Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Key Performance Indicators, also known as KPI or Key Success Indicators (KSI), help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals.


Once an organization has analyzed its mission, identified all its stakeholders, and defined its goals, it needs a way to measure progress toward those goals. Key Performance Indicators are those measurements.

What Are Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Key Performance Indicators are quantifiable measurements, agreed to beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors of an organization. They will differ depending on the organization.

•A business may have as one of its Key Performance Indicators the percentage of its income that comes from return customers.

•A school may focus its Key Performance Indicators on graduation rates of its students.

•A Customer Service Department may have as one of its Key Performance Indicators, in line with overall company KPIs, percentage of customer calls answered in the first minute.

•A Key Performance Indicator for a social service organization might be number of clients assisted during the year.

Whatever Key Performance Indicators are selected, they must reflect the organization's goals, they must be key to its success,and they must be quantifiable (measurable). Key Performance Indicators usually are long-term considerations. The definition of what they are and how they are measured do not change often. The goals for a particular Key Performance Indicator may change as the organization's goals change, or as it gets closer to achieving a goal.

Key Performance Indicators Reflect The Organizational Goals


An organization that has as one of its goals "to be the most profitable company in our industry" will have Key Performance Indicators that measure profit and related fiscal measures. "Pre-tax Profit" and "Shareholder Equity" will be among them. However, "Percent of Profit Contributed to Community Causes" probably will not be one of its Key Performance Indicators. On the other hand, a school is not concerned with making a profit, so its Key Performance Indicators will be different. KPIs like "Graduation Rate" and "Success In Finding Employment After Graduation", though different, accurately reflect the schools mission and goals.

Key Performance Indicators Must Be Quantifiable

If a Key Performance Indicator is going to be of any value, there must be a way to accurately define and measure it. "Generate More Repeat Customers" is useless as a KPI without some way to distinguish between new and repeat customers. "Be The Most Popular Company" won't work as a KPI because there is no way to measure the company's popularity or compare it to others.

It is also important to define the Key Performance Indicators and stay with the same definition from year to year. For a KPI of "Increase Sales", you need to address considerations like whether to measure by units sold or by dollar value of sales. Will returns be deducted from sales in the month of the sale or the month of the return? Will sales be recorded for the KPI at list price or at the actual sales price?



You also need to set targets for each Key Performance Indicator. A company goal to be the employer of choice might include a KPI of "Turnover Rate". After the Key Performance Indicator has been defined as "the number of voluntary resignations and terminations for performance, divided by the total number of employees at the beginning of the period" and a way to measure it has been set up by collecting the information in an HRIS, the target has to be established. "Reduce turnover by five percent per year" is a clear target that everyone will understand and be able to take specific action to accomplish.

Cloud Computing. What is it?

Cloud computing is a type of computing that is comparable to grid computing. Cloud computing relies on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle applications. The goal of cloud computing is to apply traditional supercomputing, or high-performance computing power, normally used by military and research facilities, to perform tens of trillions of computations per second, in consumer-oriented applications such as financial portfolios or even to deliver personalized information, or power immersive computer games.


To do this, cloud computing networks large groups of servers, usually those with low-cost consumer PC technology, with specialized connections to spread data-processing chores across them. This shared IT infrastructure contains large pools of systems that are linked together. Often, virtualization techniques are used to maximize the power of cloud computing.

The standards for connecting the computer systems and the software needed to make cloud computing work are not fully defined at present time, leaving many companies to define their own cloud computing technologies. Cloud computing systems offered by companies, like IBM's "Blue Cloud" technologies for example, are based on open standards and open source software which link together computers that are used to to deliver Web 2.0 capabilities like mash-ups or mobile commerce.

Cloud computing has started to obtain mass appeal in corporate data centers as it enables the data center to operate like the Internet work through the process of enabling computing resources to be accessed and shared as virtual resources in a secure and scalable manner.

Creating Good Website Content

by Victor J. McCoy

Creating well-written, original content is extremely critical to your long-term search-engine-optimization success. Content is what your visitors will use to determine the value and relevancy of your website. It also serves to inform search engines about the content on that page. This is a key factor that will help in the ranking of your website and must not be taken for granted. Whether your website ends up on the first page or somewhere around the two-thousandth page of Google or Bing largly depends on the quality and relevance of your content. If you do not know how to write search-engine-friendly content seek help. It will be worth it. But remember, write content for people first and search engines second.

For more information on this topic contact solutions@3vdesignmedia.com

What is Strategy?

In the simplest terms possible, strategy refers to either the plans made or the actions taken, in an effort to help an organization fulfill its intended purposes.

If your reason for starting a small business is to make money, then the first question you must ask yourself is how will I do that? But, there is an enormous difference between making money in business and making a profit. Not understanding the difference could mean financial disaster. It is imperative that you know how to make a profit in business, how much profit to expect, and over what period of time should I expect to begin making a reasonable profit. If financial projections have been constructed for your business you will be able to identify that point (after breakeven). Once you ask yourself that question "how do I do that" you now can begin your due diligence gathering the information answer the question and develope your strategy. The strategy should include, your management team, staffing if necessary, marketing/advertising, sales objectives, legal concerns (when applicable) and etc. Once the strategy has been developed and viable your organization is ready to move forward. All of your activities business activities and your organizational structure will be centered around that plan.

Key Marketing Terminology

by Victor J. McCoy Sr.

Sales and marketing are the "lifeblood" of business. Understanding your target audience is the "DNA" of that lifeblood. Understanding the dynamics of what constitutes a successful marketing strategy can be difficult if you do not have the right information and can skillfully use that information to your advantage.

The goal of marketing is to move goods and services from concept to customer. Making the best widget for the market means nothing if you can’t get it to market. So, step 1 in marketing is having a product to market. Step 2, determining a price that people will pay while producing a profit. Step 3, is delivery (not using the 4P’s) meaning, how will I get my product/service to the customer? Step 4, how will I promote my services so that my targeted audience will know I exist and contact me?


Below are a few terms that all business owners must understand to make the "lifeblood" flow.


Market - The set of actual of potential users/customers.

Market area - A geographical area containing the customers/users of a particular firm/library for specific goods or services.

Market Demand -  The total volume of a product or service bought/used by a specific groups of customers/users in a specified market area during a specified period.

Market Development - Expanding the total market served by 1) entering new segments, 2) converting nonusers, 3) increasing use by present users.

Market Positioning - Positioning refers to the user's perceptions of the place a product or brand occupies in a market segment. Or how the company offering is differentiated from the competition's.

Market Profile - A breakdown of a facility's market area according to income, demography, and life style (often.)

Market Research - The systematic gathering, recording and analyzing of data with respect to a particular market, where market refers to a specific user group in a specific geographic area.

Market Segmentation - The process of subdividing a market into distinct subsets of users that behave in the same way or have similar needs.

Market Share - A proportion of the total sales/use in a market obtained by a given facility or chain.

Marketing - The process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals.

Marketing Channel - A set of institutions necessary to transfer the title to goods and to move goods from the point of consumption.

Marketing Mix - The mix of controllable variables that the firm uses to reach desired use/sales level in target market, including price, product, place and promotion- 4 P's.

Marketing Opportunity - An attractive arena of relevant marketing action in which a particular organization is likely to enjoy a superior and competitive advantage.

When to Relaunch Your Website?

by Victor J. McCoy
www.3vdesignmedia.com

There are several primary motivators for relaunching your organizations of companies’ website. The motivators include some of the following:

• Never really satisfied with the design in the first place.
• Enhancing some of the technical features that are dated.
• Creating a new or different brand image to coincide with the new or updated marketing strategy.
• Just need to add a fresh look to the website.
• The organization has new leadership.

 In the start-up phase of an organization, the website reflects the current position, offerings of the organization, the brand, and message of the organization. In time the organization begins to evolve with the addition/subtraction of services, personnel changes, etc. When this happens the website must evolve along with the business. The technical features may need to be changed to keep up with technological advances.

These changes or additions may present new functions, new applications easier navigation, and so on. Many business and religious websites have begun to move away from the more text-and image oriented websites to more interactive models, many featuring personalization options that allowed users to create accounts and store personal preferences and information on the site. Some even add the e-commerce component, enabling online transactions of all sorts.

If the benefits of a technical upgrade are new front-and back end capabilities, the drawback can be in a bumpy transition. Retooling a large site can be exceedingly complicated and may lead to unexpected problems, as was the case in a publicized failure during an ambitious relaunch of eBay.com in 1999. The company didn’t devote adequate staffing to the project, and the result was costly downtime in which visitors could not use the sit or all of its function.

  

Creating a new brand image or significantly revising and existing one is a weighty marketing decision, usually separate from any technical considerations. Companies face rebranding, for example when the merge or party to an acquisition, when their marketing results are substantially below potential, or when they adopt a new marketing or commerce strategy. The risk is of course that new brand image will alienate the market and cause the company to lose some of the equity it had established in its brand. When confronted with change, customers often adopt an agnostic, even wary stance, requiring the company to demonstrate to them again that its brand is worth their loyalty and high regard. For instance, long flash animations on the home page a trend of the late 1990s as the flash language and higher-speed connections came into vogue-are widely considered annoyances that may drive some visitors away.

In situations like mergers and acquisitions, however, the company has little choice but to relaunch in order to reflect the new identity of combined firm. Here the relaunch is most likely party of an integrated marketing program aimed at raising awareness of the new company and articulating its value new propositions to potential costumers; Web content may be reinforced by advertising and publicity efforts.

Tips for Creating and Effective Marketing Message

by Victor J. McCoy

A marketing message is a succinct statement that explains the purposes of your business to your target audience. The key for most small businesses is knowing your target. If the target is not known, the message may be misguided. A marketing message is not to be confused with a mission statement or vision statement. The marketing statement will answer the questions "what do you do?" by saying exactly what you do, who you help, and how your audience benefits from what you have to offer. That idea should be incorporated throughout your brochures and other forms of print media. Your website should immediately define what you do as visitors locate and scan your website. Our research has shown that visitors rarely spend time reading all of the content on a home page when they visit a new site unless they believe the information is beneficial. This may occur within the first paragraph of your statement encouraging them to read on or stop reading altogether. The potential customer wants to know if what you offer is relevant to their needs or interest, cost effective and worth pursuing. Therefore, make your marketing message clear and target the right audience with your message.