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Develop Meaningful Service Metrics

Reinforce service orientation in your IT organization by ensuring your IT metrics generate value-driven resource behavior.

Client Challenge

  • IT organizations measure services from a technology perspective but rarely from a business goal or outcome perspective.
  • Most organizations do a poor job of identifying and measuring service outcomes over the duration of a service’s lifecycle – never ensuring the services remain valuable and meet expected long-term ROI.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  • Service metrics are critical to ensuring alignment of IT service performance and business service value achievement.
  • Service metrics reinforce positive business and end-user relationships by providing user-centric information that drives responsiveness and consistent service improvement.
  • Poorly designed metrics drive unintended and unproductive behaviors that have negative impacts on IT and produce negative service outcomes.

Impact and Result

Effective service metrics will provide the following service gains:

  • Confirm service performance and identify gaps.
  • Drive service improvement to maximize service value.
  • Validate performance improvements while quantifying and demonstrating business value.
  • Ensure service reporting aligns with end-user experience.
  • Achieve and confirm process and regulatory compliance.

Which will translate into the following relationship gains:

  • Embed IT into business value achievement.
  • Improve the relationship between the business and IT.
  • Achieve higher customer satisfaction (happier end users receiving expected service, the business is able to identify how things are really performing).
  • Reinforce desirable actions and behaviors from both IT and the business.

Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should develop meaningful service metrics, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Name Actions
Develop Meaningful Service Metrics – Executive Brief
Develop Meaningful Service Metrics – Phases 1-3

1. Design the metrics

Identify the appropriate service metrics based on stakeholder needs.

Name Actions
Develop Meaningful Service Metrics to Ensure Business and User Satisfaction – Phase 1: Design the Metrics
Metrics Development Workbook

2. Design reports and dashboards

Present the right metrics in the most interesting and stakeholder-centric way possible.

Name Actions
Develop Meaningful Service Metrics to Ensure Business and User Satisfaction – Phase 2: Design Reports and Dashboards
Metrics Presentation Format Selection Guide

3. Implement, track, and maintain

Run a pilot with a smaller sample of defined service metrics, then continuously validate your approach and make refinements to the processes.

Name Actions
Develop Meaningful Service Metrics to Ensure Business and User Satisfaction – Phase 3: Implement, Track, and Maintain
Metrics Tracking Tool

Onsite Workshop: Develop Meaningful Service Metrics

Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Do-It-Yourself Implementation

The slides in this Best Practice Blueprint will walk you step-by-step through every phase of your project with supporting tools and templates ready for you to use.

Project Accelerator Workshop

You can also use this Best Practice Blueprint to facilitate your own project accelerator workshop within your organization using the workshop slides and facilitation instructions provided in the Appendix.

Module 1: Design the Metrics

The Purpose

  • Define stakeholder needs for IT based on their success criteria and identify IT services that are tied to the delivery of business outcomes.
  • Derive meaningful service metrics based on identified IT services and validate that metrics can be collected and measured.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Design meaningful service metrics from stakeholder needs.
  • Validate that metrics can be collected and measured.

Activities Outputs
1.1 Determine stakeholder needs, goals, and pain points.
  • Understand stakeholder priorities
1.2 Determine the success criteria and related IT services.
  • Adopt a business-centric perspective to align IT and business views
1.3 Derive the service metrics.
  • Derive meaningful business metrics that are relevant to the stakeholders
1.4 Validate the data collection process.
  • Determine if and how the identified metrics can be collected and measured
1.5 Validate metrics with stakeholders.
  • Establish a feedback mechanism to have business stakeholders validate the meaningfulness of the metrics

Module 2: Design Reports and Dashboards

The Purpose

  • Determine the most appropriate presentation format based on stakeholder needs.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Ensure the metrics are presented in the most interesting and stakeholder-centric way possible to guarantee that they are read and used.

Activities Outputs
2.1 Understand the different presentation options.
  • Learn about infographic, scorecard, formal report, and dashboard presentation options
2.2 Assess stakeholder needs for information.
  • Determine how stakeholders would like to view information and how the metrics can be presented to aid decision making
2.3 Select and design the metric report.
  • Select the most appropriate presentation format and create a rough draft of how the report should look

Module 3: Implement, Track, and Maintain Your Metrics

The Purpose

  • Run a pilot with a smaller sample of defined service metrics to validate your approach.
  • Make refinements to the implementation and maintenance processes prior to activating all service metrics.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • High user acceptance and usability of the metrics.
  • Processes of identifying and presenting metrics are continuously validated and improved.

Activities Outputs
3.1 Select the pilot metrics.
  • Select the metrics that should be first implemented based on urgency and impact
  • Complete the service intake form for a specific initiative
3.2 Gather data and set initial targets.
  • Create a process to gather data, measure baselines, and set initial targets
3.3 Generate the reports and validate with stakeholders.
  • Establish a process to receive feedback from the business stakeholders once the report is generated
3.4 Implement the service metrics program.
  • Identify the approach to implement the metrics program across the organization
3.5 Track and maintain the metrics program.
  • Set up mechanism to ensure the success of the metrics program by assessing process adherence and process validity

Testimonials

Paul's insights and facilitation was invaluable.

Hunt Consolidated, Inc. viaWorkshop

No way to determine time or budget impact at this time. Too soon. Love the conversation and have good direction on where to start.

Government of Bermuda viaWorkshop

The level of real-world valuable insight Valence, the facilitator, brought to the workshop had great value for the team overall. After this workshop, we are more knowledgeable on Metrics, KPIs, and how to use these to show visibility and add value to ou...

Shelby County Government viaWorkshop

Best: Adequate time to do the work. being able to afford the time to dig deeper into the KPIs. Executive review at the end. Good management of doing the workshop remotely (adjusting break times, etc.) Worst: great facilitation, but value added from th...

University of Ottawa viaWorkshop

Valence was very knowledgable and helpful. I'm pleased with the level of service.

Tulane University viaWorkshop

Best part: - The analyst used examples I'm familiar with (applications and databases, human body, etc.) so it was relatable and easier to understand.

Office of the Attorney General viaWorkshop

Best: Tony gaining understanding and validating our experience and position in developing a metric model. Framing how we can start to use the metrics blueprint with our leadership team. Defining some next steps through guided implementation. Worst: N...

University of Wisconsin-Madison viaWorkshop