How do companies use metrics in their business -- A Survey

Periodically, often in association with one of the tutorials in our series, we ask our readers to respond to a survey. The survey contains two parts. The first asks a few simple questions on a single topic. The second part asks a few questions about the respondent and their business, so that we can properly group replies.

Why take the time?

Once we receive a minimum number of replies, typically 25 or so, we’ll compile the results. We’ll then return the overall results to those who have submitted data. We have tried to design the questions based on the following thinking:

What would I really like to know about how other organizations do this, and where are they having success?

We carefully safeguard the identity of participating companies and their corresponding data. If you prefer, you can omit your company name altogether and still participate.

This survey asks a few questions about what metrics our readers use, how they use them, and their opinion of their success. If you’d like some background prior to starting the survey, see our tutorial on How to Measure Success - Three Secrets to Effective Measures.


Survey Questions

Put a check next to the areas for which you use metrics to measure your business’ performance. For those areas checked, list the metric(s) you use.

Area Metric
performance against customer requirements
customer satisfaction
associate satisfaction
financial measures (profitability, market share, etc)
supplier performance against your requirements
internal performance measures for quality, cycle time, cost, etc.
Other(s) (please specify)

Are these measures reviewed on a regular basis with those in leadership positions?
Yes
No
Don't Know

For those areas that you measure and regularly review, has your performance improved?
Yes
No
Don't Know

Indicate the top two pitfalls you have encountered with business measures:

metrics for which you cannot collect accurate or complete data
metrics that measure the right thing, but sometimes drive the wrong behavior
too many metrics, creating excessive overhead and red tape
metrics that are complex and difficult to explain to others
other

During the time you have been using metrics, has your business performance improved?
Yes
No
Don't Know

Do you believe that metrics have contributed to this change?
Yes
No
Don't Know

Which of your metrics have had the most impact? (please list)

What additional questions would you want answered by other companies? (please list)

Is there any business whose response you’d like to see included? If so, give us the name, and a contact if you have one, and we’ll try to include it.

Business
Contact

Comments: (add anything you’d like here):


Background

In order to help us make the results more meaningful to you, we’d like some high-level information about your business. It’ll help us ensure we make good comparisons.

Organization name: (We’d like to be able to list businesses that contribute to the survey in our response to everyone.)

Type of business: (general, for example, government, telecommunications, automotive, aerospace, healthcare, insurance, banking, food service, ...)

Number of employees in the organization that you had in mind when you answered the survey questions? (round off to the nearest 100 or nearest 1000)

Your position: (example: marketing vice president, design engineer, process specialist, company president, ...)

Email:

Phone:

Name:

Would you like to be registered for the next article in the series?
Yes
No

Related Workshops and Toolkits

    Metrics Toolkit

    Reengineering Toolkits

    Data Collection Tools - WS9

    Goal Deployment (Policy Deployment) - WS11

    Measurement Systems - WS14

    Process Management and Improvement (CQI) - WS16

    Seven New Quality Management Tools - WS19

Send questions to bpr@prosci.com

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