How to Develop Performance Measures?

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StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article |Performance Measures|How to Develop Performance Measures?Have you ever thought of improving the quality and productivity of your organization, achieving set goals, and recognizing hard-working employees?

Well, one sure way is by developing the right performance measure.

Organizations often measure employee performance to achieve set goals. Most times, determining how to develop the right Key Performance Measure (KPI) may lead to hassles and failure that might bring unwanted results. However, it is important to develop the KPIs using the right approach as it aids better decision-making, makes employees more responsible for achieving set goals, evaluates the growth of the business better, and manages the employees’ performance better.

Steps to develop performance measures

1.Familiarize with the concept of performance measure/What is KPI?

It is needless to say that the misconception of KPI is a common organizational problem. Organizations need to comprehend what KPI is all about so they can apply it correctly. KPI is not a data collection strategy, nor is it an employee productivity tool.

It is the value of the numeric work input and evidence of the reoccurring performance result. Simply put, KPI refers to the reliable data generated from the efficiency of programs. After a proper understanding of the subject matter, other processes would yield better results.

2. Evaluate the KPI’s Criteria

If your company has existing KPIs, it is advisable to conduct another review on it and select the one that would yield better results based on the performance measurement. However, if you don’t, you should create strategies according to your company’s achievable goals.

The goals must also align with the measures and must be proven to work efficiently, i.e., someone else must have used this plan. The measure must also be understandable, inspirational, and capable of being regularly tracked. Remember to keep the measurements lesser in numbers and detailed.

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3. Set Measurable Goals

Your company’s goals should be specific, clear, realistic, and understandable. All this aids an excellent performance measure with meaningful results. Try to make the objectives less action-oriented, vague, and multi-barrelled. Instead, write about intended results with precision, and list your goals separately. Setting up small goals is better for a start.

4. Be Deliberate

While developing your performance measurements, employ the deliberate technique rather than a brainstorming one. Visualize the end, evaluate the potential measures that expose the capability of achieving positive results, and look at the bigger picture. This would allow you to decipher what is being measured and take your stance regardless of the unforeseen circumstances. It should be visible, countable, and measurable.

5. Let your supporters buy-in

Without those who support and understand your performance measure, your KPIs would not get the required attention. To make your KPI meaningful, you have to put them into use. They would fulfill the purpose by building buy-in with those you have been working alongside.

Building buy-in is by creating a measure team and ensuring that they comprehend the problems and how the KPIs work. Also, build an open environment where others can critique and give feedback on the KPIs.

Required characteristics for performance development

Before developing the KPI’s, there are some characteristics an organization should possess; they are:

  • Target An organization aiming for success should have some achievable targets within a specific period. The period may be within six months or annually
  • Measure The measure and the target work together. Measure here may refer to the number of acquired customers for the various products and services. Set a means to achieve the target.
  • Frequency The review of the KPI’s progress should be done regularly. It could be on a monthly or weekly interval depending on the nature of the target
  • Data Discover where your data would come from, as this would boost your progress level. Discovering this would prevent a waste of time.

Conclusion

Developing performance measures is an essential business tool to achieve your organizational goals. It also goes a long way to fulfill other organizational needs like setting realistic goals, recognizing employees’ hard work, timing employees through task timer online, and building a supportive team that understands your business challenges. You can try out our opinion on the steps in developing a performance measure, leave questions on where you need clarification, and tell us about your views.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Lori WadeLori Wade is a journalist from Louisville. She is a content writer who has experience in small editions, Lori is now engaged in news and conceptual articles on the topic of business. Time management is critical to career success. That is why she uses the task timer online to stay in the lead at all times. If you need more tips on time management, entrepreneurship, or leadership, you can find her on LinkedIn.

Measurement of Success in Business

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StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article |Success in Business|Measurement of Success in BusinessSuccess in business can be a difficult concept to grasp. Success means different things depending on your industry, your products, your market and, most importantly, your goals. But just because it’s a broad concept, doesn’t mean there’s not a methodical way to measure success.

The crux of measuring success in business is quantifiable, trackable metrics. It’s all well and good to feel like you’re doing a good job, but if you can’t prove that to your shareholders that feeling isn’t much use. Knowing how to measure your business’ success rate can improve how you fare against competition and determine how quickly your business grows. Here are a few of the most common ways businesses measure their success, and some tips on how to implement them in your work practices.

Sales metrics

This one might seem obvious to many companies engaged with sales, but tracking your sales data is an essential way to determine business success. Naturally, as with any data there are many ways you can go about this. But whether you track the volume of sales, the frequency, the time of day, or which products are most popular, use that data to help measure your sales success rate.

One key tip is to break down your data into various sections. Sales, be they online or offline, generate huge swathes of data that is hard to wade through at the best of times. Trying to use gross data to determine your business success is giving yourself more work than necessary. Instead, think about how you can divide that information into something you can act upon. Take a look at customer demographics, and whether certain products are more popular in certain areas. You can then use that information in a future action, say, developing a targetted marketing campaign, track the change and easily measure its success.

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures eBook

Net income

Another obvious one, your business profit is a clear marker of how financially successful your business is. Profit is purely the money left over from revenue after expenses have been extracted, it’s a fact of life for pretty much any business in any industry. How you manage your expenses versus your profit will be an indicator of how you manage your business as a whole.

It’s important to have a consideration for profit, even for small businesses and startups. As much as you should expect to be in the red from time to time, you should be consistently planning for profit in other times.

Leads Generated vs Leads Converted

Finding leads is an essential part of most marketing-driven businesses, but tapping the potential of these leads is a different matter. You can find a thousand potential clients a day, but if none of them result in actual clients then your work has achieved nothing.

Karlie Fiorina, a business manager at Essay Service and Revieweal, offers that “keeping track of your converted leads will let you know which of your actions work and which don’t. For example, you may find that your leads from email are far more likely to become customers than those from direct mail. Use that information to direct your resources and attention when it comes to marketing.”

You Can Get Satisfaction

Success in business isn’t just about profit margins, it’s also about how satisfied shareholders are in your business. Yes, some of that will be determined by profit margin, but there are a myriad of elements that can affect how your business is perceived. Satisfaction can be determined through surveys, feedback forms and reviews.

Bear in mind that satisfaction is not a one way street. Birk van der Beck, a career coach at UKWritings and AssignmentHelp, points out that “while customer satisfaction is usually more talked about, employee satisfaction is equally, if not more, important. A satisfied and engaged workplace will be more productive, more innovative and, eventually, more successful.”

Goals, goals, goals

The subtitle on all these points should be about setting goals. There are hundreds of ways you can measure the success of a business, but putting those measurements to use means setting yourself goals. How to set a reasonable but challenging goal is the subject for another article, but make sure you consider how your metrics can inform your future business decisions.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Katherine RundellKatherine Rundell is a business writer at Big Assignments and OXessays services. She writes about business, finance and project management, amongst other things. She is a keen reader and a blogger at Essay writing services reviews.

7 Metrics to Help you Measure Success and ROI in Business

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StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures (OPM) Article |Business Metrics|7 Metrics to Help you Measure Success and ROI in BusinessA Business metric is a useful way to understand and analyse the tracking of a business process. A business analyst should focus on metrics to measure Return on Investment (ROI) to make the business operation’s success.

You will get to know whether your company is getting the intended results or getting back to the drawing board. Measuring business success is quite challenging for many. You have to evaluate your business, define your goals, set key performance indicators (KPIs) for the objectives set, and then measure and track these KPIs. Let us cover some useful metrics that you can employ when measuring success.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is an essential tool in measuring your business success and marketing campaigns. It is possible to get feedback from your customers directly by adding consumer surveys to your site. This helps you in knowing your customer’s needs meaning you can tell your customers’ satisfaction rate.

You can learn what they don’t like about different facets of your business. For example, you can tell the reasons they visit your site, and if it leads to conversions. This significantly helps you in strategizing more effective marketing campaigns. Also, paying more attention to them will go a long way since your visitors are your target audience.

Customer follow-up can also be done by sending them things like an email asking the customer to rate your services. This is important as it helps in keeping your customers more satisfied.

Website Traffic

This is simply the number of visitors landing on your web pages. More users translate to more traffic to your site. Remember, your website serves as the face of your brand and your home base. The primary traffic sources are search, direct campaign, and referral. Your site may have traffic from campaigns such as banner ads as well.

To increase traffic to your website, optimize all pages on your site with relevant keywords, and boost your website security. Besides all, security plays a vital role in drawing traffic to the site, and for that, you should buy a cheap SSL certificate to help secure your web users. This will encourage more transactions because users are becoming wary of online web security. More users will only transact on safe business sites.

Cash Flow Levels

This is the measure of the difference between cash inflow and outflow. Cash inflow levels are dependent mainly on the nature of your business. For instance, you will need more cash in hand if you run a convenience store. Cash flow accounts for all the money that comes in the form of investment and goods returned, and sales revenue.

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures eBook

Employee Satisfaction

Your employee’s satisfaction is as important as your customers’ satisfaction. Yes, your employee’s morale is correlated directly to business success. A much satisfied and motivated employee could turn into a more productive and effective employee. Keeping your employee’s satisfaction levels high leads to a long commitment to the company and the team.

It is essential to check whether your employees feel rewarded and are satisfied with their work. To determine your employee satisfaction, conduct team surveys to collect feedback on the teamwork and HR to collect personal satisfaction levels. You can improve your employee satisfaction by introducing some perks such as free office coffee, creating an atmosphere for work and growth, etc.

Net Profit Margin

The main aim of any business is to earn a profit. This metric shows how your pricing and total sales volume impact your business in terms of the costs contracted: the lower your profit margin, the lower or higher your cost. Your profit margin calculations should include variable expenses paid regularly, such as utilities, insurance, taxes, and salaries.

It would help if you diminished the cost in case of losing profit ratio. If you happen to make more profit than you were previously, this means that your customer base is expanding, and your sales have increased. Understanding your revenue will give you crucial insights into your business.

Customer Retention

The essence of customer retention is to keep as many customers as possible. Having loyal customers is beneficial as it helps to grow your sales and create awareness more about your services.

The retention rate shows the number of clients who make repeat purchases and use your product over an extended period. Retaining customers is achievable by having things like special rewards or customer loyalty programs for old customers.

Number of Sales

Sales indicate whether people are interested in buying your product or service. They also tell us whether your marketing efforts are paying up. However, the number of sales can be affected by other factors like recent market changes.

Sales metrics can be measured in the number of purchases made directly from the site. To increase your sales, one can hire new talent, expand your marketing goals, or introduce irresistible discount offers.

Wrap Up

This guide has provided you with a few metrics that can help in kick-starting your growth journey. You can pick some of the essential metrics based on your needs for better and effective operations.

Measurement of Success in Business

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StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article |Measurement of Success|Measurement of Success in BusinessSuccess is a relative term and does not only mean different things for different people but also different things for different businesses. What makes success even more tricky to measure or define is that it also changes over time or circumstance. What could be a success today might be underperformance the next.

As an entrepreneur, the one thing that you want to see is growth, but that growth does not necessarily mean that the bank account is filling up nicely. So how does one go about measuring success in business?

Looking at the business’s financials

Obviously, business financials are a good indication of whether the business is successful or not. No business can survive without money and no business can grow with it either. But when looking at the money, one must focus on all three the major streams or trails of money, the income statement, the balance sheet and the cash flow statement.
The income statement shows you how much money the business made over a period. It indicates the profits and losses of the business and gives an indication of the measure of profitability during the specified time.

Most entrepreneurs who are new to the game will place a very high value on the income statement and can tend to forget about the balance sheet.

The balance sheet is one of the most important financial indicators seeing that it depicts the health of the venture. It measures how much you owe and how much you own. A successful entrepreneur will home in on the debt of the business and strategically align it with the income statement to pay off the debt as soon as possible while still making a profit.

The cash flow of the business shows the state of how liquid the cash in the business is. When there is a cash flow problem, it can cause some serious strain on the other two financial aspects and ultimately lower the success of the business.

As the management writer for write my essay service puts it, “being successful does not necessarily mean that the business is debt, free, but rather that the debt repayments can be made without constraining the cash flow.”

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Customer satisfaction signs

When a customer has a bad experience, they probably will not buy from your business or use your services again. As an entrepreneur, you will know how important customer satisfaction is. Not only does it indicate that the business is doing well, but it is also a reflection of your efforts.

There is a certain pride involved with customer satisfaction, especially if you have poured everything into your business. To get a bad review or to deliver bad service, is like a slap in the face and an attack on your character.

It sometimes happens that bad experiences go unnoticed and this is only because it was not picked up and dealt with. There are many tools available that will help the young entrepreneur to measure how satisfied the clients are.

Surveys and questionnaires are excellent tools that provide an in-depth quality check of your products or services. The review does not necessarily have to be bad to make improvements.

Reviews are very specific and when a bad review is received, it should be dealt with immediately. A bad review could be turned into something positive if the customer feels as though their concerns were heard.

These reviews could also be posted on the company website so that people can see that real people gave their opinions. When you see mostly good reviews and positive surveys, it is a good indication that the company is successful.

The new clients that come in

A successful business will show gradual growth over time. When a business is turning a profit, it generally means that it is good health and successful. However, when the profits stay stagnant, it means that the business is not growing. New customers are a much more reliable indicator of the success of a business.

When you know how many new customers you get, you can measure the success and projected growth of the company. On the other hand, when the same old customers keep you afloat, then it might be time to invest in a marketing strategy. Customers come and go, but if there is not a general influx of customers, they will only end up going.
To see if new customers are supporting you, draw up a client list with email addresses to see if your sales are limited to existing clients.

The statistics writer and researcher at the essay writing service says that once you have a client list and a system in place, you can measure how well your marketing strategies are doing. Every time you launch a new product or run a promotion, you can run averages on your customers and establish which strategy is the best for bringing in new clients.

StrategyDriven Organizational Performance Measures Article |Measurement of Success|Measurement of Success in BusinessIt is not just about the clients

A business can only sustain growth if the people who are doing the work are doing it well. As a young entrepreneur, you might not have too many people working for you, but as your business grows, so also will your list of employees.

One way to measure the success of the business is to see how well the staff are doing. When they are discontent, it could spill over into the quality of their work and threaten the customer experience.

Running performance reviews is an excellent way of finding out where the bad spots are. Many entrepreneurs fail to do performance reviews because they do not want to step on the toes of the employees. The thing is, if they are not made aware of the areas where they lack, they will never know how they can improve.

It also serves as a morale booster when there are performance bonuses on the line. Nothing puts a smile on the faces of employees like money in the bank.

Stay on top of market trends

A successful business is one that keeps with the times. Technology has changed everything in the world, and it continues to change every industry. When your business is successful, it does not mean that you can relax and keep on with the same recipe, expecting the same results.

Unfortunately, you need to keep up with the times and the best way to do this is to see what the competition is doing. If your business is aimed at service delivery and you do not apply the newest techniques, then you will start to see a decline in profits.

Look to yourself

There is a bit of subjectivity involved in measuring the success of a business, which is why you should measure what your business is doing against your own expectations. It does not matter how well it is doing on paper.
If it does not meet your expectations, the business could still be unsuccessful. You need to be content with the growth of the business and if you are not, then a new plan can be drawn up.

Conclusion

The success of any business depends on so many factors that it is hard to put it all into one category. The main thing to remember is to continuously evaluate the state of your business and track where things are going well and where there is a need. The more you tinker with the things you do not like, the more successful the business will become.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Tiffany HarperTiffany Harper is a freelance writer from New York. She loves to share her experience through blog posts. She began writing from the professional writer service for Write my essay and later for buy college papers. Please do not hesitate to contact her on twitter.

Why Are Analytics Important for eCommerce?

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StrategyDriven Organisational Performance Measures Article |why are analytics important |Why Are Analytics Important for eCommerce?It’s easier than ever to start an eCommerce store. Just sign up for a hosting account, and your store will be ready in a few minutes. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy to get customers.

You’re competing with at least 12 million other online stores on the internet. The good news is you can make use of website analytics to make better choices for your business.

The question is, why are analytics important for eCommerce websites? Keep reading to learn the answer to your question.

Uncover Your Traffic Sources

It isn’t too difficult to figure out where you’re getting traffic from if you only run advertising on one platform. It’s much more difficult if you’re getting search engine and social media traffic.

Analytics software will show you exactly where your traffic comes from. You’ll be able to gauge which websites are showing the best results from your efforts, so you know where to focus your energy.

Group Audience Segments

Not all customer demographics will respond to your products in the same way. People of different ages, sexes, and geographical locations will react differently to your content. Your tracking software can help you figure out which demographics take what action.

This data will help you optimize your website and advertising campaigns. When you create messaging specifically for different demographics, you can speak more to what they want in a product.

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Split-Test Pages

You should never be satisfied with your website design. There’s always a test you can do to improve your conversion rate. Unfortunately, this is hard to do without any kind of tracking software.

A heatmap is a tracking script that informs you of what actions your visitors take on individual pages. You can see where they look and where they hover their mouse. Use this information to test small changes to your website to figure out which versions produce the best results.

Track Ad Campaigns

It isn’t enough to get click-throughs on your ads. If you have no method to track what visitors do on your website, you won’t be able to figure out what marketing campaigns are successful.

ECommerce analytics software provides you the ability to set up goal pages. Set a dollar amount for these pages, and you’ll be able to figure out how much money your ad campaigns generate while your campaigns are live.

Learn What Visitors Search For

Your search bar isn’t only there to give your visitors an easy way to find items. It’s also there to help you understand the type of products your visitors are searching for.

Using a tool like Knowi will help you gain insight into the search trends on your website. You’ll be able to see reports detailing search terms and use them to figure out what popular items are and what trends are happening in your industry.

Why Are Analytics Important? Now You Know

Now that you can answer the question, “why are analytics important to online stores?” you’re ready to get started. Sign up for an analytics software package today so you can start tracking the people on your website. The more information you have, the better business decisions you’re going to make.

Do you want more tips for running an eCommerce store? Read our latest articles to discover our newest tips.