Creating and Using KPIs

Overview

KPI’s allow individuals, teams and organisations to measure what success looks like, track progress towards key performance goals in multiple areas and have access to an overview of important health indicators.

Key features

  • Allows you to track performance against a single target, whether that’s organisational cost savings, a target in your annual delivery plan or monitoring your progress against a personal fitness plan.
  • Summary KPIs allows you to group together readings of a similar nature, allowing you to see, for example, how all the teams within a department are contributing to an overall objective.

Instructions

Setting up a new KPI

KPIs are a key part of the all top level pam initiatives. KPIs can also be set up as standalone measures in Scorecards.

To set up a new KPI; click on ‘KPIs’ tab within an initiative and select ‘New KPI’

The initial KPI setup options also give you the ability to clone (copy) a previously created KPI. This allows you to keep consistency when attempting to measure similar criteria in multiple areas.

KPI-setup

Measurement details

Once you have chosen the type of KPI you wish to create and Scorecard category you are then asked to define how the details of your KPI will be measured. These include metrics, duration and desirable targets.

You can also set if you would like your KPI to track Cumulative totals, these will allow you to track year-to-date totals and present them on a graph.

General details

Here you can assign an owner for the KPI and stipulate when reminders should be sent to that owner to update the KPI with the latest reading.
When creating a KPI within a Project you can choose to associate it with a single activity, a Phase or the Project as a whole.

Adding a reading

To record a reading, simply click on ‘add your reading here’.
When adding a reading, you can just enter the reading and click ‘Save’.

KPI-reading

If you want to add more detail to explain your reading you can do so in the notes section or you can upload a supporting document.

Working with KPIs

Underneath the KPI graph, you will find three other tabs. History, which shows the most recent recordings, Discussions, which supports conversation around the KPI between members of the Project/Account/Alliance, and Tasks, which allow you to task around the KPI (these tasks will appear in the to-do list).

KPI list

This is accessed via the KPI tab within an initiative. Here you can create new KPIs, view existing ones and favourite (by clicking the little heart icon) your most important KPIs so they appear in the ‘KPIs’ widget on your home page.

KPI-list

The list shows the KPI name, the area it sits in, its owner and last updated date, as well as:

  • An add a new reading button – the green plus button at the beginning of the row
  • The name and area that KPI sits within along with its owner and last update date
  • The target and actual values for the most recent reading – this is shown in the left hand column of numbers
  • The cumulative target and the cumulative actual values for the KPI overall – this is shown in the right hand column of numbers beginning with the ∑ symbol
  • Red/Amber/Green icons to indicate how well a KPI is performing
  • The trend of the KPI (in relation to how the KPI was configured) with improving performance as an up arrow, a trend remaining level as an equals sign and a trend which is worsening indicated by a down arrow

Summary KPIs

Summary KPIs allow you to combine a number of separate KPIs with similar characteristics for comparison and presentation purposes. This can be used to compare performance in identical KPIs across several areas in an organisation.

When creating a summary KPI, you will be asked to name it and choose a Scorecard category. The category should be the same as those for the KPIs you wish to summarise.

Next, search for the KPIs you wish to include in the Summary. You can then select a KPI using the checkboxes to the right of the screen. Once chosen click the ‘add KPIs’ button.

Once the KPIs have been chosen, you can view the summary KPI in the same fashion as other KPIs, the main difference is that instead of history, you now have the ability to turn on and off the individual KPI’s in the Summary KPI to only view the results you wish to see. When individual KPIs are updated, the summary KPI is automatically updated.

Summary KPI’s have three circles, making up their RAG indicator, making them easy to spot amongst a list of standard KPIs.

KPI-summary

Need further help? Get in touch...

Message us via pam, email us at support@pam-it.com or call 01273 041 042.
  • Sam Peters
  • Roy Crombleholme
  • Stuart Johnson