I just returned from a meeting with my national CIO peer group where we dug into the data. There’s a lot we can measure for business, especially with the growth of big data (as I talked about last month). I am a firm believer that effective management requires effective measurement.

So, how do you figure out what the key indicators are for your business or product segment? We recently had that challenge at Marco for our rapidly growing managed IT services division.  Here’s what we’ve learned:

Go beyond the linear.
Businesses like Marco often focus on billable hours for measuring service lines. But that’s far too linear for today’s data-rich environment. It doesn’t effectively measure our 24-7 world. In the case of managed services at Marco, it’s an around the clock service that covers everything from proactive planning to recovery and leverages technology to deliver key value to our customers. Billable hours only skim the surface and do not reveal the depth that we are used to for our mature copier services model. It’s best to identify 5-6 key indicators that you track in real-time.

Look at a service you measure well.
For decades, we have had a series of specific metrics and benchmarks for copier services. We can check key metrics by technician and device. In a moment, we can hone in and see the percentage breakdown spent on parts, usage, supplies and labor for each copy made on a device.

Our ability to slice and dice the data allows us to make better decisions about what we sell and how we sell it. So, naturally, we seek the same ability for our newer and emerging services. By dissecting how we measure our copier division, we have been able to identify a system for our managed services division.

Begin with the end in mind.
Yes, you hear that all the time. But it’s fitting when identifying key indicators. It’s important to answer the question: How will we know we’re successful? The answer will vary based on the organization and what’s being evaluated. But it needs to be specific, including 3-5 indicators that are measurable. 

For managed services, it’s important that we measure not only call volumes and live answer, but also how fast they are answered, first call effectiveness and time to resolution based on the reason for the call. For an example, a password reset should be handled more quickly than a server problem. We’ve tiered our response teams and set benchmarks for each level. This same system can be applied to customer service models for most companies.

Use key data to make decisions in real time.
We can’t manage what we don’t measure. By measuring these key indicators for IT, we not only deliver better service to customers, but also build in operational efficiencies such as staffing. We have built our staffing based on a historical analysis and have been within 5 percent accuracy on having the right staff available to handle the specific call volume at any given time. That has a direct impact on profitability, a key metric for any business.