Would it not be nice to simply cherry pick KPIs from a list and use them to enhance your organisation’s performance? However, this will not work for many reasons:
- You need a three stage process to find the right KPIs for your organisation,
Stage 1: Getting the enterprise committed to the change and up-skilling the in-house KPI team,
Stage 2: Ascertaining your organization’s operational critical success factors, those “issues or aspects of organizational performance that determine ongoing health, vitality, and well-being.”
Stage 3: Determining metrics and getting them to drive performance
- There is a confusion on what KPIs are and what they can and should do
- There are in fact four types of performance indicators (performance measure)
I have created a KPI database of 400 metrics (KPIs, PIs, KRIs and RIs)
There are some steps you need to do before using any KPI database. These are set out in my toolkits;
How to implement winning KPIs (180 page Whitepaper + electronic templates)
A sample from the 400 performance measures in the newly updated KPI database
The following database is a listing of performance measures to help start this process off. These measures will be a valuable resource when looking at performance measures during workshops. You can acquire this database electronically (for a small fee).
I have been influenced by Stacey Barr’s work and agree that it is beneficial to evaluate potential measures by asking two questions for each potential measure:
- How strong an indicator of performance is this measure? (5 = very strong, 1 = very weak)
- How feasible will it be to measure this? (5= very easy as system generated, 3 = special request will be required to gather data, 1 = very difficult to gather data)
The strength of the measure should be evaluated with regards to the critical success factor you are working with. My weightings are thus only guidelines.
Performance Measure | Frequency of Measure | Time Zone (Past, Current, Future) | ||
Late delivery of key service | Daily | Past | ||
Date of last contact with customer with current major projects (list by major projects only) | Monthly | Past | ||
Date when remedial work is planned to be completed (major projects only) | Weekly | Future | ||
Quality problems detected during product audits | When audits performed | Past | ||
Number of initiatives completed from the recent customer-satisfaction survey | For three months after the survey | Past | ||
Abandon rate at call center (caller gives up) | Daily | Current | ||
Calls answered first time (not having to be transferred to another party) | Daily and in some cases 24/7 | Current | ||
Calls on hold longer than xx seconds | Daily and in some cases 24/7 | Current | ||
Complaints from our key customers that have not been resolved within 2 hours reported to chief executive officer (CEO) and general managers | 24/7 | Current | ||
Unresolved complaints—from other customers (not key customers) | Weekly | Past | ||
Complaints not resolved during first phone call by customer | Daily | Current | ||
Initiatives completed from last in-house customer-satisfaction survey | Two times a year | Past | ||
The time elapsed between quality assurance failures | Weekly | Past | ||
Times during day when queue at serving counter over xx minutes long | Daily | Past | ||
Date of next outside-in activity to enhance senior management team understanding | Monthly | Future | ||
Date of next think tank with major customers | Quarterly | Future | ||
Date of next initiative to attract targeted noncustomers | Quarterly | Future | ||
Key customers service requests outstanding for more than 48 hours reported to the general manager | 24/7 | Past | ||