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Customer Lifecycle Value

Depending upon on how well your know your business, a great discussion to have somewhat regularily is whether or not the customer lifecycle value is increasing or decreasing. To achieve this we need to know a few things...

• How much has the customer purchased from us?
  
• How long are they likely to stay with us?
  
• What does it cost us to serve them?
  

None of these are necessarily easy questions to answer, but that does not mean we should not talk about these items. Worst case, you should at least be looking at the average revenue and cost per client and see how those are changing. They are probably pretty good indicators of lifecycle value. If we look at the trends of our revenues, costs (COGS & SGA), and profits per customer this should certainly indicate if we are doing better or worse.

While most of us do this to some degree, we probably also throw in a great deal many more variables and business rules and end up discussing various concepts. What about once a month or once a quarter getting all the department heads together and discuss progress on only these items.

Setting Targets

Setting targets for Performance Indicators should be well thought through. This should not be an exercise in looking at the historical average (unless that is specifically relevant) and then apply 10% as the desired increase. You will want to review history, but you need to understand the goal. It is also important to define the KPI clearly.

For example, let's use the retail market's target of sales to sales last year. Retail has traditionally looked at this on a daily basis, as well as rolled up to the week, month, quarter, and year. I have two primary concerns with this:

1. If the weather was bad, we ran a promotion, or some other contributing factor, we may not know it and are really not comparing apples to apples. Additionally, what if last year was really bad? Beating that number doesn't do much for us.  
2. If we are reviewing this on a daily basis, we loose institutional knowledge due to the repetition. What if we miss a day? Is there any repercussion? What if we miss three days in a row? What if we miss 10 days out of 14? Were there enough days in there of good performance to hide the fact that a trend is occurring?

What would make more sense to me would be to look at this number as a rolling average, or take the total sales for the last 365 days / 365 on a daily basis. Here we can very quickly identify a positive or negative trend, as we don't have to look at numbers that swing wildly by the day of the week. Instead of talking about  a couple of bad days, we understand that even though we had a couple of bad days, the overall trend is above the goal. We can also integrate our sales goal and show it relative to the trend line.  

The Value of Scorecarding

One of my first Scorecard exercises is one of my favorites.  It taught me a great deal about the power of scorecarding.  

I did what I suspect most people do.  I interviewed all the VPs and developed a long list of KPIs.  I then used an excel spreadsheet to organize the KPIs.  I put the KPIs down the rows, and the VPs across the columns.  Then to help visualize the data, I placed "red" cells where VPs were directly impacted by the KPIs and "yellow" cells where the VPs were indirectly related.  I did not intend the colors for anything other to call out attention for each of the VPs.

By choosing the "red" and "yellow" I had each of the VPs concerned that they were under performing in each of those areas.  I had to explain a number of times, the reason for the colors.  

• The first lesson was that by associating colors with performance, I clearly had the attention and focus of the executives of this team.  It sparked a number of very strong conversations about performance.
  

• The second lesson is that communication is just as important.  By doing a less than stellar job of communicating (at least from a visual sense) the information, I wasted a tremendous amount of time that should have been used for more strategic discussion.  
  

Scorecarding can be a very powerful tool, but it needs to be used appropriately.  

Business Intelligence vs Business Analytics

Current Blogs: Peter Thomas / Gaurav Verma (SAS) /James Taylor / Neil Raden

There is a growing debate over Business Intelligence vs. Business Analytics and what the future holds.  Clearly the Business Intelligence world has been shaken with Hyperion, Business Objects, and Cognos all now smaller parts of bigger companies.  This has created a number of marketing opportunities for the likes of Microstrategy and SAS.  The obvious marketing play was independence.  Now it is clear that SAS is taking a slightly different tact by claiming that Business Intelligence is dead and the future is Analytics.

Marketing messages aside, what we need to be focusing upon how we use information and the management process.  Call it data, information, intelligence, analytics, or whatever we come up with next, it is all irrelevant if we don't understand how to use it.  A basement full of great tools doesn't mean the house remains maintained.  

• Do you have rules on when to use the specific tools in the BI suite?
  
• Do your people have the analytical skills required?
  
• Do you have a process where the information can be discussed and actions agreed upon?
  

We all agree that organizations need to make fact based decisions.  The other thing we should all be working upon is creating a common vernacular for each of the tools.  As analysts, consultants, pundits, bloggers, we do little good if we don't teach the value of how to use each of the tools.  You don't need predictive analytics for an exemption report.  You don't need a sexy looking reports that do little to explain the goal.  Organizations don't need real time scorecards.  

What organizations do need are ways to make people comfortable to take decisive action.  We also need these actions to align to company goals and strategy.  The tools we use need to be consistent enough for us to trust them, and the minds that analyze them need to be able to use the tools well enough to communicate only what matters in a digestible presentation.

Scorecard or Business Fact Sheet

A common Scorecard design is to list a bunch of business facts - how many customers, total square feet, total employees, inputs, etc.  While these can be important business facts that executives need to know, they may not be manageable numbers.  By adding them to the scorecard, they take up valuable real estate and misdirect focus.  

As you are thinking through your scorecard design, take some time to consider if an item is a REAL KPI, or just a business fact.  Then design the scorecard to focus on objectives with potential links to business fact report(s).

Initiative Performance Indicators (IPIs)

I made the argument that Key Performance Indicators and Key Risk Indicators are really the same thing, yet a nuance worth discussion is initiative management.  We launch new factories, new products, training programs, marketing material, etc all the time, yet often do a sub-optimal job managing the project.  And execution waters down further as we try to manage the portfolio.

Even though initiatives are different than performance indicators, we need to account for their management within the same framework.  We need to understand our objectives, the priorities, resource constraints, milestones, etc in order to more proactively manage the business to achieve more strategic goals.  We need to enhance our ability to discuss our progress to our goals (both annual and strategic) and how all the KPIs and Initiatives are working together to achieve the end.  

Scorecard Layout

As you design your scorecard, you should consider the story it tells and the goal of the process. One of my favorite starts to a project began with this opening line from the client...

"I know we are doing it wrong, just be gentle when you tell us how bad..."

In this specific case, they were trying to build a cube for slicing and dicing within the Scorecard environment.  (And in all fairness to my client he had inherited this design and was trying to figure out how to use it).  They ended up with multiple depths of scorecards along a number of different dimensions.  Analysis was very difficult as that was not the purpose of the tool.  In the end we built a cube for this and found a management report that was perfectly designed for a scorecard.  This report walked through KPIs for new customers, existing customer purchases, average deal sizes, average debt.

Often a great place to start with Scorecarding is to find an existing management report.  Now the tool can easily be integrated into the management process.

Scalability as a KPI

One item that companies should do a better job with is understand departmental scalability.  Are the company grows, do each of the departments grow with the same scale?  Does finance not scale because of compliance and risk, or because of broken processes?  How do we know if we can't track Revenue / Departmental Headcount over time?

And if we do start to do a better job tracking metrics like this, doesn't this give us greater insight as to where the organization gets the most bang for the buck?  As well as give us a defensible rational to defend against empire building for personal reasons?

External & Market Indicators

One item most organizations struggle with is leveraging external indicators. Early last year, the price of gas created a chain reaction. Most companies cost of goods sold increased to where they were forced to raise their prices as their margins eroded.  

Even if we do that, we typically do not have a systematic way to incorporate the learning into a business process. What we would need is the ability to understand the external indicators, know of potential sources for the information, and work these into ongoing environmental scans.  

What is the value of understanding how the consumer price index impacts your revenues? What happens if you were able to move before your customer in terms of supply chain interruption? In some cases, this could mean millions to your top or bottom line. There are a number of organizations that knew the market was struggling in 2008, but did nothing to prepare.  And a number of those names will never be the same (GM, AIG, Circuit City, etc).

When is the last time you did a formal environmental scan, discussed the results, and put new actions into place?  

Efficiency vs. Effectiveness KPIs

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be measures of risk to annual goals or strategic objectives.  If we can keep this list of KPIs minimal, we stand a much greater chance of keeping the organizational focus on improving key processes.

To derive these KPIs we need to understand the organizational inputs, outputs, and desired outcomes.  While this is a little academic, it is a good way to start to organize and define your KPIs. Outputs / Inputs are measures of efficiency, while Outcomes / Inputs are measures of effectiveness.  By overlapping the organizational or departmental focus we can align and define these KPIs to make sure they are driving the desired behaviors.  

Tradionally Sales and Marketing goals are to be effective, thus revenue per head, or win percentage are better measures.  While finance and IT are generally geared for efficiency with cost per order, or IT spend per target are more common.  

KPI design is far more difficult than people expect and is often unique to the environment as strategies, objectives, and priorities vary organization to organization.

Scorecards & Dashboards

These are two terms that the BI world uses interchangably.  The only thing they should have in common is that they both can visually display data.  

Defined:

Scorecards are tools that help facilate discussions around strategy and operational performance management.  The indicators (KPIs) should foster discussions about corporate direction, resource allocation, priorities, and initiatives.

Dashboards should be used for tactical discussion triggers, like inventory orders, technical support, phone coverage, etc.

What should be happening with these tools is a far more structured use for each (and throw in reporting as well).  All too often these tools are used without discipline which leads to mulitple versions of the truth, lack of focus, red herrings, miscommunication, and ultimately a waste of time and energy.

IT and business users need to work together to better understand what each tool can provide, when that tool will be used, how it will be used, how it will NOT be used, and who should be using them.  

Align to Customer Value

On thing to consider in terms of developing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is how they are aligned to the customer's wants.  All to often we ignore this perspective, yet it is perhaps one of the most important factors.  

For example, one of the growing cost saving tools companies use is call automation services.   "For sales, press 1.  For customer service, please hold while we test your patience."  

Companies do this because they are measuring cost per call, or efficiency.  What the customer really wants is a convenient resolution to their call, or effectiveness.  Clearly these goals are working against each other and in most cases destroys customer loyalty and brand value.  

In the end, we need to balance costs with value, and we need to understand customer and corporate strategy.  Are we focused on customer intimacy as our core business focus, or operational excellence?  Are we measuring the business in a manner that reinforces our business model and customer value creation, or strictly by the bottom line?