Learn about the main IT strategic indicators

IT (Information Technology) has never been as relevant to the performance of a business as it is today. With digital transformation, practically all processes have some interface with management software.

As a very important area that demands continuous - and often high - investment, IT needs to prove to the business its relevance to business performance. This can only be done by collecting and measuring data, using it in a corrective and predictive way, and impacting both the internal customer and the consumer.

In this article we will show you which are the main KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that should be used in IT. Read on!

How do you know if IT is efficient?

With performance indicators, it is possible to validate the efficiency and effectiveness of the IT area for the success of the business. The most interesting thing is that data collection is done, exactly, with technological tools, such as bots (robots), and treated using management software, as is the case of Microsoft's Power BI.

It is important to know the structure of your IT and to keep in mind the objective of your business. The indicators of this department directly depend on this clarity and alignment between these two factors. Otherwise, due to the high flow of information (Big Data), energy is focused on collecting and manipulating data that often may have no impact on your business.

What are the main indicators?

To help you develop a more objective and accurate management dashboard in relation to your company's purpose, we have some indicators that are the most common in the area.

It is important to note that they can be tailored to your business scenario. Therefore, our tips serve as guiding agents for you to define which ones are most pertinent to your management.

Check out the main KPIs below!

SLA

The Service Level Agreement - or Service Level Agreement, better known by the acronym SLA - is an essential part for the effectiveness of service contracts in the IT area. The SLA establishes goals related to the client's expectations, in other words, what the contractor must fulfill.

In day-to-day IT life, the term is often used to refer to the maximum deadline for a service call, for example. In management software, it is common to see its acronym referring to this issue of time. Even more common is for analysts in the segment to use the expression "SLA exceeded" to refer to unmet deadlines.

Basically, the Service Level Agreement is a tool that defines the quality standards of your IT service. Many do not consider it a KPI, however, with its use in a monitored and predictive manner, it becomes a great tool to validate the sector's performance.

IT NPS

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is one of the most widely used indicators to measure how effective your service is for the customer, while validating customer satisfaction in the experience with your brand. It is often used to measure commercial services, but can also be used for IT Service Desk.

As this area is responsible for servicing internal customers, the NPS can and should be used as a tool to measure the performance of the service, as well as of the analysts responsible for each stage of the service.

The Net Promoter Score is considered a methodology, and its application consists of a survey with a crucial question: how much the client would indicate your services or brand to a friend or relative. It evaluates with scores from 0 to 10, where 9 and 10 are promoters, 7 and 8 are neutral, and scores below 7 are considered detractors. The result of the sum of the percentage of voters in grades 9 and 10, minus the detractors and divided by the total number of voters, is your indicator.

ROI

At the beginning of our article we talked about how the IT department needs to reinforce its relevance to the business. With ROI (Return on Investment), you can justify, with accurate data, the profitability of the area for the company. In other words, it shows how much profit the IT department provided to the business.

It can be calculated on both processes and projects in the department. For process approval, ROI is usually a requirement to justify the investment of resources, be it equipment or human capital. To arrive at the value, simply subtract the initial investment from the gain obtained, and divide the result by this value.

Number of tickets

Measuring the number of open calls is a simple indicator, however, very important to get an idea of the productivity of your team. It is from this information that you can validate if the team is coping with the demand or if it is necessary to hire more service agents.

Allied to this IT indicator, it is interesting to include in the dashboard the number of tickets opened by users, by department and in which call segment. Thus, it is possible to map the behavior of the internal customer and even check if your team is closing the calls without solving them properly, in order not to have the SLA exceeded.

Cost per agent

Every company needs to know how much it costs to keep an employee, doesn't it? In departments, it is no different. For a hiring to be justified, it is necessary, in addition to the indicators that show the demand, to have the relation of costs to maintain this employee. This is a job that you must do in partnership with the Human Resources professionals in your business.

To make IT indicators a reality in your processes and projects, it is important to use data management tools. Align with your team what the expectations of the business and the area are, so that they understand their responsibilities. With this, the tendency is that your performance indicators will always be on target.

So, did you like to learn about the key indicators for the I.T. area? Here in inova we will always bring strategic knowledge about technology, subscribe to our newsletter and receive everything first hand!