Business Measures – KPI’s
Management consultant Peter Drucker once said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) help businesses understand how well they are performing in relation to their business goals and
objectives.
Why Measure Performance?
Here’s just a few reasons why you need to get the Business Measures – KPI’s
- Measurements/KPI’s improves the bottom line by reducing product/process cost – Real costs in Real time
- Key to improving productivity – If you don’t know how you are doing how can you improve
- Measurement of process efficiency provides a start point for improvement activities
- It allows the business to identify best practice – Then deploy it elsewhere in the business
- It allows benchmarking of processes/performance against the competition
- Collection of cost/project data this allows us to estimate costs more accurately for future projects
Measuring what matters
Business Measures – KPI’s serve to reduce the complex nature of business performance to a small number of key indicators, in order to make performance more understandable and digestible. This is the same approach we use in our daily lives. For example, when you go to your doctor he might measure blood pressure, cholesterol levels, heart rate and your body mass index as key indicators of your health. With KPIs we are trying to do the same in our businesses.
Problems with Business Measures – KPI’s
In practice, the term Measurements or KPI’s is too loosely defined. For many it describes any form of measurement data and performance metrics used to measure business performance.
Instead of clearly identifying the information needs and then carefully designing the most appropriate indicators to assess performance, this can be termed the ‘ICE’ approach
- Identify everything that is easy to measure and count
- Collect and report the data on everything that is easy to measure and count
- End up scratching your head thinking “What on earth are we going to do with all this performance data stuff? – Information overload
There is further information available on this web site to help you with your introduction of Measurements or KPI’s as they are also termed into your workplace, however if you require any further information or support please either email us at info@smartworxs.co.uk or call 07977 147 130 to speak to one of the team