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Do you value what you measure, or measure what you value?

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Working on the SBS/EBS launch plan, catching up on some MBA reading & getting ready to watch the Swannies once again snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory, & two things strike me:

  • I really need to get out more on Sundays, and
  • Most of the measurements in our launch plan are leading rather than lagging indicators

Although we're purposely building out our activities this way, I was still pleasantly surprised to see that of the 13 specific metrics that I'm keeping an eye on up to the November 12 customer launch, only 1 of them is a lagging or "after the fact" measurement - revenue.

Everything else is a leading indicator - which to me means that we're tracking & tweaking all those things that, if successful, should hopefully mean more partners selling solutions & more customers buying kit. This of course means that we can change course mid stream if need be, rather than waiting until the results come in & saying "ah, we should have done that back then."

Given the challenges around accurately measuring our SBS business (I only have visibility to 3% of our actual end-users), it becomes even more important to actually measure what we value, rather than just valuing what we can measure. I'll be honest & say this approach doesn't always work - due to resources, availability of data, politics or what have you - but is something that we continually strive to achieve.

So, what are some of the leading indicators that I'm tracking for the launch & how are we progressing so far?

  • Number of SBS / EBS beta downloads - 8/10
  • Plans in place with HP, IBM & Dell to ensure stock in channel - 8/10
  • Registrations for TechEd SMB Servers day & Aust Partner Conf - 7/10
  • Number of unique users receiving info through this blog - 6/10
  • Number of engagements with relevant user groups - 5/10
  • Extent & quality of PR coverage - 4/10
  • Number of partners trained (sales & technical) by launch - 2/10
  • Local customer case-studies available by launch - 1/10

I've obviously got some work to do around Partner training (stay tuned), case-studies & telling the "why SBS 2008 & EBS 2008" story via public relations (think ARN/CRN & feature articles in small business publications) - but at least I know that this needs to be done, rather than just waiting until the end of the quarter to find out we're behind.

What are your leading vs lagging indicators?

Robbie

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    In a follow-up to yesterday's post around the metrics that we're tracking for the SBS & EBS launch,