From Outcomes to Action: Building Effective Value Realization Dashboards

[dan_linton]

Understanding the Core Challenge

Value realization dashboards such as ITSM Success Dashboard (https://www.servicenow.com/community/itsm-articles/measuring-success-in-your-itsm-deployment-with-su...)  provide analytical reporting capabilities for senior management, the critical missing link is often connecting these high-level outcome metrics to actionable items that individual contributors can influence. There's no one-size-fits-all solution – success requires understanding your organization's specific context, people, and current implementation.

Terminology - Indicator Framework

Understanding the relationship between different types of metrics is important and should help us understand the relationship:

• Lagging Indicators - These are typically on executive or management dashboards and reflect historical data. One common example is a weight loss journey with a lagging indicator being the scale. Apart from taking off your shoes there is not much you can do in the moment.
• Leading Indicators - These are measures that influence the lagging indicators providing actionable metrics for teams. In our example calorie intake and exercise would be appropriate leading indicators.

Working ITSM example

Let’s go through an example of an outcome (lagging indicator) and find some actionable metrics (leading indicators) we can make available to teams and individual contributors.

1. Define the desired outcome
   • Increased Call Deflection – process of rerouting service calls to other support channels including but not limited to self-service, AI virtual agent or live chat.
2. How will we measure the goal?
   • Knowledge adoption
   • Service Portal engagement
   • Virtual Agent engagement
3. How can an individual contributor influence these items? Here we need to define measurable metrics that can allow for course correction.
   • Knowledge adoption – First what is the positive direction? Of course we want to increase adoption. We need to think how do we increase knowledge adoption for end users. We likely need to focus on items such as ease of use, accuracy, accessibility and readability. How do we measure those items? Thinking through here are some “leading indicators” that would give teams insights on how to improve knowledge management.
     • Number of knowledge articles pending reviewed – Monthly trend
     • Out of date knowledge articles – Monthly trend
     • Knowledge searches – Monthly trend
     • Average time to publish – Monthly trend
     • Average article rating – Monthly trend
     • Converted knowledge articles from incident/problem – Monthly trend
   • Service Portal engagement – Similarly to above how do we drive usage of the Employee Service Center? Making self-service easier would be a good approach, below are some examples.
     • Catalog Items submitted through Service Portal – Monthly trend
     • Incidents submitted through Service Portal – Monthly trend
     • Ticket status checks through Service Portal – Monthly trend
     • Comments added to tickets through Service Portal – Monthly trend
   • Virtual Agent engagement – Finally do the same for virtual agent, how can measure improvements and adoption of the virtual agent experience. I will leave this one for you to try for yourself.

1. Make it easy
   • Build a dashboard for teams to get all relevant metrics above in one location.
2. Review and refine
   • Stay engaged with team. This shows the importance of the data and process and allows for firsthand feedback.

Have some better examples? Please do share in the comments!

Implementation Best Practices

1. Plugin activation is not enough. Enable your people with an approach based on organizational needs.
2. Organizational change management (OCM) such as training, guided tours, etc. to aid in adoption.
3. Be aware of and avoid incentivizing negative behaviors that may influence metrics.
4. Communicate desired outcomes. Establish clear definitions and measurements for key metrics. Ensure teams understand how a metric (lagging indicator) can influence an outcome.
5. Listen for feedback. Provide a mechanism for feedback on improvements that may provide further insight into improvements.

[hochst123]

Appreciate the summary.