Every time you make a move, thousands of nerves as well as
your eyes and other senses provide feedback as to where your
body parts are in relation to other things in the environment.
Without this continuous feedback, you would be unable to function.
Evaluation and feedback play an equally vital role for the
organization. It is all too easy for people to do their "jobs" the
same way each day, without knowing much about the end result
other than what's on the paper, the computer screen or the
machine. The top executives of the company get financial reports,
but even that is very limited. Cash flow as captured by double-entry
bookkeeping, which was developed over 500 years ago, is not
the most modern or only way to track an organization's success.
A much more comprehensive approach to measurement and feedback
is advocated by the authors of "The Balanced Scorecard." This
system seeks to balance over-reliance on financial data, which
they call "driving while looking in the rear-view mirror," with
three other key indicators of success and progress. |
They are marketing (such as customer satisfaction
measurement), internal business processes (such as quality
control and cycle time), and learning and growth (employee
satisfaction and learning indicators). From this system and
other research, we at Lawrimore developed the five primary
success factors explained on our Solution Finder page.
Realistically, almost all measurement costs money. And a system like the Balanced
Scorecard is something that typically only a large company can afford. Some swear
by it, others try it and toss it because it does consume a lot of resources.
However, since marketing often represents a significant external expense, it
is just good business to measure results. At the very least people who answer
the phone should be trained to ask potential customers who call how they heard
about the company, and record that information for management review. Customer
satisfaction can also be tracked by periodic satisfaction surveys using mail
or the Internet. This is especially useful for business-to-consumer companies.
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If you sell business-to-business, your client may be a busy executive who is
not going to take much time to fill out your survey or anyone
else's.
Other forms of measurement and evaluation include using a coupon code or special
offer with advertisements such as direct mail, print or broadcast media ads.
Again whoever answers the phone must at that first moment of contact capture
the source of the person's interest in calling the company.
Evaluation and measurement best begin at the beginning. That
is, we measure where we are now, using market research to evaluate
customer and market perceptions and developing numeric quantifiers
of the results (which is not hard since most of the data has
to be converted to numbers to be tabulated). With that information
as a benchmark, and specific goals based on that starting point,
we can then reasonably track our progress moving forward.
To discuss how evaluation and measurement can benefit your business or organization, contact Lawrimore today using our online contact
form or call 704-332-4344. |
