The BrightGauge Blog

Most readers probably know what key performance indicators (KPIs) are by now, but just in case: KPIs are performance metrics that you can use to measure the performance of an employee, a team, or a business as a whole. Using KPI tracking, companies can benchmark their performance and progress towards important business goals. KPI tracking can be invaluable for identifying your biggest opportunities for improvement, motivating employees, and driving long-term success for the business. However, that’s only if you’re tracking the right business KPIs. Relying on poorly-chosen key performance indicators can cause more harm than good. One question that some business managers and owners have about KPIs is: “What are the worst KPIs to track for my company?” There are a lot of bad KPIs out there that, if used, can actually have a negative effect on employee engagement and overall business performance. Here’s a short list of some of the worst KPIs to track by type, which can help you spot a bad KPI in general. When reviewing this list, it’s important to remember that not all KPIs are equally good or bad for all businesses—some KPIs might work for one company but not another because of inherent differences in how the two operate and what their goals are. Worst KPIs to track: KPIs that are too easy to manipulate Most people want to have their performance recognized and KPI tracking makes for an easy way to get recognition. However, when a KPI is too easy to manipulate, it can lead to people abusing the KPI to artificially inflate their performance. For example, say your business has a call center that dials out to people to make cold sales calls or to follow up with customers who recently made a major purchase. One employee performance metric such a call center might track could be their number of outgoing calls. While this sounds like a good way to track call center activity, it may lead to some employees trying to inflate their numbers by making quick “dial and drop” calls that would never make an actual impact on the business’ goals. This scenario can be mitigated somewhat by tracking related employee KPIs for call centers, such as average time spent on the phone, successful close rate, and revenue per deal. Using these secondary employee performance indicators can help contextualize even a “bad” KPI that could be easily manipulated on its own. Worst KPIs to track: KPIs that are too vague Every KPI used in a business should have an objectively measurable value to go with it. If an employee performance indicator is too vague, employee engagement can easily suffer as your people struggle to meet their goals. For example, say your business had a KPI along the lines of “make the workplace neater” or something else similarly vague. In this instance, employees might clean up their desks and make their workspaces nicer, but still fall short of the goal because there’s no measurable standard. Worse yet, because the criteria for meeting or missing the goal is purely subjective, there’s the risk that some employees might see the evaluation as discriminatory, leading to reduced employee engagement and a whole mess of other problems. Instead, it’s better to set employee performance metrics that have a specific and measurable outcome that creates a clear pass or fail assessment that everyone can understand. This makes KPI tracking easier and more effective in the long run. Worst KPIs to track: KPIs that aren’t relevant to your business or industry Tracking business KPIs should never be a waste of time and effort. In most cases, even a “bad” KPI can at least provide some type of insight into your business operations, even when the data isn’t super useful—though it’s better to focus on better performance metrics whenever possible. However, one of the worst KPI tracking mistakes that a business can make is tracking metrics that aren’t relevant to its operations or industry. This is a mistake that can be easier to make than you might assume. For example, a team leader may accidentally add a KPI to a list without noticing, or decide they want to test out a metric, only to forget about it later. When you’re tracking numerous data sources across multiple dashboards, it’s easy for an irrelevant KPI to slip through the proverbial cracks. One or two of these won’t do much to slow operations. But, over time, they can lead to unnecessary data bloat that makes it harder to track your most important business KPIs. The best solution is to periodically check your KPI lists to identify irrelevant employee performance metrics and remove them. How can I spot bad KPIs? When you’re creating or cleaning your KPI lists, it can help to ask yourself the following questions: Is the KPI relevant to my team or business’ goals? Is the KPI necessary for some kind of regulatory compliance standard? Do my employees have any control over the employee performance metric? Can I easily measure the KPI? Could the KPI be easily abused to twist performance evaluations? Does the KPI establish a specific and easy to understand performance goal? Does this business metric indicate what I really want to know better than other related KPIs? Can I set goals with this KPI that can be met in a reasonable amount of time? If the answer to most of these questions is “yes,” then odds are it’s a good KPI. If the answer to all of these questions is “no,” then you may want to reconsider using that performance metric. Need help optimizing and tracking your KPIs to improve employee motivation, engagement, and productivity? Reach out to the BrightGauge team today to learn more!

Modern enterprises need modern solutions to their business process workflow challenges—at least if they want to remain competitive. Business management software represents a major opportunity for enterprises to smooth out their process workflows. However, what is business management software, really? There are many kinds of business software programs out there for managing different types of processes, such as: Sales Finance Human Resources (HR) Service Supply Chain These broad categories of business processes can be broken down into hundreds of different specific items, and some functions can even have a bit of overlap. This, in turn, means that the list of business management software that a company can use is virtually endless. So, which types of business management software should your organization use? Here are a few examples that you can start with, though this is not a comprehensive list by any stretch of the imagination. 1: Business Invoicing Programs Being able to effectively manage billing/collections is a necessity for any business. After all, if your business doesn’t get paid, the budget for funding projects, payroll, and maintenance is going to run dry fairly quickly. Business invoicing programs help companies with this basic financial task. While the specific capabilities of these bookkeeping solutions will vary from one vendor to the next, some common ones include: The ability to create new invoices—sometimes even automating the billing process. Online payment portals that can accept credit cards or other online payment platforms such as PayPal. Customer recordkeeping to help verify what amount of money is owed on each account. Tax data collection to automate filing processes for the business so customer payments are accurately reported. These are just a few of the potential features a business invoicing program might have. The big benefit of this software is that it helps to minimize late or missed payments while increasing the accuracy of financial records and projections. 2: Asset Management Software Managing the supply chain is an enormous task—one that only gets more difficult as the organization grows. Asset management software programs help to track and manage inventory, automate ordering processes, and provide critical insights into spending patterns. Of these capabilities, tracking spending patterns and invoices can be surprisingly important. Largely because it: Makes it easier to identify wasteful spending; and Helps to spot anomalous orders and invoices that indicate fraud. With asset management software, businesses can ensure that their supply chains operate efficiently by minimizing waste while avoiding shortages of critical resources. 3: Project and Task Management Software Keeping employees on task and helping them prioritize their efforts is crucial for ensuring efficiency and productivity. Project and task management software solutions, like Basecamp, JIRA, or Teamwork help companies do just that. The capabilities of these project and task management software programs do vary, but some of the basics include: Tracking total time spent on specific tasks; Logging which tasks are waiting to be worked on, in progress, or have been completed for a specific work period; and Displaying project details or requirements for an assignment to be considered complete. Project-oriented teams in an organization frequently use these features to review progress and identify issues on a daily or weekly basis. For example, if the time estimates for a given project aren’t matching actual time worked, that could be an indication that the project was under-scoped and needs to be adjusted. Data from these project and task management software solutions could potentially be fed into a key performance indicator (KPI) tracking dashboard for use during employee evaluations, as well. This would help you track employee performance and improve your human resources management. Speaking of which… 4: Human Resources Management Solutions HR is at the core of many modern organizations. Being able to effectively manage, train, and reward employees can mean the difference between having a strong, highly-engaged workforce and struggling with disengagement and poor-quality work. Human resources management solutions come all kinds of flavors, depending on the HR workflows you want to improve. Examples of HR solutions include: Employee training platforms; Benefits tracking solutions; and Employee assessment solutions. The specific benefits of human resources software can vary from one solution to the next depending on their features. However, common advantages of using HR solutions effectively include improving employee retention, productivity, and engagement throughout your organization. One type of business software that can be used for your HR processes—specifically to help track and improve employee performance—is KPI tracking software. Platforms such as BrightGauge make it easy to visualize and study your employee performance metrics so you can help your people realize their full potential. With employee data dashboards, you can easily identify opportunities for improvement and recognize/reward top performers in your organization. Want to get started on maximizing the potential of your people? Reach out to BrightGauge today!

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial for a business to measure and enhance success. Data dashboards help to make tracking important performance metrics easier for leaders who want to improve their company’s competitiveness. What is a data dashboard? Which types of data dashboards should you use in your organization? Here’s a quick explanation, followed by some data dashboard examples you can use for your business: What is a data dashboard? A data dashboard is a collection of important KPI information that is assembled into one convenient display. The specific performance metrics will vary between different types of data dashboards and the goals of the organization—a data dashboard for a sales team will be very different than the one used by a service delivery team, after all. Data dashboards can double as a motivational tool for some organizations, especially when those dashboards are put up in a display that everyone can see. Dashboards can also be incredibly useful for managers in their one on one meetings with team members—providing easy access to important performance data for assessing employees. What types of data dashboards should I use? There are many different types of data dashboards that you could create for your organization. Naturally, not all data dashboards are going to be useful for all organizations. Your company may need a specific type of data dashboard to track information for a particular goal or initiative. So, when looking at the following list of data dashboard examples, keep in mind your own business’ goals and needs, then use that information to determine whether each of these dashboards can benefit you: Data dashboard example #1: Employee dashboards This is one of the most common types of data dashboards used by every business—employee performance dashboards. However, while virtually any business can use employee dashboards, the specific KPIs that they track may vary from one company to the next. Even employee dashboards within the same company might differ depending on the employee’s specific role in the company. Two examples of KPIs that you might track on an employee dashboard include: Ticket Close Rate. For a service team member or call center employee, you might track how many service tickets that employee closes in a given week to benchmark their performance compared to their peers. Billable Project Hours. For project team members, measuring how much time each team member spends on a project helps with accurately billing projects and estimating employee efficiency. Data dashboard example #2: Sales team dashboards The sales team plays a key role in your business’ success by closing sales deals and building relationships with customers/clients. Tracking sales team performance metrics helps you identify strengths and weaknesses so you can improve their skills as a team. However, instead of tracking an individual employee’s performance, sales team data dashboards provide a broader scope of information, focusing on the team as a whole with metrics such as: Overall Sales Funnel. This performance metric helps to visualize the count of opportunities created as well as closed/won deals. Looking at the last 30 days, you can see how your sales team is performing and compare it to their yearly averages and goals. Total Pipeline Dollars. How much money is sitting in your pipeline, waiting to close? Tracking your total pipeline dollars, as well as how far along each deal in your pipeline is, can help you predict how much revenue your business can expect in the next month. Tracking the rate at which you close deals on top of this metric can help to further refine your income estimates. Data dashboard example #3: Client services dashboards For B2B (business to business) service-oriented companies, being able to meet contractual service level agreements (SLAs) with clients can mean the difference between sustained success and losing market share. Tracking KPIs related to these SLAs is a must for B2B companies. While the specific KPIs you will track on your client services dashboard will vary depending on the nature of the services you provide, a couple of potential performance metrics you might use include: New Tickets. A measure of the number of unresolved tickets that have not been responded to yet. Can be combined with tickets currently open to showcase how much work is being generated, which helps to put response time and other metrics into perspective. Tickets Waiting on Customer. A measure of how many open tickets are waiting on input from the customer before they can be worked on. Putting this into a report for your clients helps encourage them to respond to inquiries more quickly, which allows your team to provide faster service. Data dashboard example #4: Financial performance dashboards Rather than measuring the performance of any one team or team member, financial performance data dashboards help you get a picture of your company’s financial health at a glance. This can be crucial for spotting issues that threaten the future viability of your company. A couple of financial performance metrics you might track for your company include: Past Due Receivables Amount. Accounts receivable is critical because it helps you set an expectation for your income from clients within a set period of time. Past due accounts receivable highlights which clients you need to increase your outreach with. Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization. Abbreviated EBITDA, this metric helps establish your overall profitability and is often used to calculate things such as employee bonuses. Do you need help creating comprehensive and effective data dashboards to help your business achieve maximum performance? Reach out to the team at BrightGauge to learn more!

Motivating your employees can be the secret to achieving lasting success as a company. A workforce that is actively engaged with their work is more likely to go the extra mile, be more productive, and want to stay with the company for longer (improving employee retention). All of these factors can contribute to the success of the business and make it more competitive. However, mastering employee motivation can be difficult at the best of times. There are any number of variables in the workplace culture that can impact employee performance and motivation. So, here’s a list of simple tips and tricks for how to motivate employees. 1: Consider how leadership actions impact workplace culture The actions of leaders in an organization can have a massive impact on workplace culture and employee motivation. For example, if you’ve ever been told “Do as I say, not as I do,” odds are good that you know how frustrating it is to be held to a higher standard than others unfairly. So imagine how your employees might feel if they see leadership team members getting away with behaviors that they would be reprimanded (or even terminated) for. A workplace culture that seems to encourage double standards can quickly create actively disengaged employees. On the other hand, having leaders exemplify the behaviors that you want your employees to model, and showing employees that everyone will be treated equally when it comes to both rewards and consequences, can help to improve employee engagement. 2: Take some time for 1:1 meetings with employees How leaders communicate with their teams can also have a major impact on employee motivation and performance. As Kevin Plank, the founder of Under Armour, said in an article for Inc.: “I listened to everyone’s opinions, and, without fail, they’d bring up things I hadn’t thought of. More important, my team members knew they were part of the process and that their voices mattered… Employees are more motivated when they feel needed, appreciated, and valued.” By taking employee suggestions and implementing them, Plank was able to influence his company’s workplace culture. This created an environment where employees were encouraged to share their thoughts—helping them to be more engaged and motivated. Holding 1:1 meetings with team members to provide feedback and collect ideas can make employees feel more appreciated—making these meetings an invaluable tool for motivating your employees. 3: Use visible data dashboards to encourage healthy competition Creating some data dashboards featuring employee performance statistics and putting them where all employees can see them can help to create some healthy competitiveness. When your teams see these “leaderboards” of who is doing what the most effectively, it can spur them to try harder and be more competitive so they can reach the top spot. This trick for motivating your employees borrows from the concept of online leaderboards in video games—making this a type of “gamification” strategy. By providing open recognition for strong employee performance, and attaching a “score” to employee efforts, you can increase employee engagement and create a workplace culture that promotes excellence. However, it’s important to employ this tactic carefully. Making sure that the performance metrics tracked on the public data dashboard are both relevant to your business’ goals and are within your employees’ ability to control. Otherwise, employees may waste effort on worthless activities to boost the wrong numbers or become demotivated. 4: Create opportunities for employees to learn new skills for the company Many employees are looking for opportunities to move to a new role or get promoted. However, they may not currently have the right skills to move into a new position. Without education opportunities, these employees will stagnate and, eventually, leave to find new opportunities in a company where they’ll be given such opportunities. Providing an employee training program that can give employees new skills that allow them to take on different roles can be an excellent way to motivate them. This not only lets employees try new things, it creates a chance for your company to find promising talent to promote from within. When employees feel as though their employer is willing to invest in them, they’re more likely to stay—increasing employee retention. To maximize the effectiveness of an employee training program, it helps to: Ensure interested employees have the time to pursue the training—people who are already working full time may not be able to squeeze in extra time for training. Provide incentives to complete the optional training—such as providing pay increases or other bonuses to people willing to learn skills the company needs. Publicly recognize employees who learn vital skills—doing so helps advertise the learning program and reward employees who complete a course. Motivating your employees can be difficult. However, using a few simple tricks can help increase employee engagement. Have questions about how you can pick the right employee performance metrics to track for your public data dashboards? Reach out to the team at BrightGauge for advice!

Whether you’re a small business or an enterprise company, generating a steady (and improving) gross margin for your services is essential to a healthy business. When starting or managing a business, there are many KPIs to track. At BrightGauge, we always recommend you lean towards simple as too much data can be overwhelming. An often overlooked but essential KPI to watch is Services Gross Margin. So, why is gross margin so important for MSPs? Simple. Services Gross Margin represents cash being generated to cover all those operating expenses. Your sales team, the office space, marketing efforts – all covered by Services Gross Margin. Higher gross margin means more money to invest in your business and accelerate growth. Calculating Services Gross Margin Here are some definitions to keep in mind when calculating Services Gross Margin: Total Services Revenue is any and all revenue your services team delivers. This would include both Managed Services Revenue and Professional Services (consulting, project). You can calculate different margin rates per type of services (more on that later). Cost Of Services is the total direct costs associated with delivering services, which not only includes the obvious base salary, incentives of your services team, but also all the direct costs. That includes, parking, mileage, laptops, software, benefits, etc. Over the years we’ve heard different variations for how to calculate Services Gross Margin. For the purposes of this post we are going to use this formula: (Total Services Revenue - Cost of Services) / Total Services Revenue An example of how to track Services Gross Margin in BrightGauge Using Services Gross Margin at Our MSP Before we formed BrightGauge, we had our own Miami-based MSP, Compuquip. Our typical Services Gross Margin hovered around 42% - 48%. This was well below industry best practices according to most. We were a Technically Led Sales Organization. Therefore, our cost of engineers was higher than normal and our margins tended to be lower. When we broke out the services by line item, we usually ended up with an average margin on Managed Services of approximately 40% - 45% and Project or Professional Services at 50% - 60% range. To see a more detailed breakdown of the types of revenue please visit: Revenue By Category. We believe anything above 50% is a great target margin and if you can move the percentage up to 60% you are best in class. If this number starts to trend downward, you could be approaching a cash flow problem. That’s why it’s important to start measuring and tracking these types of financial KPIs on a regular basis. Once you decide on those metrics that matter to you, start setting goals to guide you and your team. Interested in More? To learn more about gross margin and other metrics that matter for MSPs, download the full white paper here. If you already know what KPIs matter to you but you’re struggling keeping track of everything, reach out to us and we’ll help. Note: This post was originally published in August 2013 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

Very few business leaders question the importance of tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) for their business. KPI tracking has long been an integral strategy for helping businesses improve employee performance and meet their long-term business goals. However, though this is the commonly-accepted thought, is KPI tracking worth it for your business? The short answer is: “Most likely yes.” Here’s an explanation of the benefits of KPI tracking and why it’s worth your time. The business benefits of KPI tracking When used correctly, KPI tracking can be an incredibly helpful tool for businesses. Some of the key benefits of measuring performance metrics and acting on that data include: Being able to recognize and motivate top performers One of the most important benefits of measuring performance metrics is that it can help you track who your top-performing team members are. Using KPIs, you can identify, congratulate, and reward these top performers—which can help spur them and others to improve. For example, say that you have two people on your client services team, Bill and Bob. If Bill is consistently exceeding his goals for customer satisfaction rates, tickets closed, and time-to-resolution while Bob isn’t, you can incentivize Bill’s performance with public recognition and other bonuses. On the other hand, failing to acknowledge and reward Bill’s extra effort can risk demotivating him. If Bill only gets the same amount of compensation and recognition as Bob despite putting in extra effort and performing better, Bill may think that it isn’t worth working hard—leading to a drop in his performance. Identifying learning opportunities amongst your team Continuing from the Bill and Bob example above, once you’ve identified a top performer in your team by tracking their performance metrics, what else can you do aside from simply recognizing and rewarding them? One thing you could do is ask them to provide coaching for others on the team who are struggling to meet their performance goals. For instance, you could have Bill talk to Bob about how they each approach their client services work, and provide some tips and tricks for ensuring client happiness and streamlining service delivery. This helps not only to recognize Bill’s achievements, but to increase Bob’s skills so he can improve his own performance metrics as well. It can even help to groom Bill for an eventual leadership role on the team by getting him used to teaching and leading others. Having the data needed to course correct Even the best-laid plans may not succeed. However, without tracking performance metrics for the business, it’s nearly impossible to tell when a given strategy is having a positive or negative impact on the business. Using KPI tracking to monitor key business metrics can help you identify trends and even associate them with specific events or actions. For example, say you’ve hired a new leader for your sales team, and your sales KPIs immediately improve or worsen. By tracking KPIs, you could associate the change in sales performance with the act of changing leadership. Using this information as a starting point, you can poll your sales team and their new leader to see what else was changed, and use that information to make more course corrections to improve business performance. By tracking key performance indicators, you can identify when the business plan is doing very well or going off the rails. Hopefully, you’ll also have the data you need to make smarter business decisions to keep things improving. Choosing the right KPIs for benchmarking employee and business performance Naturally, to achieve the best effect for measuring key performance indicators in your business, it’s important to choose the right ones in the first place. When selecting KPIs for your business, it can help to use a goal-setting framework to help ensure that each KPI you pick is relevant. One popular framework to use is the SMART framework. SMART being an acronym for: Specific. Meaning that the performance metric can be clearly-defined—such as saying “sales should add $50,000 in monthly recurring revenue each month in quarter one” as opposed to “I want to sell a lot.” Measurable. This means that the KPI should be objectively measurable. In other words, results should not have room for interpretation or bias; they should simply have a goal that can be objectively met or missed—such as “closing 10 deals per month” instead of “being more upbeat on sales calls.” Achievable. Can employees meet the goal set for a KPI with the resources available to them? This may require you to take a look at historic performance to see whether a goal being set can be achieved. For example, if your historic top performance for sales in a month is $200,000 in closed deals—and that was by one top performer who never repeated the feat—then asking every member of the sales team to hit $300,000 in sales in a month may not be achievable. Relevant. Does the KPI really matter to your business and its overall goals? For example, if your business focuses on managed services, then KPIs focused on service delivery would make sense, while inventory management-focused metrics may not be as relevant (except where the inventory is required to deliver services). Timely. Establishing a time frame for meeting certain goals can be important for creating a sense of urgency. If the span of time for meeting a KPI goal is too long, it becomes an abstract concept to employees—so they don’t focus on meeting that goal. Choosing KPIs to track and setting goals for them using the SMART framework listed above can help you ensure that you’re picking the right performance metrics to motivate your people. Need help tracking your KPIs so you can improve business performance? Reach out to the BrightGauge team to learn more!

Being able to track data is crucial for measuring employee performance and identifying opportunities for improvement. However, there is such a thing as trying to keep track of too much data at once. Trying to monitor too many different key performance indicators (KPIs) at once can easily lead to data bloat, which is something to be avoided. Why should you clean up your KPI list as soon as possible? Here’s an explanation of why, as well as some advice for cleaning up KPI lists. Why you should clean your KPI lists 1: To stop data bloat The major issue with data bloat of any kind is that it can distract you from the performance metrics that matter most to your business. The problem is that data bloat doesn’t happen overnight—it creeps up on you slowly and steadily. For example, it can start with a single employee performance metric that you use for a single project. Then, you forget to do anything with it and keep adding more and more KPIs to the list for future projects. One day, before you realize it, your KPI list is full of performance metrics you never use. When you go through your key performance indicators to look for metrics to measure employee goals, this data bloat makes the task take much more time to complete. Periodically cleaning up your KPI lists to get rid of unused performance metrics is crucial for stopping KPI bloat in its tracks. This, in turn, can help simplify data management tasks and save you time on measuring KPIs in the future. 2: To focus on your most important employee goals Another reason to prune some employee performance metrics from your KPI list is to increase focus on your most important employee goals. For example, is your business’ overall goal to increase revenue? If that’s the case, then you may want to delete some employee metrics to focus on ones that contribute more towards revenue growth. At the very least, tweaking the data dashboards you use for employees to reflect these new priorities can be helpful for motivating them, even if you don’t delete the performance metrics from your KPI list. Choosing which employee performance metrics to remove So, how can you ensure that you’re keeping the KPIs that matter and only deleting the performance metrics that you don’t need from your KPI list? It can help to ask yourself the following few questions: Do I know what the KPI was being used for? If you don’t know the purpose of a KPI in your list, odds are that tracking the KPI is a waste of time and effort. Being able to understand the purpose of a performance metric is crucial for using it to improve your business. Is the KPI relevant to my business’ goals? KPIs that aren’t relevant to your business’ goals probably shouldn’t be taking up valuable space in your KPI list. Irrelevant metrics do little more than create data bloat and waste time. Does the KPI help me hold better discussions with my team? A KPI that helps you have better meetings with your team members so you can help them meet their employee goals may be worth holding on to. Can I measure the performance metric objectively? To be valuable, a key performance indicator has to be objectively measurable. For example, “Having a positive, upbeat attitude towards customers” sounds good in theory, but it isn’t an objective standard that can be measured—positive results in customer satisfaction surveys is. Is the employee performance metric something an employee can control? Measuring KPIs for employees that are beyond their control—like the number of customers that walk into a retail store’s doors or the number of calls that are made to a call center—is unfair and demoralizing. While these metrics might be worth tracking for assessing issues with the business, they shouldn’t be part of employee performance-focused KPI lists. Consider reorganizing your KPI list Aside from simply removing unused or unnecessary KPIs, consider reorganizing your KPI list to make it easier to browse in the future. For example, you could arrange your KPIs in order of importance to put the ones you most frequently reference in 1:1 employee meetings at the top of the list (or organize them into employee data dashboards). You could also organize KPIs in alphabetical order to make them all easier to find when searching for a specific metric that isn’t used frequently, but is still important enough to keep in the KPI list. Another idea is to create different KPI lists that are specific to each team or department within the organization. For example, creating a KPI list just for the sales team would allow you to stuff it full of sales-oriented performance metrics. Meanwhile, a services team-specific KPI list could be used to track an entirely different set of metrics that are more meaningful to that department. Creating multiple lists has the benefit of making it easier to keep each list short, making the data therein easier to manage for each team. However, some KPIs may be repeated between multiple lists. Here, having a solution for automatically updating KPI data in lists can be invaluable for saving time and effort. Do you have a preferred method for managing which KPIs you track? Or, are you curious about how you can improve KPI tracking for your business? Reach out to BrightGauge today to let us know!

Employee performance is a major concern for organizations of all sizes. Companies that fail to improve employee performance will be competitively stagnant and struggle to meet their overall business goals. One key strategy for maximizing employee performance is to ensure that employees are actively “engaged” with their work. Employee engagement is important because, as noted by Gallup, “Organizations that are the best in engaging their employees achieve earnings-per-share growth that is more than four times that of their competitors.” Engaged employees are productive, high-performing employees. The question is this: How can you light a fire under your employees to get them engaged with their work? One trick is to use data dashboards to measure employee key performance indicators (KPIs) and motivate people. Here are a few ways that you can use data dashboards to motivate employees to improve their performance: 1: Displaying data dashboards to encourage competitiveness A little competitiveness among employees can be a very good thing for maximizing employee performance. Displaying a data dashboard that can be viewed in a common area of the office can be a very strong motivator for employees. How does having a data dashboard where everyone can see it help increase employee engagement and productivity? Here’s a hypothetical example: Say your sales department has two sales reps—we’ll call them Bill and John. Bill has been on the team for years, while John is a relatively new hire who wants to work his way to the top. In one week, John closes $80,000 in new deals for the company by working his contacts and leads as efficiently as possible. Bill, more comfortable in his position, works his leads less vigorously and only closes $33,000 in new deals—less than half of what John pulled in. If there were a data dashboard showcasing the sales team’s KPIs for the last week where everyone could see them, Bill would see that John is crushing his numbers. Determined not to let the new guy show him up, Bill redoubles his efforts next week, working his contacts list and making deals that are more favorable to the company to show that he isn’t going to take this loss lying down. This could be considered a “gamification” strategy for the workplace—creating a leaderboard of sorts that provides real-time feedback to employees. As noted in a Forbes article on gamification in the workplace, employees “can work toward real-time, measurable, meaningful targets, and get upper-level feedback as those targets are hit or missed.” This helps to drive engagement and employee performance. Of course, when displaying such a data dashboard for everyone to see, it’s important to frame it as a way to gauge success—not to punish failure. Otherwise, a large disparity between two employees might discourage one or the other and have the opposite effect. 2: Using KPIs tracked in data dashboards for 1:1 meetings Another way to use a performance dashboard is during employee performance reviews. Having an organized list of an employee’s most important KPIs can be enormously helpful during these one-on-one meetings. For example, with an employee’s data dashboard on hand, you can show them their top KPIs and where they have opportunities to improve. Using the information contained in their performance dashboard, you can even create a personalized employee improvement program specific to that employee’s needs. Creating personalized content for an employee to work on can be much more impactful than sending them to a random seminar with a dozen other people who have different performance issues. 3: Using employee performance dashboards to identify leaders Aside from tracking employee performance KPIs to identify high performers and recognize their efforts, you can also use the data tracked in a dashboard to identify those with leadership potential. By tracking certain leadership KPIs among your employees on their data dashboards, you can identify people who have the potential to succeed if promoted. It should be noted that these will be different KPIs from your productivity-related indicators that you would normally track—just because an employee is great at closing deals or making products doesn’t mean that they’ll be able to effectively lead other people in doing so. Knowing that you’re tracking leadership KPIs and using that information to identify and promote new leaders from within your existing teams can be a powerful motivator. Employees who are looking to take on a leadership role will work to demonstrate those qualities (once they know which qualities to work on) and be more likely to stay on because of the advancement opportunities that exist. These are just a few ways to take advantage of data dashboards (and the KPIs they show you) to improve employee performance by lighting a fire under them. For more information about data dashboards, KPI tracking, and how to use data in your business, reach out to the BrightGauge team!

Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is a basic part of any long-term business plan. By using KPIs, businesses can track their progress towards various goals. However, goal tracking isn’t limited to just the business as a whole—KPIs can be used to help employee goals as well. Wondering how to use key performance indicators to track employee goals and objectives? Here are a few tips for how to track goals and objectives for your team members: How to track goals: Choosing goal-oriented KPIs Before you can start using KPIs to track employee goals, it’s important to pick some relevant employee performance metrics. Not just any random KPI will prove useful for tracking employee progress towards goals. When choosing KPIs for employee goal tracking, consider the following: Is the goal quantifiable? Employee performance metrics need to be easy to measure and quantify. Something like “be more positive,” while sounding good, is hard to quantify and measure objectively. Instead, consider setting goals based on KPIs that can be objectively measured with ease. Is the goal relevant to my business’ objectives? When picking KPIs, it’s important to make sure they align with your overall business objectives. For example, if your current business objective is to improve customer satisfaction, then KPIs such as time-to-resolution or ticket close rate could be valuable. On the other hand, if your current goal is to drive revenue, then KPIs such as upsells, total sales, or average deal value could be valuable. Can employees have a realistic impact on the KPI being measured? How much control can an employee realistically have over the KPI you want to track? For example, if you were thinking about tracking time-to-resolution for customer issues, the value of that KPI would not be very high if every ticket had to be routed through several other systems and people. On the other hand, if most tickets could be closed by a single person without relying on outside authorization, then time-to-resolution would be extremely valuable as an employee performance metric. Is the KPI relevant to the employee’s role? Obviously, not every employee should be graded on the same metrics—you wouldn’t hold your tech support team to the same metrics as your sales team and vice versa. When choosing KPIs for individual team members, it’s important to tweak the selection to match that employee’s role. Some examples of KPIs that we use to track our own team members include: Dials-per-week for sales team members (to measure outreach efforts) Tickets escalated per week for support team members (with the goal being one or fewer escalations) Blog articles (like this one) published per month Qualified inbound leads (as a company-wide goal) Demos scheduled (to help close more deals) Many of the employee goals you track can be personalized to individual team members. For example, instead of having a blanket “every sales team member has to make X calls this week” goal, you could set a personalized goal for one person to make 15% more calls than they have previously. Meanwhile, another sales team member could be tasked with getting more demos scheduled each quarter. Why set personalized goals for employees? Because, it helps you address the specific strengths and weaknesses of your individual team members so they can be the best versions of themselves. This way, if one employee makes plenty of calls, but lags on getting demos, or vice versa, you can address the performance issue. Of course, it’s also important to emphasize employee goals that help further the interests of your business. By experimenting with different goals and measuring their impact on your business’ bottom line, you can establish a few go-to employee performance metrics that can help your company. How to track goals: Creating dashboards for employees and teams Once you’ve selected some KPIs to use for tracking employee goals, it can help to create a dashboard view for each employee you want to track. This dashboard should provide you with a quick overview of each employee’s performance based on their progress towards your most important goals. For example, say your most important goal for your business is to grow revenue. In that case, some of the employee performance metrics you’ll want to put front and center on the dashboard may include total sales, average deal value, and/or total number of customer outreach activities (phone calls, emails, texts, etc.). Creating these dashboards makes it easier to track employee goals with a glance instead of having to dig through endless tables of employee KPIs. On a related note, you can also create dashboards for entire teams to track group progress towards business goals. How to track goals: Creating employee goal reports to track progress over time The idea behind goal tracking is to measure progress over time. Creating quarterly or yearly reports can help with this. By creating and archiving quarterly reports, you can track an employee’s progress towards their goals over time and see if their performance has improved, declined, or plateaued. If their performance is improving, you can ask them if they’re doing anything differently from before, or if their new success can be attributed to experience. If their performance is declining or has plateaued, it may help to check if anything has changed or if there are any new processes or issues that may be keeping them from succeeding. Just because an employee has reached a plateau in their performance doesn’t mean that they’re a poor performer. Even your top employees may encounter a ceiling on their performance after a while on the job. Although, it may help to change things up for employees who have stagnating performance metrics so they have a new opportunity to grow. Need help tracking employee goals? If you need help tracking employee goals, reach out to the BrightGauge team today! We have a proprietary goal-setting system that allows team members to mark their progress on a daily basis, fostering a culture of accountability and productivity that can eventually lead to better business outcomes.

Keeping track of key performance indicators (KPIs) in your sales process is a fundamental part of measuring and improving it. One crucial concept in the sales process is the sales funnel, which divides your customers into different sections of the funnel as they move along your sales process. The Top of the Funnel. This is where most potential customers start as new sales leads. In graphics, the top of the funnel is the widest section, as it likely has the most people in it. The Middle of the Funnel. The middle of the funnel is reserved for leads who have moved part of the way through your sales process. The criteria for moving a lead into the middle of the funnel may vary depending on your company’s sales process. The Bottom of the Funnel. This is the part of the sales funnel where your most qualified leads and those who are about to close a deal reside. The bottom of the funnel is where many sales teams focus their efforts, as it represents their best opportunities for deals. Why is it called the sales funnel? Because, as prospective leads move through the funnel, there is a tendency for some of them to drop out of your sales process. So, when represented with a picture, the funnel tends to go from being wide at the top to being narrow at the bottom. Tracking your sales funnel KPIs is critical for evaluating the overall health of your sales pipeline and addressing potential issues. What are some sales funnel metrics you should be tracking, and why are they important? Here’s a short list: Sales funnel KPI #1: Lead generation It’s hard to build a healthy sales funnel if you don’t have any leads to track. So, lead generation is a critical sales funnel metric to track. In a nutshell, lead generation is a measure of the number of people you have added to your sales pipeline over a given period of time. When tracking lead generation as a sales funnel KPI, it can help to track related metrics as well, such as: Cold calling activity metrics Website form fills (which helps generate leads) Social media activity metrics Activities such as cold calling and social media can help create leads—though their use and the specific metrics you track may vary depending on your sales process. Tracking website activity and which forms your potential customers are filling out (and which ones they’re abandoning partway through) can help you optimize your website and forms to improve lead generation. Sales funnel KPI #2: Lead attrition Attrition is a fact of life for any sales funnel no matter how good your sales processes and team are. There are many reasons why a lead may leave your sales funnel, such as the lead realizing they signed up for the wrong type of product/service, to them closing with another company faster, to their circumstances changing so they no longer need anything. Keeping track of lead attrition at different levels of the sales funnel can help you identify potential issues in your sales process. For example, if 90% of your new leads never make it to the middle of the funnel, that’s a good indication that you may need to refine your lead generation methods. Why? Because that many people dropping out of the funnel right after entering may indicate that they weren’t a good fit for your product or service. By measuring lead attrition, you can identify steps in your sales process that are proving problematic. From there, you can make refinements that will, hopefully, help reduce attrition. Sales funnel KPI #3: Time to conversion How long do customers spend in each section of your sales funnel? Time to conversion is an important sales funnel metric to track alongside lead attrition because it can help highlight a cause for attrition. For example, say that one of your steps in the sales funnel, such as from the middle of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel, has an extremely high lead attrition rate and a long time to conversion for the few customers that do make the transition. The long wait to convert could be causing leads to lose interest in your product or service. Finding ways to speed up the transition from middle of the funnel to bottom of the funnel could help your sales team keep potential customers interested. This can involve any number of measures depending on how your current sales process is structured. Some common ideas include streamlining your sales process to eliminate blockages in the sales pipeline, adding more sales team members to increase your lead outreach, or using automation to improve communication with your potential customers. Sales funnel KPI #4: Sales activity metrics How engaged is the sales team in trying to move customers along the sales funnel—especially those who are in (or ready to transition to) the bottom of the funnel? Sales activity metrics, such as number of phone calls made, emails sent, and time spent engaging with leads can be crucial for measuring the performance of the sales team and determining what is or isn’t working. If you look at your highest-performing sales team members, what do you see? Are your top performers spending more time on the phone, sending more emails, or arranging demos of your product/service? When you can correlate high-performing salespeople to their most frequent activities, you have a better idea of what will work for the rest of your salespeople. You can also contrast these sales KPIs against those of the lowest performers. What are the least successful members of the team doing that others aren’t? While not every employee will have the same level of success with the same activities (for example, one sales team member might be really good on the phone while another one is better at writing emails or creating presentations), it can help you optimize your future sales training efforts. Sales funnel KPI #5: Customer lifetime value What is the average return on investment you can expect from a customer over their lifetime? Knowing how much a customer will be worth during their time with your company is important for assessing how much you can afford to spend on trying to acquire that customer. As such, customer lifetime value is a crucial sales KPI to know (alongside your cost-per-lead). Being able to assess the lifetime value of your customers and balancing that against your cost-per-lead and customer conversion rate helps you gauge the success of your sales process. If the average lifetime value of your customers is less than the cost of getting that customer in the door, then something obviously needs to change. These are just a handful of the sales funnel metrics that you can (and should) track. Do you need help measuring your sales funnel KPIs? Talk to our team to learn more about how you can use data analytics to optimize your sales process!