Develop Meaningful Service Metrics
Reinforce service orientation in your IT organization by ensuring your IT metrics generate value-driven resource behavior.
- 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.
Develop Meaningful Service Metrics
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.
1. Design the metrics
Identify the appropriate service metrics based on stakeholder needs.
2. Design reports and dashboards
Present the right metrics in the most interesting and stakeholder-centric way possible.
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.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
9.3/10
Overall Impact
$13,912
Average $ Saved
30
Average Days Saved
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Dollar General
Guided Implementation
10/10
$2,479
50
OpenText Corporation
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
5
University of Ottawa
Workshop
8/10
$25,000
14
Tulane University
Guided Implementation
10/10
$14,259
50
Office of the Attorney General
Guided Implementation
10/10
$12,292
10
Allens Operations Pty Ltd.
Guided Implementation
8/10
N/A
N/A
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
6
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Guided Implementation
10/10
$99,166
60
Clark Pacific
Guided Implementation
9/10
$509K
N/A
Performance Measurement
Measure IT right and measure it well.
This course makes up part of the Strategy & Governance Certificate.
- Course Modules: 4
- Estimated Completion Time: 1.5-2 hours
- Featured Analysts:
- Gord Harrison, Senior Vice President, Research
- Valence Howden, Principal Research Director, CIO Practice
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.
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
Determine stakeholder needs, goals, and pain points.
- Understand stakeholder priorities
Determine the success criteria and related IT services.
- Adopt a business-centric perspective to align IT and business views
Derive the service metrics.
- Derive meaningful business metrics that are relevant to the stakeholders
Validate the data collection process.
- Determine if and how the identified metrics can be collected and measured
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
Understand the different presentation options.
- Learn about infographic, scorecard, formal report, and dashboard presentation options
Assess stakeholder needs for information.
- Determine how stakeholders would like to view information and how the metrics can be presented to aid decision making
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
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
Gather data and set initial targets.
- Create a process to gather data, measure baselines, and set initial targets
Generate the reports and validate with stakeholders.
- Establish a process to receive feedback from the business stakeholders once the report is generated
Implement the service metrics program.
- Identify the approach to implement the metrics program across the organization
Track and maintain the metrics program.
- Set up mechanism to ensure the success of the metrics program by assessing process adherence and process validity
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
Need Extra Help?
Try Our Guided Implementations
Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 6 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation #1 - Design the metrics
- Call #1 - Design metrics based on business needs
- Call #2 - Validate the metrics
Guided Implementation #2 - Design reports and dashboards
- Call #1 - Select presentation format
- Call #2 - Review metrics presentation design
Guided Implementation #3 - Implement, track, and maintain metrics
- Call #1 - Select and implement pilot metrics
- Call #2 - Determine rollout process and establish maintenance/tracking mechanism
Contributors
- Joe Evers, Joe Evers Consulting
- Glen Notman, Associate Partner, Citihub
- David Parker, Client Program Manager, eHealth Ontario
- Marianne Doran Collins, CIO, The CIO-Suite, LLC
- Chris Kalbfleisch, Manager, Service Management, eHealth Ontario
- Joshua Klingenberg, BHP Billiton Canada Inc.
