Archive for March, 2010

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2010 IPL – Indian Premier League and the Castrol Cricket Index

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

In a previous post we have presented a new approach for measuring performance in cricket: The Castrol Cricket Index. In the same blog post we talked about the immense media coverage that cricket started to attract in the last years, and the introduction of new shorter version of the game as one of the most important development in recent years. Thus, in short period of time, a series of new competitions, such as Twenty 20 World Cup, Cricket Champion League and the Official Indian Premier League proved to be a total success  attracting huge interests from fans, sponsors and media.

On 12 March, the Indian Premier League (IPL) just kicked off with its third season. It is the first sporting event ever available by live broadcast on the popular video sharing website YouTube.

Additionally, the Castrol Cricket website offers full coverage of the teams and players’ performance. Viewers can benefit from the insights and analysis of top experts such as Harsha Bhogle and a wide variety of statistics and standings in which teams and players’ performance is analyzed in high detail. The table below illustrates the IPL standings at the beginning of the season:

Source: www.castrolcricket.com (2010)

smartKPIs.com also brings its contribution to the game by promoting and facilitating the understanding of  some of the key metrics used in the sport :

For more details about some of the most important metrics in the game and their use as part of the Castrol Cricket Index visit www.castrolcricket.com.

Additional resources:

References:

  • Castrol Cricket Index (2010)  available at: http://www.castrolcricket.com/castrol_index/castrol_index , (accessed 19 March 2010)

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Email use remains strong despite social media buzz

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Merkle, a US based provider of fully integrated customer marketing solutions, released at the beginning of 2010 a ten page report with the title “View from the Social Inbox 2010 – Actionable Information for Marketers“.

The report presents original findings about social media users’ attitudes and their behavior related to using social media versus email. Here are some of the highlights:

  • “Time spent with personal, or social, email to friends and family is unchanged from last year, with 71% of respondents spending 20 minutes or more weekly. These numbers suggest social email use remains strong, contradicting earlier speculation that social networking would quickly replace traditional email use.”
  • “Active social networkers are more likely to be avid email users, as measured by time spent with social email as well as number of times checked daily. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of social networkers use the same email account for their social networking messages and the majority of their permission, or opt-in, email.”
  • “Social networkers are twice as likely to use mobile email (28% vs. 14%) and be “hyper email checkers” compared to their non-networked online counterparts – 50% of mobile email users check their personal email four or more times daily versus 32% of non-mobile users.”


    • The image below presents the difference in behavior between users of social media (in blue) and non-users of social media (in red).

Source: Merkle, 2010

This is a clear example on how indicators can provide relevant information about a certain area, informing decisions. Based on the information, email marketing continues to be a key communication tool for reaching potential and current customers. Measuring the email marketing performance is done through a variety of metrics, many of them listed in the library of KPI examples available on www.smartKPIs.com:

Note:

The study “View from the Social Inbox 2010 – Actionable Information for Marketers” was conducted through an online survey of 3,281 U.S. adults age 18+ during the fall of 2009, by Merkle.  The report is available for free at the following link: www.merkleinc.com/viewfromsocialinbox2010.

References:

smartKPIs.com (2010), “KPI examples for the Online presence – eCommerce Functional Area, Email Marketing subcategory”, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/functional-areas/online-presence-ecommerce/email-marketing/ (accessed 15 March 2010).

Merkle (2010), “View from the Social Inbox 2010 – Actionable Information for Marketers / From the Annual Consumer Email & Digital / Media Attitudes and Usage Study”, available at http://www.merkleinc.com/user-assets/Documents/WhitePapers/Social%20Inbox%202010%20WPaper%20Final.pdf (accessed on 15 March 2010).

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Performance measurement in the Business Consulting industry – measures and more

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

The Business Consulting industry is an economic sector characterized by one of the greatest levels of added-value produced. Unlike production, for example, Business Consulting is able to produce large amounts of income, with rather low consumption of resources.

The sector includes the provision of an impressive range of services to businesses, in areas from strategy planning and change management, to corporate finance, technology, human resources or marketing. The industry has known a very dynamic evolution, from the boom sector stage, to periods of downturn and also sustained growth.

In 2005, with the “Business Consulting” publication from The Economist it was argued that the industry was facing a “crossroads”, clients becoming extremely demanding. This did not come as a surprise, according to Bjorn-Erik Willoch from Capgemini, considering the fact that back in the 90s, consultants were earning a lot with little effort and were impressing the clients just „by reading the right magazines”. Moreover, a frequent reality mentioned by Michael Traem from AT Kearney was that the clients were beginning to create their own consulting teams internally. All in all, it was clear that clients were getting tired of strategic presentations and were asking for results. Thus, outstanding quality and innovation and high levels of performance were the things that could keep Business Consulting companies on the market.

In many countries today, the industry faces again great challenges due to the fact that budgets have been cut down in almost any area of activity, mainly when it comes to long-term focused consultancy projects. Often, companies focus mainly on short-term survival. As a consequence their investment in internal consolidation is often considered a secondary priority.

In this context, consulting firms have to be themselves very careful when it comes to their own performance. In order to remain competitive, not only the global leaders but also consulting firms of any type and size find beneficial to track performance of their consulting projects and consultants.

Consulting firms can choose from many indicators when it comes to measuring performance. Three of the most popular Key Performance Indicators in use are:

1. % Chargeable ratio

Also known as % Billability, the chargeable ratio measures the percentage of time the consultants are used in revenue-generating activities, meaning the amount of time they spend working in consulting projects for clients. From the time the consultants spend on consulting projects for the customers, in some cases some may be spent doing non-chargeable work, and usually this is inherent as estimating the exact amount of time for a project can be difficult to do. Delays can also come up and they will not be charged to the customer in all situations.

Calculation:

% Chargeable ratio = (# Time spent doing revenue-generating activities / # Total labor time)*100

2. % Utilization rate

It is well known that consulting activities are not continuous and consultants are not involved in projects on a permanent basis. Also, they can perform a great deal of their labor time doing activities such as documenting, research, writing and so on.

Utilization rate measures the percentage of time that consultants are actually used from the total time they are available. It can be measured at individual level (% Consultant utilization rate), at a group of consultants or to reflect the overall utilization of the company’s consultants.

Calculation:

% Utilization rate = (# Time spent in consulting projects / # Time available for consulting projects)*100

3. % Realization rate

Consulting firms usually have list prices containing the fees they charge, usually on a hourly basis, for the various services they provide. However, in most of the cases, the list prices remain “on the list”, as prices are negotiated by the clients and vary from one project to another. To see how much they have obtained from their list prices, consulting firms calculate their realization rate.

Calculation:

% Realization rate = ($ Revenue earned / $ Potential revenue from the list prices)*100

These are only three of the most popular KPIs in Business Consulting. Visit smartKPIs.com for more KPI examples in consulting industry and stay tuned for more to come.

Recommendations:

To check the latest news in the consulting industry, we recommend: Consultant-News.com.

References:

Zacks Investment Research (2009), “Business Consulting: Industry Outlook”, available at: http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle/articleid/3220694 (accessed 21 March 2010).

Writer, S. (2005), “Business consulting at the crossroads”, available at: http://www.consultant-news.com/article_display.aspx?p=adp&id=2201 (accessed 21 March 2010).

smartKPIs.com (2010), KPIs in Management Consultancy, available at: http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/industries/professional-services/management-consultancy/ (accessed 21 March 2010).

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KPIs and Dashboards in practice: TrackDC an innovative District of Columbia Performance Management initiative

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Performance measurement and reporting for control is not the sole purpose of tracking results against targets. One of its very important dimensions is that of enhancing accountability towards stakeholders; in private-owned organizations, reporting is directed mostly to shareholders and managers, whereas in governmental institutions, communication is directed towards the entire community served.

Usually, government accountability and reporting comes in the shape of annual performance reports, made public on the various agencies’ or local cities’ websites. smartKPIs.com – KPIs in practice section – includes various such annual reports, the ones below being only a part of the tens of governmental reports contained:

However, more complex initiatives are on their way, governments seeking not only to release a descriptive report covering one year’s activity, but also put in place more user-friendly reporting tools, with increased usability, based on Performance Management Dashboards.

A pioneer in this area seems to be the District of Columbia, which developed an online application called TrackDC, where citizens can visualize Key Performance Indicator results in graphs, check Budget distribution and spending, have access to permanent news and learn more about agencies and their Performance Plans and Accountability Reports.

Source: District of Columbia, 2010

The website contains individual pages for all the 53 agencies, with agency profile section, the annual Performance Plans and Reports, Performance Indicators, Customer Service data and Budget & Operational information.

For a complete picture, you can access for example the District Department of Transportation page:

Source: District of Columbia, District Department of Transportation, 2010

The Department’s 2010 Performance Plan includes performance measures in areas ranging from Finance, Contracts and Customer Service, to People, Properties and Risk. Several examples are the following:

You can see that the Agency Responsiveness Quality Assurance Result for Q4 was of 97,09 %, against a 87,47 % Citywide Average.

You can also check the daily Website Traffic Dashboard, covering website traffic numbers for the last month’s period.

The Key Performance Indicators vary from one agency to another, being broken down from the objectives and initiatives each individual agency identifies. However, reporting is the same for each agency, covering the sections mentioned above.

References

District of Columbia (2010), “Track.DC”, available at: http://track.dc.gov/ (accessed 15 March 2010).

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All time high for New York City high school graduation rate

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

In a recent press release, the  Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein announced that New York City’s four year high school graduation rate rose to all time high of 63 % in 2009.

“After a decade of stagnation, New York City’s graduation rate has increased for eight consecutive years” said Mayor Bloomberg. “And not only are more students graduating than ever before, but the number of students dropping out has been cut nearly in half in just the past four years alone. We won’t be satisfied until every student graduates from high school, but our City’s principals and teachers deserve enormous credit for the significant progress we’ve made.”

Photo credit: Edward Reed, New York City Office of the Mayor


Photo credit: Edward Reed, New York City Office of the Mayor

When evaluating the performance of the high school academic education, the New York city used he following key performance indicators:

According to the press release, “since 2005, when New York City began calculating graduation rates using its current methodology, the June graduation rate has risen by 12.5 points. The dropout rate has been cut nearly in half during the same period, falling to a new low of 11.8 percent-a decline of 10.2 points since 2005. In all, 3,300 additional students in New York City graduated in June 2009 compared to June 2008, with that number rising to almost 6,200 additional students when August graduates are counted.”

There are many academic institutions around the world that measure their performance on an annual basis, using different performance indicators. For more examples of performance analysis, reports or statistics in  educational systems local, national or international based, visit the Academic Education section of smartKPIs.com KPIs in practice. Also,  visit the KPI examples for the Education& Training industry, for more specific performance indicators.

Related links:

References:

New York City, Office of the Mayor, Press release (2010), available at http://www.nyc.gov/cgi-bin/misc/pfprinter.cgi?action=print&sitename=OM&p=1268301741000, (accessed 10 March 2010)

smartKPIs.com (2010) “KPIs in practice examples for the Academic Education industry”, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi_examples_in_practice/industries/education-training/academic-education/ (accessed 10 March 2010)

smartKPIs.com (2010) “KPI examples for the Education& Training industry”, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/industries/education-training/pag2.html (accessed 10 March 2010)

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Microsoft Excel – the most popular Performance Management and Business Intelligence tool

Friday, March 12th, 2010

smartKPIs.com Performance Architect update 10/2010

Since its launch on a Windows platform in 1987, Microsoft Excel has gradually become omnipresent on business desktop environments. It is widely used in businesses of all sizes for data management, analysis and reporting. In a way, it can be considered the first Business Intelligence (BI) software product mass marketed.

Almost since its launch, Excel’s position in the market has been challenged by various products with advanced data integration and analysis functionality. Together, they formed the basis of the today’s BI market, by going through several successive phases:

  • 1987-1996 Formation – initial product launches
  • 1996-2005 Growth – product maturity and market formation
  • 2005-2010 Consolidation – by various mergers and acquisitions involving the major software producers in the world.

In recent years, a trend that starts to get wide acceptance in the market is the move from desktop installed products to online service delivery. Software as a Service (SaaS) is largely facilitated by technology advancements such as cloud computing.

There are indeed products in the market with more features, more robust and integrated. However, considering the estimated number of 500 million users, Microsoft Excel can still be considered the most popular performance management and business intelligence tool in use today.

So what makes it so popular?

  • It is not expensive, at under $350.
  • Most users are already familiar with its basic functionality.
  • It makes sharing of data easy due to its widespread use.

The main drawbacks of using Excel as a BI tool are:

  • Data reliability – spreadsheets are error prone due to human error
  • Lack of advanced collaboration features
  • Limited advanced reporting functionality

This is the traditional way of assessing Excel, by looking at its reporting functionality, through the BI lens. Some of the additional benefits of using Excel form a Performance Management perspective are:

  • Supports creativity, as it can be used as a canvas for developing visual constructs. While it doesn’t have advanced visualization options, it offers vast screen real-estate for structuring data.
  • Useful communication tool, as it provides a structured approach to presenting information. Reports can be structured by hyperlinking tabs and combining text with graphs and pictures.
  • It is easy to use, basic user functionality requiring no training. Configuration is straightforward and the visual interface relatively user-friendly.

Overall, due to its versatility, Microsoft Excel is here to stay. Its availability in an online format and the upcoming release of the 2010 version of the software are interesting new developments in this success story.

Stay smart! Enjoy smartKPIs.com!

Aurel Brudan
Performance Architect,
www.smartKPIs.com

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Gallup’s Customer Engagement Index

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

In a previous blog post Employee Engagement was presented as an important driving force of organizational success and financial performance. It has a significant influence on a large number of factors that drive organizational performance outcomes. In successful organizations, Employee Engagement Index often transcends from a human capital performance measure into a strategic approach supported by tactics that drive improvement and organizational change (Gallup, 2008).

Today’s post explores human behavioral influence on organizational performance, by looking at Customer Engagement Index. This performance metric was developed by Gallup, in order to supplement Employee Engagement Index in the quest for building a strong platform for organizational performance optimization and bottom line improvement.

The need for an improved customer engagement measure was justified by the Gallup researchers based on previous Gallup research that “has shown that many popular metrics – like Customer Satisfaction, Customer Loyalty, and Advocacy (including Net Promoter) – do not consistently demonstrate strong links to key business outcomes” (Gallup, 2009).

Gallup’s Customer Engagement Index is informed by behavioral economics , whose leading proponents theorize that “only 30% of human decisions and behaviors are actually driven by rational considerations – shich means that more thant two-thirds of consumer loyalty and spending decisions are based on emotional factors” (Gallup, 2009).

Both academic studies and common sense practice have showen that emotionally connected customers or engaged customers are more profitable for the organization if compared with average or rational counterparts.  The 2009 Gallup research study “ Customer Engagement: What’s your engagement ratio” successfully demonstrates the impact of emotionally satisfied customers (fully engaged customers) on marketplace performance (see results below)

Customer Engagement Index as initially built by the Gallup researchers is based on a survey with 11 questions from which 8 are emotional attachment questions and 3 are rational loyalty questions. According to McEwen et al (2003) the metric provides with a far stronger connection to the business outcomes than other satisfaction measure can provide. By looking into important emotional factors such as confidence, integrity, pride and passion, Customer Engagement Index can provide the true state of company’s customer relationship and its influence to the final business outcome.

Using the input from the index survey, Gallup researchers categorize customers in 4 distinct groups:

• Fully engaged customers – are emotionally attached and rationally loyal

• Engaged customers – are rationally loyal and start to become emotionally attached

• Disengaged customers – are emotionally and rationally neutral

• Actively disengaged customers – emotionally detached and actively adverse

Based on these categories Gallup built the Customer engagement ratio as a macro level indicator that allows organizations to track the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged customers. Gallup research reveal that:

• On average the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged customers is 0,8 to 1

• In world class organizations the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is 8 to 1 (Gallup, 2009)

When looking at measuring Customer Engagement Index and its relation to business performance  and linking these insights to the Employee Engagement Index presented in a previous blog post, two major conclusions emerge:

• To get a complete picture of the connection between customer relationship and business performance outcomes we must look at both customer satisfaction (rationally loyal customers) and customer engagement (emotionally satisfied customers).

• Optimized performance results are obtained by companies who succeed in bringing together engaged customers and engaged employees.

Additional resources:

  • McEwen, J. William (2005): What measuring customer engagement reveals, Excerpted from “Married to the brand”, Gallup Press, available at: www.gmj.gallup.com (accessed 11 March 2010)

References:

  • McEwen, J. Williams & Fleming, H. John (2003): Customer’s satisfaction doesn’t count, Gallup Management Journal, March 13, 2003
  • Gallup Consulting (2009), Customer Engagement: What’s your engagement ratio? – Gallup: available at www.gallup.com (accessed 11 March 2010)
  • Gallup Consulting (2008), Employee Engagement: What’s your engagement ratio? – Gallup: available at www.gallup.com (accessed 11 March 2010)

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The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) is an international ranking system applied to universities around the world, being published starting with 2003, and updated on an annual basis, by the Center for World-Class Universities and the Institute of Higher Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China.

The last published academic ranking report was realized for the year 2009, and it contains the top 100, reaching up to  500 universities of the world. More than 1000 universities are actually ranked annually by ARWU and only the best 500 are published on the web.

In order to rank world universities, ARWU uses six indicators:

  • # Alumni winning Noble Prizes and Fields Medals
  • # Staff winning Noble Prizes and Fields Medals
  • # Highly cited researchers selected by Thomson Scientific
  • # Articles published in journals of Nature and Science
  • # Articles indexed in Science Citation Index – Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index
  • # Per capita performance with respect to the size of the institution

Other international universities rankings are:

smartkpis.com (eab group, 2010) provides its users with a comprehensive library of Academic Education KPIs in practice, how universities monitor their performance.

References:

Academic Ranking of World Universities, (2010), available at http://www.arwu.org/index.jsp (accessed 5 March 2010)

eab group (2010) “KPIs in practice examples for Academic Education”, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi_examples_in_practice/industries/education-training/ (accessed 28 February 2010)

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KPI examples in practice: Camelot Group – the operator of The UK National Lottery

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Camelot is the operator of The UK National Lottery. It operates solely in the UK and Isle of Man and its head office is situated in Watford. The primary purpose of the Camelot Group is to drive sales in order to maximize returns, having as principal activity the operation and promotion of The UK National Lottery in a socially-responsible manner. Its strategy is centered on four key elements:

  • Strengthening the National Lottery brand and giving it universal appeal.
  • Growing the core product range and diversifying into new products to better satisfy consumer needs.
  • Giving consumers easy access to the brand.
  • Building direct dialog with consumers alongside traditional mass communications, wherever possible.

The Camelot Group monitors and uses a set of Performance Standards (Key Performance Indicators) in order to achieve its purpose, follow the strategy and also remaining compliant with regulations so it will maintain its Operating License.

The financial KPIs cover sales levels, prizes and returns, as well as net profit levels. The performance standards cover areas like the availability of the computer systems, player service, prize payment, complaints investigation and resolution, and customer contact.

The table below presents some of the KPIs used by the Camelot Group, together with the targets set and achieved at the end of 2008.

The table clearly depicts how performance indicators (both financial and non-financial) are aligned to the strategy the Camelot Group follows.

For example, to maximize the  returns the Camelot Group monitors indicators such as:

  • $ Profit before taxation
  • $ Gross ticket sales
  • $ Prizes

To give consumers easy access to the brand the Group monitors indicators such as:

  • % Terminal sales availability
  • % Access to NLL Voice Response System (VRS)
  • % Complaint resolution (all channels)

The Camelot Group managed to achieve its targets for 2008 and even surpass some of them, safeguarding its position as one of the most cost-efficient lottery operators in the world.

More details

smartKPIs.com library of KPIs in Practice: Camelot

Camelot company website: 2009 Annual Report and Financial Statements, available at the following link: http://www.camelotgroup.co.uk/annualreport2009/performancestds.html (accessed 7 March 2010)

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The Internet in numbers – using metrics to measure online performance

Monday, March 8th, 2010

Online businesses have an important role in today’s economy, many of them being best practices lasting for decades. eCommerce and online service delivery are considered some of the fastest growing trends on the Internet. As we are facing an exponential growth of Internet usage, performance indicators provide essential information about the online market and the performance of online businesses. Used wisely, the indicators can reveal market trends, spot potential problems or opportunities and guide target setting.

Some of the performance indicators used widely in the Online / eCommerce space are:

There are many online videos presenting data about the Internet and social media, by using measures and performance indicators. One of the latest is the one below, published in February 2010.


JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3.

What is interesting about this kind of videos is that they quickly become outdated due to the speed these numbers and targets evolve. For example, if at the end of 2009 Facebook was reporting over 350 million active users (as shown in the video), in February 2010 Facebook reached over 400 million active users.

There is a wide range of performance indicators available and many more that can be developed to fit the need of specific projects or organizations. However, performance indicators are not KPIs until selected and applied as key to a specific project or business.

Additional resources

smartKPIs.com library of KPIs: Online presence – eCommerce

smartKPIs.com library of KPIs: Information Technology

Facebook company timeline, available at http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline (accessed 5 March 2010)

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The Cinderella tool of Performance Management and Business Intelligence

Friday, March 5th, 2010

smartKPIs.com Performance Architect update 9/2010

One of the skills we have as humans is the ability to find, create and select the appropriate tools to assist us in our activity. One way of grouping tools is by their form: physical or conceptual.

Performance Management as a human activity concerned with the achievement of desired outcomes makes no exception. It uses both types of tools. Physical tools can be considered the plans, reports and software system used as a business intelligence tool. Conceptual tools are performance measures, grouping of measures in scorecards and dashboard and the structure of performance management systems. More often than not, these tools are used in combination, as they complement each other: you need reports to make performance measures relevant same as you need performance measures and scorecards to populate a business intelligence system otherwise empty of content.

Some of the more talked about tools in Performance Management are the business intelligence software tools. At a conceptual level, the most popular so far proved to be the Balanced Scorecard.

But there is a tool that doesn’t get the level of attention it deserves compared to its benefits and utility.

It doesn’t benefit from big advertising budgets of the software giants of the world. It doesn’t get much media coverage, the attention of research analysts or user conferences. It is not a recipient of worldwide executive management exposure through the publications of Harvard Business Publishing. It doesn’t support an industry of consultants. There are no training courses available for users and no user certification is available.

However, it is simple. It is cheap. It is easy to use. It has an impact. It works.

So who is this “Cinderella tool” of Performance Management and Business Intelligence?

Many years ago I worked as a recruiter for a small consulting company. One of the rituals we had each day was updating our scores on the whiteboard: number of active requisitions, preselected candidates, submitted candidates and placed candidates. A few months ago, while visiting an office I came across a similar table on a whiteboard: number of phone calls, number of meetings and number of sales completed. A few weeks ago, while taking to a friend, the whiteboard emerged again as a useful tool for keeping track of important performance measures.

What makes it so special?

  • It is beautiful in its simplicity and effectiveness. It achieves its purpose. It facilitates communication of performance data and it makes the information actionable.
  • It only has enough space for the most important data, so it filters through complexity.
  • It is noticeable by the entire team. Being in sight all day and available instantly, without the need to turn on a computer or logging in, it delivers its message more directly and frequently than any other tool.
  • It motivates. You see your targets and results every day, at least when you get to the office and when you leave the office. It makes performance real.
  • It provides value for money and utility for effort ratios that are difficult to match. Yet, it is almost ignored in Performance Management and Business Intelligence circles.

It doesn’t have the bells and whistles of the latest generation analytical software tools. But it does plenty with less. And considering the number of small businesses, the level of usage and sales at international level, whiteboards might also be some of the most used Performance Management tools.

Stay smart! Enjoy smartKPIs.com!

Aurel Brudan
Performance Architect,
www.smartKPIs.com

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