Selecting Core Performance Metrics

This report examines how business leaders can better identify unit performance gaps by focusing on six key considerations, which will allow them to enact more impactful actions when performance lags.

This study outlines top-of-mind considerations and strategies for identifying core performance metrics for each administrative unit, as well as methods to set principled action triggers. Download the complete publication to learn more.

Executive summary

Many chief business officers cite a lack of credible data as an impediment to many of their top priorities, including cost-savings initiatives, process improvement efforts, and resource allocation. However, surveys on institutional data management in higher education uniformly show that colleges and universities are tracking more data than ever before, largely due to increased regulatory requirements.

An overwhelming array of metric options

The first challenge to effectively leverage data to drive change is picking the handful of core metrics that best measure unit performance.

More on this topic

This resource is part of the Ease the Transition to Shared Services with a Plan for Change Management Hurdles Roadmap. Access the Roadmap for stepwise guidance with additional tools and research.

Given the countless ways to measure performance, unit leaders often struggle to choose the metrics that truly evaluate operational effectiveness.

Units that track the wrong metrics may waste time on insignificant issues or miss an emerging problem. Worse yet, units that track all possible metrics rather than a manageable set of core measures often fail to extract actionable information, leading to diluted improvement efforts.

We weren’t sure what the root of our problem was…and every week we waited we were running out of runway to recover by the end of the fiscal year.

Chief Business Officer
Public University

Analysis paralysis

While…