You may find it helpful to know that there is no ”right” way to go about evaluating your business growth plan (or knowing that might actually make you even more anxious!). There are however, several reliable tips for getting the most out of the effort. 

Tip # 1. Choose the right metrics

Using metrics to evaluate your business growth plan is a powerful strategy that can bring you greater focus. The key is knowing which key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure — and to do so, you need to really understand your business and what your version of success looks like. Start by considering such basic questions as:

• What are the three or four market forces or trends that will have the largest impact on your organization in over the coming year?
• What are your specific revenue objectives for the year, and for each quarter?
• What are the “soft” (that is, non-financial) criteria for success over the coming year?

Your answers to such questions will provide insights into what matters the most to your business. They’re also a springboard for choosing the metrics that will be most effective at measuring success. 

Small wonder that the use of metrics differs from firm to firm. For example, Full Sail Partners recently conducted a survey of client organizations and asked about which specific metrics they considered to be reliable growth indicators. Almost 9 in 10 (88%) identified revenue, while slightly less (70%) identified profit margin; a much smaller portion pointed to headcount or retention as indicators of growth. 

Tip # 2. Establish yearly and quarterly goals, and measure accordingly.

Create a business growth plan with goals not only for the company, but for each department as well. Ideally, you should measure every component of your business in terms of its performance against goals — your marketing staff, your project managers and teams, support and operations, sales, finance, and so on. 

Tip # 3. Keep your data fresh and reliable.

To be most effective, you need data in as close to real-time as possible. QuickBooks, Excel and other office applications can help in collecting and analyzing current data. Even more effective is a purpose built ERP, like Deltek Vision, that allows front and back office functions to share and collaborate on relevant data. Whatever tools you use to gather your metrics, be sure to automate the process as much as possible — that way, you and your people won’t spend all your time on number-gathering. 

Tip # 4. Get people involved and interested.

In our survey, we also asked firms which functional areas within their organizations took part in the development of KPIs to measure. More than half (58%) said that their finance and operations functions contributed to the establishment of KPIs, while another 17% said that HR also played a role. Don't forget to include marketing so they have visibility on how they can impact KPIs. It’s also a good policy to share metrics and results as you receive them — not only with management, but with all employees. Doing so helps to maintain transparency and leads to a culture where everyone is on the same page and motivated toward unified goals. 

Tip # 5. Keep tweaking.

For best results, you should plan on reevaluating and adjusting your metrics as your business priorities change. Every month, quarter, and fiscal year offers a new chance to refine your metrics and your business growth plan in order to drive growth. 

The power of metrics is within your reach!

When you invest time and thought into establishing, measuring, sharing, and refining your metrics, incredible things can happen. You’ll be pleased at how much more in sync you are with the state of your business, and how much more confident you’ll feel in making the critical decisions that can help you take your business to the next level.

For firms in the project-driven Professional Services industry, managing a defined set of tactical project management metrics is key to meeting strategic objectives.

Although it might seem efficient to have a single indicator of project success that measures the firm’s profit growth — for example, project profitability — there are pitfalls with such an approach. A better solution is to measure across a finite and efficient set of indicators that together track whether the firm is meeting its objectives, whether the specific goal relates to market penetration, service offering penetration or key account growth.

Project Management Metrics — collectively known as the Project Management KPI — fall into six major categories. One way to remember these categories is to use the acronym TRACQS. 

Is your project on TRACQS?

Time - How is the project tracking against schedule plans?

Keeping projects on schedule increases profit growth by lowering overhead and increasing labor margins. For example, when a project is off schedule and staff is reallocated it increases overhead to readjust the schedule may reduce realized utilization.

Metric calculation: Schedule Performance Index (SPI) = Earned Value of the work performed ÷ Planned Value of the work performed (to date).

Resources – Are we within anticipated limits of staff-hours spent?

Using staff and labor multipliers as budgeted is essential to maintaining project margins. When evaluating which resources to use, it is sometimes argued to use a more skilled person that will use fewer hours than a less experienced person. The thought is the margin will ended up the same. However, when this decision is made business development and client relations to do the production work can result in the firm’s backlog and pipeline suffering.

Metric calculation: Total Hours variance for budget vs. spent AND Labor Multiplier
Budgeted versus Labor Multiplier Attained.

Actions – Do we have action items outstanding or past due?

It may seem obvious, but without a metric tracking action items (completed, missed, and planned), project performance cannot be corrected. Maintaining visibility and monitoring deliverables can increase client satisfaction and reduce inefficient cycles of “catching the project up”.

Metric calculation: Number of project collaboration tasks that are past due.

Cost – How are we doing against the budget?

Monitoring this project performance metric provides direct insight into a firm’s profit growth.

Metric calculation: Cost Performance Index (CPI) = Budgeted Cost of the work performed ÷ Actual Cost of the work performed.  

Quality – Does client feedback indicate project success, or the need for correction?

On a regular basis, survey clients about results and milestones, based on meeting the client’s expectations to the deliverables.  There is little to no change that can affect the project, if you wait until the end of the project to conduct a survey, there is little to no change that can affect the project. A satisfied client results in more work (client retention), reference-ability (more clients) which are essential to firm growth.  

Metric calculation: A rating greater than X means quality, and anything less requires attention.

Scope – Is the scope staying within budget? If not, do we have authorization for variances
of planned from baseline?

Clearly define an agreed upon scope, the client’s role or responsibilities, and qualifying what constitutes a change in scope is an essential first step. When the scope has changed, documenting “why” will allow for margins to remain intact for
client requested change orders and allow management to take corrective action when the scope creep is due to the firm’s lack of performance to the initial scope.

Metric calculation: Comparing where planned exceeds baseline, and ensuring that original scope plus authorizations equal or exceed the estimate at completion.

Clearly, a firm needs to have mechanisms in place to measure these project management metrics. Almost as important, however, is finding a way to indicate variance from expected (budgeted) results in an easy-to-reference graphical format — e.g., blue for good, red for bad. Doing so will ensure that staff, project managers, and executives are all on the same page for tracking firm growth and responding to any obstacles or problems that may appear.

Activities provide a greater way to gain visibility into communication efforts across the firm about a client. They provide a detailed view of what is going on with a project/firm/opportunity and are critical for providing team backup and covering your backside.  You are probably aware of three main ways to create activities in Deltek Vision – Manually (slow), Using MODI (faster but limited), and CMO (even faster but costs more $$).  The innovation team here at Full Sail Partners has developed a fourth way, the fastest, easiest, most convenient way to create activities so far:  Just do your timesheet and let the activities be created for you! 

The way it works is quite simple, just enter your hours, as well as, a detailed comment regarding work done for a project on your timesheet and make sure the first character in the comment is a tilde symbol (~).  Save your entry and close your Deltek Vision timesheet.  Overnight all the timesheets will be scanned and those that start with the special character will have activities generated for them.  Additionally the leading character will be changed from the tilde to a carot (^) to signal that an activity has been created for this entry.  Once your Deltek Vision timesheets are closed out and before billing is run all special characters are removed. 

So just by adding one additional character to my timesheet, this: 

Becomes this:

This is a great way for you to “kill two birds with one stone” (well maim them maybe) – Keeping your timesheet up-to-date and relevant (making accounting happy) and providing the CYA and team insight into your progress on the project (making management happy). Want to learn more about this and other Full Sail Partners solutions?

In the movie Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart’s character tells his café’s piano player, Sam, that a competing bar has offered to pay him double what Rick is paying him. Sam says he’s not interested, explaining, “I ain’t got time to spend the money I make here.” 

When professional services firms are swamped with work, they can be a bit like Sam the piano player. You might say, "I have too much on my plate, I don't have time to track the results." If you aren't tracking your performance then how do you know it's paying off? To make the most effective decisions, financial and otherwise, it's important to allow time to step back to see the bigger picture. Tracking your firm's performance results provides a number of bottom-line benefits to the firm. Here are our top five: 

1. See around corners.. First and most importantly, it allows you to spot emerging issues before they become major problems. For example, if you’re tracking employee utilization and the numbers start heading south, management can take steps to diagnose and fix the underlying problem, such as setting more realistic targets. Depending on the metric that is underperforming, your management can take other steps to nip problems in the bud.
2. Know who to hire, and when. A related benefit to measuring growth is that it can be crucial to effective resource planning. You can track the status of projects and determine whether you have sufficient staff on board to get the work done, and if not, how many and what type of new employees you need to hire in order to keep the work flowing and deadlines being met. A featured firm, SAGE Engineering, is an example of how this exact topic helped their firm grow.
3. Get more context. Monitoring relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can also provide you with useful data in benchmarking your firm, giving you a context against which to compare your own firm’s performance. Where is your firm in comparison to other firms in your industry allows you to understand what metrics growing firms are doing. Set your sights high! If you want to compete, do you really want to compare yourself to the 'average'?  See what high performing firms are accomplishing and understand what is impacting that growth.
4. Motivate! Don’t forget about the impact of metrics on employee motivation. Many of the top performing firms not only track a specialized set of KPIs, but also make them constantly available to employees. For firms that tie employee bonuses to certain KPIs, this can be a powerful motivator. In addition, the same tools and processes used to measure growth can be used to answer other questions that can affect employee motivation, such as: Are we remaining competitive?; Are we engaging our people?; Do we have loyal clients?; and others.
5. Build your value story. Last but hardly least, measuring growth can be highly beneficial to project based firms that are considering or may be the targets of a merger or acquisition. Deltek Vision provides an excellent solution to this need, by creating comprehensive, auditable paper trails that help a potential buyer or partner see exactly what the financial state of the organization is. 

When things are busy, it may be tempting to keep your head down and pound away at the keyboard (whether at a piano or a computer), with the hope that the financial picture will work itself out. However, you should be measuring growth continually, tracking your performance against your own past history, as well as against relevant competitors and other firms, and using the insights to inform your management decisions. 

Be sure to check out how SAGE Engineers, Inc. (SAGE) used a purpose-built ERP to bring rapid improvements to an organization and track their firm metrics against industry standards:

As an executive in a professional services firm, you have many demands on your time.  Many times you are pulled into client conferences, HR issues, and day-to-day “how-to” decisions.  With all the distractions, how do you continue to monitor your business health?  There is a plethora of financial performance metrics to help you monitor your company’s financial health. 

Most financial performance metrics are “lagging indicators”, with the exception of the backlog.  Meaning that they are a great indicator of how you performed (past tense). Unfortunately, you can’t control or affect change. The benefit of tracking lagging metrics is that it gives you the ability to change course to impact the future.  Since lagging indicators are based on actual performance, even if you haven’t been tracking these metrics, it is pretty easy to go back and get the information (accounting people everyone now hate me). In an upcoming article, we will discuss leading metrics. These metrics help your firm know where you are going therefore allowing you time to change course.  

When reviewing your financial performance metrics, it is important to understand how other firms in your industry compare.  If you consistently have a 3.00 direct labor multiplier, that may be good – and you may be profitable, but if everyone else in your industry consistently has a 3.75 multiplier, that would tell you that you need to review your bill rate structure.  Perhaps you can do even better in profits!  Several companies (PSMJ comes to mind) queries companies and publish trends on financial metrics.  Check out our past article: The Business Benchmarking Process: 4 Key Steps on this topic.

There isn’t one metric that is the “magic bullet” of reporting your company’s health (sorry to say).  Profit will tell you if you “made money” – right?  But it doesn’t tell you how you made that money and where your weaknesses are.  

Here are two examples to help illustrate:

1. Your production staff may have a 95% utilization (i.e. 95% of the time at work is spent on production projects), but if you do not have an effective multiplier high enough to cover your indirect and overhead expenses – that utilization will not translate into profits.
    
2. Your profits can be soaring but if the days your Accounts Receivable is outstanding is growing, you are not translating your profits into cash. 

Using a combination of metrics identified below can help determine if your firm is making money, but equally important, how you are making the money.

1. Profit – Well duh you say, however, you would be surprised at the number of business owners that watch their profit numbers dwindle while making excuses or “hoping” it will simply turn around.   Your profit is your way of ensuring that your revenues are exceeding your costs.   While one month of poor profit performance should not send you to the stratosphere of worry, a two to three months trend of poor performance should start you down the path of inquiry as to the cause and solutions.   Profits are tracked both as an amount and as a percentage of your revenues.  
    
2. Cash Flow – Cash is king as they say!  Profit on an accrual basis is a nice indicator of the work your staff has performed, but if it never translates into cash then you really are not ahead of the game.  If you are not collecting on your billings, then you aren’t really making money – regardless of what your financials say.  Cash inflow is what supports your ability to pay your bills – including your employees – timely.  Again, if you have one month of poor cash flow, then you probably don’t need to get too excited, but when you see this beginning to trend downward then you need to research.
    
3. Average Days outstanding – This is the indicator that you are collecting on what you bill which directly affects cash flow.  So if your profit is looking good, but your cash flow isn’t, this might be a good place to start looking.  As your AR ages, you are not putting that money back into your cash flow – keeping in mind you have typically already paid your employees.  Clients that usually pay on-time do not suddenly start paying late for no reason.   When your average days outstanding begins to grow, this could be indicative of your clients perceived service quality had decreased.  It is in your best interest to identify this issue and correct it immediately.
     
4. Utilization – For professional services firms, what you sell is your employee’s time.  So it is important to keep tabs on what your staff is doing.  If this number is steadily decreasing, then you can bet your profits are also decreasing.  This number is affected by the amount of non-production work that is being assigned to production staff.  If your production staff have billable work to do, and have also been assigned high priority non-production work, then utilization can be affected in the short term. However, as soon as the non-production work is complete, it should fall back into line.  If however, your staff is doing non-production work because they do not have production work to do that is also whole different story.  Anytime your utilization slips, it is worth an inquiry as to the reason and the finding a resolution.
    
5. Effective Multiplier – This is the ratio of your net revenue divided by your direct labor costs.  This lets you know how much money in revenue (and hopefully cash inflow) you can expect for every dollar of direct labor you spend.  This multiplier affects your ability to cover your indirect and overhead costs as well as meet profit goals.   This ratio can be a reasonable number, but if you do not have enough hours utilized on production projects, you may still not be profitable.
    
6. Annual Net Revenue in Backlog – Backlog is the dollar value (expressed as net revenue) you have contracted for, but not yet performed.  When you create a ratio of backlog over your 12 month net revenue, you can use that ratio to calculate how many days work you have under contract.  This is a forward-looking metric and the only one mentioned that looks to the future.   Focusing strictly on past financial performance won’t prepare your firm for if there is a downturn looming (i.e. low backlog) or more work than your existing staff can handle.

Remember, each of the metrics above is just one piece of the puzzle to your firm’s financial health.  You can’t take just one as your company gospel. They are interrelated and play on each other. 

Financial performance metrics are typically calculated monthly and reviewed.  However, they can also be reported only a quarterly basis.  Sometimes, people decide based on how things are trending.  If your metrics are trending up then focus on them quarterly.  If your metrics are instead trending downward then switch to monthly.  Work with your accounting staff to have these metric prepared for the past several months/years allows you to get an idea of past performance and decide how often you need to review. 

As you get to know the above metrics and understand their interrelation you will be able to quickly identify when your company is going ‘sideways’ and understand the action needed to adjust your course accordingly.  Check out this past webinar to see how your firm can become ‘Best In Class’.
 

Here we are ½ way through the year, and yet my ‘to-do’ list has kept growing.  In today’s economy we have all been asked to do more with less help.  This often requires us to take on more responsibility and daily tasks - which causes us more stress, longer hours and greater chances to ‘mess up’ -  so to speak.

What to do? What to do?  Through workflows, Deltek Vision offers us an opportunity to automate many of the repetitive tasks we have to do every day – that quite often fall through the cracks of our busy, busy days (and hopefully not too many nights).

What is a workflow? 

You might ask, what is a workflow? Workflows are actions that your Deltek Vision system will carry out for you based on events that occur within specific Info Centers.  An example of this is sending an email to an employee when their name is added as the Project Manager on a project.

Can I do this?

In many cases you can do a lot of the automation on your own.   Deltek's intuitive design allows “non-programmers” to create workflows and actions for many repetitive task. 

To do this, you will need to know a couple of things.  First – where are workflows found?  They are found in Configuration --> Workflows (guess that wasn’t too hard).

Next you need to understand the different options under workflows. Watch this highlight video to better understand the options under workflows, and the actions that can be performed: 

So you see that using the standard workflows in Vision can help you with many repetitive tasks that are triggered from actions taken within Vision.  Making these automated will free you and your staff up to pursue more productive workdays and more fun nights.

But wait you say, how do I actually set up these workflows? That's a great question!  If you still are asking, what is a workflow, watch the full length video on Workflows and Stored Procedures. Learn how to set up workflows in your Deltek Vision system today! 

In order to truly gain a holistic view of the organization, there are key financial ratios and indicators that project-based firms should focus upon at regular intervals. Some key project performance metrics need to be monitored on a real-time basis, or at least weekly, while others are more relevant on a monthly basis. Also, because firms must first win projects and engage in other activities that do not directly produce revenue, project-based firms should also regularly monitor firm-wide metrics.

We should not focus on a single metric but rather, should adopt a more comprehensive view and monitor a handful of key metrics. For example, firms might reach the target for their Net Effective Multiplier (NEM) and yet have too few revenue producing projects, too much overhead, and poor utilization rates.

Key Project Performance Metrics for Management

At a minimum, firms should monitor their Net Effective Multiplier (NEM) on a monthly basis. The NEM is calculated by dividing net services revenue by direct labor, which is the cost of labor charged to projects. Net service revenue is total revenue less direct cost (i.e., Direct and Reimbursable Consultants and Expenses).

Most firms would like to see a multiplier that is better than 3 times direct labor. In its recent AE Clarity Report for 2012, Deltek reported an average of 2.9 with top performing firms reporting 3.43.

One way higher performing firms achieve a better NEM is by assigning appropriate resources to their projects. More experienced resources are typically very productive, but their higher labor cost drives the NEM downward. Thus, it is important to assign the resources with the right level of expertise to complete the task at hand.

Some firms prefer to report and monitor the Realization Ratio in lieu of the NEM. The Realization Ratio is calculated by dividing net services revenue by direct labor at billing rates instead of cost rates. A target Realization Ratio would be greater than 1.

On at least a weekly basis, if not real-time, firms should monitor Project Estimate-to-Complete (ETC) and Estimate-at-Completion (EAC) values. ETC amounts are how much additional money must be spent from tomorrow through the end of the project to complete the work. EAC amounts are how much total money you expect to have spent at the end of the project. This is calculated as the job-to-date costs plus the estimate-to-complete costs. ETC amounts can be calculated simply by maintaining schedules. With a timeline defined, ETC amounts are simply future scheduled amounts at either cost or billing rates.

Best Practices Tips: To monitor ETC and EAC amounts in real-time, it’s a best practice to complete timesheets on a daily basis. Additionally, to establish a proper Project Work Breakdown Structure, subdivide a project into smaller more manageable components (e.g., phases and tasks) to maintain schedules and monitor these amounts. Ideally, EAC amounts will not exceed budgets but by monitoring these calculations weekly, firms are better able to keep projects on track and the work within scope. 

Key Firm-Wide Management Metrics

Firms should monitor their utilization and overhead rates on a monthly basis, at a minimum. The Utilization Rate is calculated by dividing the cost of labor charged to projects by the total labor cost of the firm. In the early referenced Deltek's 2012 AE Clarity Report, the average employee utilization rate was reported as 59.8%. Excluding vacation, holiday, and sick time it was 65.4%.

Firms can improve employee utilization by setting realistic utilization targets, properly allocating resources, managing client expectations, and having employees monitor their performance against their target, real-time, while completing timesheets each day. The Overhead Rate is calculated by dividing total overhead (before distributions) by total direct labor expense. Typically, bonuses are excluded from overhead for this calculation.

An interesting finding from Deltek’s AE Clarity Report was the average overhead rate for 2012 which was 161.6% with bonuses excluded and 175.7% with bonuses. Rates were not significantly different for higher performing firms suggesting they had achieved higher project profitability with better NEMs and better utilization rates.

The bottom line is that there is no magic bullet but rather a handful of key project performance metrics firms should monitor at regular intervals to maintain profitability. Does your firm have a global view of your firm metrics? Schedule a demo today to see how Deltek Vision is an ERP specifically designed to provide access to these key metrics and many more. 

Deltek Kona is a cloud-based social collaboration and productivity platform that empowers individuals and groups to connect, organize and get things done together. Through the use of collaborative spaces, users have the ability to coordinate, share, and schedule events or tasks with teams and groups.

Groups that use Kona vary from companies to individuals. Companies communicate with team members, internal and external, on company initiatives, proposals submissions, and the execution of projects every day.  Individuals involved in organizations and personal groups need a way to coordinate efforts among participants.  You may find yourself in both of these circles.  No matter if you are a company or individual, each find Kona brings the conversation, tasks assignments, and files needed to a centralized space.

Most companies and individuals are already accustom to viewing their calendar in Outlook (Entourage for Mac) or Google. The good news with Kona is you can integrate the Kona web calendar into other calendar applications.  For today's example we will walk you through viewing your Kona calendar in Microsoft Outlook 2013. This allows you to see the Kona calendar along with any calendars you have setup in Outlook to provide a quick visual of all of your Kona spaces. 

Step 1

Login to http://www.Kona.com

Step 2

Select the calendar by clicking on the Events tab

Step 3

Click on Calendar

Step 4

Select Share this Calendar from the drop down menu

Step 5

Select the link displayed in the window and copy it.

Step 6

Open outlook and switch to the calendar view. Notice the list of calendars displayed at the bottom left.

Step 7

Right click on Other Calendars and select Add Calendar, From Internet

Step 8

Paste the link from Kona in the New Internet Calendar Subscription box and click on OK.

Step 9

Notice the Kona Calendar is now displayed in the bottom left

Step 10

Multiple calendars can are displayed when additional calendars from the list are selected

Step 11

Click on the arrow beside a calendar to combine the view.

Step 12

Now the Calendars and all appointments are all displayed in a single calendar view

Making the Kona calendar viewable in Microsoft Outlook is a great way to boost productivity, social collaboration, and calendar management. You can use similar techniques to attach other Internet based calendars to Outlook as well. The attached calendar is read only and is not editable from Outlook. This is a slight draw back but the ability to see the Kona calendar without switching applications provides a quick and convenient planning in Outlook.

Interested in Kona? Contact us for a demo or to discuss how Kona can help you.

At the core of a project-based firm’s business is the need to monitor the progress of your projects. As Project Manager’s we are busy and we need quick, real-time information to help us steer our projects. Just as a dashboard in a boat identifies and provides feedback regarding the status of our voyage – the speed, the wind angle, the wind force, and the navigational direction – a dashboard can provide the same information about your project.

Specifically, a project KPI dashboard can examine some simple indicators that allow a project manager to gauge which project(s) need more attention.  They should be examined on a regular basis. 

What Project KPIs should I be looking at?

• Accounts Receivable - Overdue AR can be a warning sign for many problems including:  client dissatisfaction, overall project communication issues, and client insolvency (they can’t pay us if they have no money. . . should we be loaning them more money?).  Make sure your AR is in line with a Summary AR Dashboard Part and one for each individual project.  We recommend examining this Project KPI at least twice every billing cycle.

 Tip to Think About:  What is my outstanding AR?  Not only the amount, but how many days out is it? 

• Unbilled Labor – A large amount of unbilled labor is a serious risk not only to the project, but to general firm cash flow.  The company cannot get paid for it if it doesn’t get billed.  A Project Manager should monitor this Project KPI closely all the time, but especially after invoicing.  Make sure to avoid carrying large amounts of unbilled labor from billing cycle to billing cycle.

Tip to Think About:  How much labor is sitting on my project that has not been marked as billed?  In other words, have I been billing my project progress correctly?  

• Estimated to Complete (ETC) and/or Estimate at Completion (EAC) – These schedule based measures will help you determine not only if you are on budget, but if you will finish the project within the overall budget as well.  Compare the EAC to the overall budget and if it is greater, you may decide to either reduce future expenditures or accept the fact that you going to be over budget. 

 Tip to Think About:  How much more do I need to finish this Project?
 When over  budget, confirm that you didn’t forget to send out additional services  contracts. 

• Summary Key Performance Indicators - Above the project level, the measures are usually about Net Revenue, Utilization and Backlog.  By putting these Project KPIs on your Dashboard, you can improve your performance and make your boss look good too.

Tip to Think About:  What is your Boss being measured on?  How can you manage your   projects better with the use of Project KPIs to improve those Summary Key Performance   Indicators?

There may be other metrics your firm utilizes.  Share with us what you have on your project KPI dashboard.  Also, be sure to check out our past webinar: Get the Work Done.

Many of us are familiar with the idea of measurement improving outcome. Whether it’s Karl Pearson’s Law: “That which is measured improves” or the concept of losing weight by counting calories, we understand that measuring results is crucial to understanding how to improve results. 

But it’s not just the act of measuring – it’s measuring the RIGHT things and then utilizing what was learned from the results. When trying to improve the performance and evaluation of your team or team members, what should be measured (and how) become critical questions. 

Professional services organizations are beginning to follow the lead of other industries and explore areas such as Voice of the Customer (VOC), Client Experience Management (CEM), and Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM). And while 86% of organizations across all industries employ some form of customer/client feedback as part of their performance and evaluation strategy, only 5% of professional services firms do so. 

If you are planning to implement a feedback process, consider these three key steps to creating an effective performance and evaluation strategy powered by client feedback. 

1. Any measurement strategy should promote desired employee performance. Therefore, it’s important to measure things employees can control or greatly influence. If employees feel they are being held accountable for measurements beyond their sphere of control, they may reject the system, game the system, or lose hope. So when capturing client-centered metrics like feedback, don’t focus on the scores provided by clients. If you focus on feedback scores, rather than what employees do with scores, they may avoid feedback in the most critical situations. Instead, measure, monitor, and promote the successes of those who gather the most feedback, maintain the highest response rates, and follow-up most effectively to challenging feedback. 
    
2. Craft questions that measure improvable actions. Keep personalities out of your surveys. People don’t change quickly or easily. When faced with personal criticism, most people will reject the information. Instead, focus on the processes and practices of delivering the service. Processes are more easily documented, adjusted, and customized to a client. 
    
3. Measure early, measure often. Monitoring client expectations-the real source of success as a professional service organization-is just as critical as managing your income statement and balance sheet. You look at your financial reports every month, and carefully track progress over time – but when was the last time you looked at metrics from your clients’ perspective? How well are you doing for them? To maximize performance with clients, feedback cannot be a once a year (or once every five years) activity. Track constantly, during projects, when you have time to create better outcomes for your clients.

The most important way to measure staff performance in a professional service firm is from the clients’ perspective. It’s really the client’s perception of reality that matters most. To summarize, to best measure performance and evaluate it from the client’s perspective:  make it easy and comfortable for the client to offer their feedback, have questions focus how well the process worked for them, and ask them often throughout a project, not just at the end.