Practical help with KPIs, measures and reporting
I’m often asked how to create KPIs and measures. It’s not a short process, which is why most people end up brainstorming or using existing measures when they are tasked with doing this (check out this article – Six KPI Selection Traps to Avoid to see some of the other pitfalls). The good news is [...]
KPIs are the first step for improving or controlling a business. Measures are the eyes and ears of anyone who has to manage anything bigger than a one-man business. KPI management is all about using KPIs to give you a clear and honest view of whichever organisation you are looking at. I use two processes [...]
King Midas is famous for an apparently good idea – everything he touched turning to gold – with unexpected side effects – starvation. I regularly stumble across less dangerous variations on this theme, with measures that create completely unintended consequences. I’m looking for your favourite examples of bad measures, KPIs or metrics. The winner will [...]
5S is a tool that lots of manufacturing businesses use. It’s a funny tool as it can look quite superficial unless you have been involved in a project where it has been applied properly. What people often miss is the mindset that goes along with it. When you start living and breathing 5S some quite [...]
Imagine a friend saying to you “Can you pop out to the hardware store and buy a tool for me?”. Obviously your first question would be “What kind of tool are you looking for?” Deciding on your measures and KPIs without having a clear strategy is exactly like going tool shopping without knowing what it [...]
What is Spotfire? Spotfire is a BI (business intelligence) tool that enables you to explore and represent “big data” sets. It’s one of a class of tools that focus on making it easy to explore masses of data without being a database ninja. It’s head-to-head with tools like Tableau and Qlikview. I’d previously been put [...]
The Brilliant Dashboards Checklist: A systematic approach to assessing your dashboard You may be trying to work out why your current reports aren’t working properly or wondering if you missed anything on your newly created masterpiece. This design checklist encourages you to consider each element of your design and to score it if you are [...]
Look at your main KPIs, do they look forwards or backwards? Do you spend most of your time looking at financial measures that tell you how things were a few weeks or months ago? It’s good to include a number forward-looking measures, that indicate how you will do, as there’s still time to change the [...]
How many “top level” KPIs do you have? If you have more than 10 top-level measures then you probably have too many. Building a measurement hierarchy can help show which ones are crucial. Remember to focus on the indicators that support your strategy.
