Approach to KPIs reporting and value measurement transformation

This video shows you how to transform an organization that has implemented or is implementing Pega Customer Decision Hub™ (CDH) in terms of KPIs, Reporting, and Value Measurement.

So why should we focus on this topic?

Taking time to review KPIs, Reporting, and value measurement is absolutely essential when an organization shifts to a 1:1 customer engagement strategy and implements Pega Customer Decision Hub as the technology to underpin it.

Firstly, a review will ensure that you have quantitative evidence to prove the value of your investment, backing up the decision that you've made.

Secondly, tracking benefits over time can help you determine when performance is good or not so good, and help you discover opportunities to improve business results.

Thirdly, if you have the quantitative evidence to prove the value of your investment so far, you will be in a position to build a compelling case for expansion, for example, to add new channels or use cases that deliver even more benefit for your organization.

And lastly, you can avoid inadvertently encouraging legacy ways of working, and ensure that the way you incentivize and motivate your organization truly aligns to your new vision for customer engagement.

An essential foundation to transformation lies in identifying key stakeholders from the organization to take on the journey.

As well as identifying the roles that fulfill the specific functions in which you have an interest, it is worth reviewing and reflecting on information about the organization as a whole. A diagram like this can be used to invoke discussion and ensure that all potential stakeholders are considered in context when assessing the current situation and then applying typical stakeholder analysis methods.

Key stakeholders in this area are those responsible for sourcing data that are relevant to KPIs and reporting, those responsible for generating and analyzing insights, those to whom insights are reported in the business and in marketing, and those responsible for setting strategic objectives that filter down through the organization.

Now that you know who in the organization needs to be involved, it is important to consider the medium of the interactions with the client.

For both major workshops, to establish the current business situation, as well as collaborative workshops to design a future state, working in person with the client can be great, especially for establishing the relationships early on and making detailed observations and assessments of stakeholders and the business situation. However, there are plenty of tools that can help you conduct these types of workshops remotely and still keep them lively and interactive. For example, Mural. If you do need to conduct such workshops remotely, it is worth having a brief one-to-one meeting with key stakeholders beforehand to introduce yourself, set expectations and understand their point of view. This will make the workshop much easier to facilitate for the stakeholders.

Always keep your foundational stakeholder analysis in mind when considering interactions. For example, some very senior stakeholders may appreciate a one-to-one briefing before and after a workshop, rather than directly taking part.

When would we tackle these topics during a typical MLP delivery?

This topic will have been covered a lot, in advance of an MLP, especially with key senior stakeholders during the sales cycle. The main KPIs should have been discussed during the Microjourney workshop and Solution Alignment Workshop, and the topic will have been absolutely foundational to the NBA Opportunity Assessment. It is therefore essential to ensure that a detailed handover takes place, so that all information gathered can be reviewed, affirmed, and put into practice during the MLP.

This timeline gives us a typical timeframe for an MLP, but of course, depending on the scenario, this can be done faster. We recommend tackling the organizational transformation topics in a specific order based on best practice and field experience. As you can see, this current topic is addressed immediately following the foundational topics of Mindset Transformation, Governance, Organization and Agility, so at this point you should have a detailed view of how the organization works and a good relationship with key stakeholders, making it easier to jump into the detail of this topic.

During dedicated meetings in this period, consultants should review current KPI and reporting mechanisms, address any questions the client may have regarding value calculation, determine KPIs, value measurement methods and reporting requirements going forward, and ensure that all required data and export mechanisms are in place for generating necessary reports inside and outside of CDH.

So, what are the key tasks that need to be undertaken in these areas?

Pega has a standard MLP backlog to use when delivering CDH, and under the Adoption category, we have recorded all of the tasks required for organizational transformation.

For each of these tasks, we have a common approach to achieving transformation:

Step 1: We come to a mutual understanding of the current business situation – as it stands right now regarding the topic, how is value currently measured, what reporting is currently done, what are the current KPIs?

Step 2: We present best practices for KPIs, and Reporting and Value Measurement that is derived from years of implementation experience globally. We will cover these best practices in the next topic.

Step 3: We define KPIs to measure the success of objectives and the methods we use, to drive continuous improvement going forward, determine how to source the necessary data, and set up processes around reporting. We keep as close to best practices as possible.

Step 4: We then define a plan that includes steps to get from the current state to the mutually agreed upon future state, so that we can really bring it to life and make it happen.

These key steps to success are what we feature in the MLP backlog.

What are the recommended methods for undertaking these tasks?

As explained earlier, we have a common approach to tackling each of these tasks, so let's start with our common step 1, which is to review the current state.

It is essential to cover the following:

• Identify the client's current business objectives.
• For each objective, determine the KPIs measured, and how relevant data is sourced and reported.

It is recommended to apply as many of the following techniques as you can to establish a clear picture of the current business situation:

• The most useful technique will be to run a workshop or workshops where key stakeholders present their current ways of working to you. For this, you must set the expectation in advance so that stakeholders come prepared, perhaps during the one-to-one calls we recommended earlier. A workshop is invaluable, first of all to establishing your own relationship with the client, but also to observing and understanding the dynamics between the stakeholders, and to refresh your original stakeholder analysis, if necessary. Obviously, you should come prepared with the information that you have gathered so far, before and during the MLP, so the aim is more to review and fill in gaps than to start from scratch. The workshop approach will help you gain an understanding of the situation as the client understands it, with any inconsistencies or disagreements likely to be aired and resolved as they work together to explain it to you. This is the primary advantage of workshopping rather than just talking to individual stakeholders. As a facilitator, you should constantly reflect your understanding, by either using diagrams or visual notes. Also, be careful to create space for all stakeholders to contribute. For quieter stakeholders, or more dominant characters, you can do simple things like ask people to note their thoughts on a matter individually, and then you, as facilitator, take those notes, read them aloud and create a diagram to illustrate a unified picture. It can also be useful to make note of the quieter stakeholders and find another way to engage with them after the workshop.
• A workshop will normally be the first step in reviewing the broader picture. During the workshop, make a note of the documents mentioned in the process so that you can perform document analysis afterwards and add to your understanding.
• Also during the workshop, make a note of individual stakeholders with whom it would be useful to perform protocol analysis, shadowing, or conduct interviews after the workshop to really build that complete picture.
• Once all investigative techniques have been exhausted, be sure to clearly document your understanding and reiterate it to key stakeholders for some sort of sign-off or agreement. This is an essential step, as your understanding of the current business situation is foundational to the next tasks and you must ensure that your understanding is correct and verified by the client.
  

When establishing the current situation, it is great to have a checklist of questions to ensure that you have all the information you need, and to prompt discussions with stakeholders, for example:

• What are your Key KPIs around Customers, CX and Customer Engagement? How are these KPI's driving your business and investments for Customer Engagement?
• How often are they collected?
• What is the source of the data?
  
  Being prepared with industry standard KPIs for the organization is really useful, to help the client identify potential gaps and prompt discussion.
  

Going back to our common approach, let's continue with our common step 2, which is to enable the client on Pega best practices.

We have developed best practices in each area of organizational transformation, based on deep product knowledge and years of delivery experience with clients across the globe. These best practices could be described as an amalgamation of all the best things that we have seen work well and help clients make the best of their CDH implementation. We will cover the best practice materials under future topics, however in terms of approach, it is important to consider adapting your delivery of these materials according to your stakeholder analysis. For example, not only by giving a detailed presentation and discussion with people directly involved in marketing processes, but perhaps also delivering a high-level summary for more senior stakeholders. Either way, it is important to create space for a dialogue as their feedback and questions will help them understand the best practices, and therefore be more likely to adopt elements of them.

Moving on to step 3 – defining a client-specific solution. The first step is to assess the gap between best practices and the current situation, then take the best practices and design a future state that sets the client up for success and can be feasibly implemented by the client within a reasonable timeframe. To be clear, this end state should be as close to the best practices as possible, only diverging when it is absolutely not possible to adopt a best practice as it is.

It is essential to cover the following:

• The client must identify clear and relevant business objectives that align with their vision and are reflected in their CDH taxonomy. For example: Increase revenue from cross-selling in the call center.
• For each objective, you must be able to identify the correct KPIs to measure the success of your customer engagement initiatives against the objective. For example, conversion rate. These KPIs must be specific and measurable, so that return on investment can be calculated.
• Ensure that the required data for the KPIs can be sourced. By identifying key metrics early in the planning process, you can structure your application to generate the required metrics, ensuring that you can effectively monitor and optimize the performance of CDH.
• Relevant reports must be designed or configured, and the process around reporting must be clearly defined.

Work as collaboratively as possible with the client on this step to improve the likelihood of adoption. One example of how to do this is to work iteratively, incorporating their feedback or another to workshop elements of the future state.

If required, define several phases of a change, for example, by creating a change roadmap if the optimal state cannot be implemented from day one due to some sort of external restraint, such as missing data.

Document the future state as visually as possible to ensure understanding. Obviously, consider adapting documentation for different stakeholder groups, for example, by producing an executive summary.

And finally, present the solution – ideally someone in the business with whom you collaborated will present the solution, demonstrating full ownership and buy-in.

Finally, in step 4, we define the implementation steps needed to transition from the current state to the future state. This is to ensure that the future state will actually happen!

Once the future state has been agreed, make note of any tangible actions that need to be completed to get there. Ensure that they are time-bound, have clear owners, and are agreed with the organization.

It is important to keep a risk and issue matrix to address anything that might impact the delivery of these actions, and it is equally important to have regular checkpoints and an escalation route if the process falls behind.

You have reached the end of this video. What did it show you?

• The importance of reviewing KPIs, Reporting, and Value Measurement when implementing Pega Customer Decision Hub.
• Identifying key stakeholders and their roles in the transformation process.
• The types of reports needed and tools available for generating insights.
• Effective communication methods for engaging with stakeholders.
• The timeline and key tasks involved in organizational transformation.
• Steps to review the current state, enable best practices, define a client-specific solution, and implement the transition plan.