Measuring our Performance

Metrics that matter—key performance indicators

Basic metric frame definitions

  • Metric is measure of something.

  • Performance metric is a measure of some activity related to a company's business performance.

  • Key performance indicators help organizations achieve organizational goals through the definition and measurement of progress. 

Image of a graph.Unscheduled utility outages

Image of a graph.Off-campus travel

Image of a graph.Customer satisfaction

Image of a graph.Average time to process Web requests

Image of a graph.Preventive maintenance and service requests

Image of a graph.Average number of days to complete a service request

Value to the process

Key performance indicators provide the foundation that allows strategic planning to understand these advantages:

  1. Identifies everything that is easy to measure and count.

  2. Visibility on performance and strategic goal.

  3. Teamwork on the basis of shared and measurable objectives.

  4. Key performance indicators do not give answers, rather they raise questions and direct one's attention.

  5. Key performance indicators focus employees' attention on the tasks and processes.