ve added a great deal of emphasis on this in our latest release.

We’ve added a usage monitoring facility in our BI and performance management application. In a lot of cases, whether it was IT or the business that drove the initial roll-out, sometimes emphasis is placed on certain metrics and certain data elements. The monitoring capability can tell you that those elements that you put most of the emphasis on are or aren’t being utilized. And conversely you can learn what data or dashboards people are using the most that might lead to surprises or point to areas for future development.

The need for using KPI in business management practices to drive adoption and create the positive usage loop

Talking about sales performance management where you are connecting compensation to KPIs, and without going too far, saying we’re going to be so performance driven that everybody’s income is going to be determined by KPI performance, if people are not looking at those dashboards, they are not looking at the way they are being judged by management. And if they say, well this dashboard does not reflect my performance, then that is something that has to be talked about and corrected.

It’s really important that management takes that leading role in using metrics and talking about performance. We’ve seen case studies from our customers showing 30% improvements in performance because of good adoption of the KPI software.