Know Your Numbers
Adopting methods to measure success is necessary for any company that wants to maintain its competitive advantage. Although that may seem common sense, pin pointing which areas need the most focus requires strategy. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are “measurable values that demonstrate how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives”. They can be applied on a large scale to assess company-wide performance, or they can be applied to specific departments. Understanding how and where to apply KPIs is the most important part of the implementation process. It can be detrimental if a KPI is incorrectly applied or applied to the wrong department. The goal of these metrics is to gauge the performance of the most germane criteria for your business.
Be SMART About Your Goals
To ensure your KPIs will be accurate measurements of success use SMART:
Specific: Are your company goals specific?
Measurable: Can you measure your success in these goals? Do you know what you want the outcome to be? How do you know you have achieved your goal?
Attainable: Are your goals realistic? How often will you need to analyze progress?
Relevant: Are your goals relevant to the products or services you offer? Why are these goals important?
Time-frame: What is the time-frame for achieving your goals?
Using a tool such as this will help you to determine the area of focus you would like to see growth within your company.
Finding KPI’s That Work For You
The categories of KPI’s are vast. There is literally an indicator for every category you can think of that pertains to your business.
For example, a small construction company may want to measure their marketing and social media KPIs to evaluate which advertising methods reach the highest number of people within their demographic. Or perhaps a software company, to increase diversity, may employ a Human Resources KPI to measure the male to female employee ratio. In both, examples of KPIs are being used to fine tune and identify areas where resources are being misused or where full potential is not being met.
Here are some examples of the types of KPI’s you can utilize:
- Client satisfaction rating
- Number of new cases/matters you opened in the last full month
- Number of cases/matters you closed in the last full month
- Number of potential new clients (PNCs) who showed up for those consults
- Number of marketing actions have you took in the last full month
Inside And Out
Growing your company is more than just copying the industry norms, it is knowing your company inside and out, so each KPI can be tailored to strengthen specific company-wide weak spots. Reestablishing goals and criteria to better meet the needs of your company may be overwhelming at first, but worth it once your company begins pulling ahead of competition and growing like never before!