Why predictive KPIs better inform business change

Investment in digital transformation initiatives is on the rise. Our latest publication explores if that investment is being made in vain.

According to a report by IDC, digital transformation spend by businesses worldwide is expected to hit 1.7 trillion dollars in 2019. However, businesses are quickly realising that the investment they’ve made does not match the return.

The most significant reason why businesses are failing to get the desired returns from their digital investments is that they are monitoring the wrong performance metrics. If you want to see a significant return you need to change your approach to performance metrics. In short, it’s far better to focus on two key predictive metrics which will help you centre your organisation around customers than to rely on trailing indicators.

Here’s a breakdown of the key takeaways from the piece:

• Focusing on leading and predictive indicators - opposed to trailing indicators like NPS - can improve customer and business outcomes.

• Trailing indicators tell you what has happened, but offer you little chance to be reactive, reducing your ability to influence the outcome of the experience.

• Leading and predictive indicators pave the way for improvements to other elements of the experience.

• Predictive indicators in particular can allow you to intercede when it matters most and affect the outcome in a desirable way for the user and the business through design.

• Predicting what a particular customer is concerned about means content can be pushed to that individual user when they need it most.

• Paul Cobban of DBS refocused the business on one single metric, the customer hour, he set about challenging the whole of the organisation to shave minutes and hours out of every process and interaction. This had a massive impact for their customers saving 250 million wasted customer hours per annum.

The take away: Handpick core predictive KPIs and structure your business around them.

Businesses that want to use their metrics to improve and see a higher ROI as a result, need to pick a few KPIs that open-up greater understanding and alignment behind business initiatives. You’ll see the most success if those KPIs are leading indicators, and the customer experience can be engineered to respond to that indicator in real time to deliver the business outcome desired.

Read the article in full here on Information Age: Companies are wasting millions on digital investment because they are measuring the wrong KPI