How do you measure success? Probably not like anyone else
Measuring success is not a “one size fits all” sort of thing. Let’s take running, for example. A fitness activity which I loathe.
Last month, my sister and I both participated in a 5K race. She judged her performance on elapsed time and how quickly she recovered. I considered simply crossing the finish line a huge success.
No need to mention how long it took me to get there. Really, let’s not mention it. Ever.
So in business, how do we measure success? You’re probably thinking, “It depends.”
You’re right.
It depends on your industry, your organization, the size of your business, your competitors, your process – the list goes on. Since you’ve probably defined the key factors that indicate success for your business – and they are undoubtedly more sophisticated than mine were for that race – you will want help to meet those goals.
For fun, let’s review a few ways the right content services platform can do just that.
3 ways to measure success
1. Reporting
Whether it’s user performance in workflow or calculating totals for document and data throughput, the bottom line is you need to collect comparative data over a predetermined period of time.
Right? Right.
Using reporting dashboards, you achieve this by creating custom report interfaces with built-in configuration options for data presentation such as pie charts, bar graphs and grids. Your platform should give you the ability to distribute tailored dashboards to process managers or executives to help them find the information they need quickly and easily.
Additionally, you can set up alerts and notifications to keep you and your team on top of SLA deadlines. Reviewing user performance reports will also help you identify training opportunities or potential for process improvement enhancements.
Already have a robust reporting system? Send or retrieve data from your content services platform and incorporate it into your existing reporting solution and keep track of it all in one place.
2. Compliance
Compliance is a broad category and can cover anything from periodic audits by external parties to maintaining and proving document retention policies to adhering to industry regulations for software solutions within a given business process. If your business is expanding quickly, or you are already operating on a global scale, you may not be the only one defining and measuring success for your organization.
The right content services platform will offer many solutions that can help your organization be both proactive and flexible when it comes to compliance by:
- Granting external auditors direct access to your workflow processes and document retrieval through a controlled user group
- Producing certificates of destruction from your records management solution
- Exporting, authoring and publishing a collection of documents to send to auditors without granting access to your system
- Configuring workflows to include internal audit steps for any of your business processes
- Controlling document modification with versions and revisions, or supporting a process that includes electronic signatures
Not only do you give employees faster access to information and guarantee consistent and timely management and disposition of documents, you also facilitate easier audits and ensure compliance with internal and external standards.
3. User experience and user satisfaction
In the end, it all comes down to your users, doesn’t it?
Whether they can efficiently and effectively complete their work (which, by the way, you’ve been improving with reporting dashboards) is a contributing factor to the success of your business. Ease of access to documents and data, the ability to customize the interface to meet each user’s needs and the ability to quickly train new members of the team are all considerations of the user experience.
The right platform will extend its flexibility to users, allowing them to create their own set of bookmarks and shortcuts using personal pages. They can drag, drop, hide and pin workflow panes to optimize screen real estate and improve their experiences daily.
Flexibility for the future
Success factors evolve over time.
When your platform is new, your success factors may be a bit broader. You are accumulating documents, data and history from your transactions and business process activities, so your focus may be on the specific pain points you were trying to address in the first place.
But over time, your ideas of success may change as you achieve goals and set new ones. You may have to create new reports, become compliant with new industry regulations or assess existing processes in anticipation of supporting higher volumes or more users.
By any measure, your success will, in part, be determined by your ability to assess your progress, your flexibility, and the help you get along the way.
For me, my goal for the next 5K is to complete the run before they start tearing down the finish line.
