IT Department and Revenue Performance
What differentiates businesses with increasing revenue gains and greater sustainability from average-performance entities is simply consistent improvements in business process operations.
Most business leaders understand that even minor enhancements to their operational processes add up to significant improvement in productivity and revenue, over time.
However, business leaders often overlook the impact of the performance of the IT department in delivering consistent business improvements.
Revenue performance management (RPM) and why it matters
In reality, without a revenue performance management approach, you don’t have the means to optimize your revenue cycle.
According to a groundbreaking market survey executed by Marketo, revenue performance leaders generate 128% more revenue against their initial targets in contrast to average enterprises. Besides, they achieve 178% more gain than the least optimized companies.
Thus, following the proven revenue performance management model allows you to marry IT with your core goal, revenue generation.
How to Measure the Revenue Performance of your IT Department (Business Technology)?
Most business leaders leave IT staff to manage the performance and health of business technology. However, the reality is that the goals of the IT department and business goals are not always properly aligned.
The IT team is focused on keeping the systems working efficiently, while the executive is concerned with leveraging technology to reach revenue targets.
Therefore, business improvement is unattainable because without measuring technology performance you can't diagnose problems.
What to measure?
- To achieve a 360-degree view of the health of your organization, you need to measure your resilience to business risks such as security breaches, the readiness and reliability of your business continuity plan in addition to measuring the health of your business technology.
- The ROI in business technology and your success rate based on specific business requirements, for example, target lead generation sum and total sales closed per day or in a week.
- Measure improvement metrics over time either on a weekly or monthly basis by documenting test results from your RPM efforts, for example, the reduction of disruption between your marketing and sales cycle.
How to Identify Low Performance in Your IT Department
Minor issues take long to resolve: With the understanding of the impact of major items that drag your productivity, then you can lead the IT Department to prioritize those items, which are often dismissed as low-priority. Doing so eliminates the negative impact on your payroll and revenue.
Unsatisfied staff: Often times, office IT issues are just annoying and demoralizing to your staff, and the time spent on various follow-ups with IT experts negatively impacts your payroll.
Thus, you need to establish a communication process and protocols, build benchmarks, and measure resolution and response time, so that you can prioritize your time as per business needs.
Uncertainty: Are you’re unsure of what your IT budget should be, the right equipment for your organization or what your IT processes should be? Then, your IT department is not serving its purpose, which is to empower revenue generation processes.
Also, it means your decision-making process is based on opinions, discussions, and recommendations instead of fact-based data with a clear understanding of the impact on business goals.
Unpredictable expenses and results: Usually, this results from a mismatch of IT strategies with business goals due to either an outdated IT roadmap or the lack of a clear business vision for the realization and improvement of performance in a timely and cost-effective way.
Lack of Continuous Process Improvement: If your technology arm lacks improvement (plans), it means you fallen have to the complacent trap, which is rooted in organizational strategies without proper alignment of technology with revenue objectives.
Need help? Take action
Partner with Encompass – contact our team
Also review – Impact on Revenue blog
Understanding cost – access cost calculator
