There are numerous benefits you can access by leveraging the data analytics capabilities of a top-notch enterprise performance management application like Results Software. This may include fast-tracking and streamlining decision-making and obtaining diverse actionable insights into your core processes to drive continuous improvements. However, to be able to fully harness the tremendous power of Results, there are a number of critical factors you and your team will have to consider.
How can you identify the right operational measures to track with Results Software?
Step 1: Identify your highest priority outcomes: We find it useful to start with the end in mind. For instance, what are the key business outcomes you have in mind? It could be revenue growth, profit growth or even expanding your operations into new markets.
The trick lies in picking a manageable and focused set of outcomes, ideally 6-8 of them. Next, you’ll have to define your chosen outcomes in a way that’s easily measurable. For example, how much revenue or profit growth do you want to achieve? How many new customers do you wish to attract in a week, month or quarter?
Step 2: Identify the ‘core work’ you need to perform at a high level to achieve your priority outcomes. It is critical that you have a clear understanding of the various processes you need to work on to achieve those business outcomes. For instance, if you’re banking on revenue growth, effective marketing strategies will be important, and this covers both identifying and qualifying leads. Additionally, you’ll have to work on your sales processes including setting more sales appointments, executing more sales discussions, and ultimately closing them. In a word, these are the key processes and process measures you will need to track to be able to achieve the outcomes you’ve set your sight on
How can you set actionable strategic goals?
To navigate efficiently through change, and if your main strategic goal is to improve profit margins, you’ll need to again define it in measurable terms which becomes your Objective. Here, you may leverage the SMART Goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) technique.
You want your Strategic Objectives to be specific, measurable, achievable, and relevant. To this end, you might want to increase your profit at a rate of 15% by the end of 2022. To clarify, the goal is to increase profit, the Objective is to how much you want to increase profit, by when.
When it comes to creating actionable strategic goals, best practices say you start by determining your top 2, 3, or 4 strategic objectives. At the same time, you’ll need to determine measurable indicators of achieving them and then move into action by figuring out the initiatives you have to pursue to reach your goals. Results Software comes into play by enabling you and your team to consistently monitor your performance against your operational process measures, and even your weekly, monthly or quarterly outcomes. This way, you’ll be tracking your strategic goals’ initiatives and the various projects which relate to them.
How can you improve underperforming measures?
Results Software provides visibility to operational and strategic measures to ensure a high level of transparency and accountability.
So, every time you and your team have business review meetings, you will quickly be able to identify where you are on track and where you have constraints.
If some measures are underperforming, then you can immediately take corrective action. First, you and your team will need to identify what’s causing you to be off track with that measure and who has ownership over it. Next, you can discuss as a team how to create a plan to get you back on track. Generally speaking, this should be a collaborative learning process and a team effort to improve the underperforming measure. It shouldn’t be a “witch hunt” that will create a culture of fear in your team.
How long does it take from implementation to getting actionable insights with Results Software?
With an enterprise performance management tool like Results, it can be live and connected to your company’s active directory in a matter of hours.
This application by itself creates a structure that guides you in identifying your key outcomes, outcome measures, core processes, and the process measures you need to work to perform at a high level in achieving your outcomes. With Results Software, you’ll be able to see the entire picture since it accesses all relevant data sets from multiple business applications and displays them in a single interface or dashboard. Head over to our website to learn how our Results Software SMB offering can convert your plan into actionable reporting in 2 hours or less!
Jim Clark,