IT Success: Which Metrics Matter?

No matter the shape or size of your enterprise, your IT infrastructure will play a crucial role in your success. According to a recent report by Deloitte, a full 85% of businesses now rely on IT for some or all of their operations. What's more, this figure rises to closer to 100% in certain industries such as tech, marketing, and manufacturing.

As part of your business strategy, you should be measuring the performance of your IT systems on both the internal side and the customer-facing side, to ensure that you are getting a maximum ROI from the tech that powers your company. But what are the metrics that actually matter, and how can we judge IT success in 2022? Read on to find out.

Systems Metrics

First and foremost, you should be measuring your system's reliability. Without a robust, efficient, and error-free IT system, you will not be able to deliver. This means being able to measure and reduce downtime, improve security, and streamline operations. For this, you should invest in a catch-all performance monitoring tool like SolarWinds PostgreSQL monitoring, which allows you to track all of these crucial metrics in real-time from one place. The crucial systems metrics for success are:

Downtime

IT downtime is hugely costly for any business, especially once you factor in indirect costs such as reputational damage and lost business. Success should be measured against the total annual downtime experienced by your system, as well as the amount of time it takes to get back online and the cost of doing so.

Network Operations

Network operations entail the overall capacity of your IT system to handle the tasks that your company needs to complete, as well as the latency of the network and website, and the number of incidents experienced in a given time period.

Procurement

If your company uses specialist hardware or software that is not easily replaced, you should have a system in place to measure its performance and condition. This also means maintaining a relationship with your suppliers to ensure you can get what you need when things go wrong.

Security

Security threats are among the chief dangers facing companies today, especially smaller businesses that are increasingly the target of hackers and criminals. Any IT audit should involve a robust examination of cybersecurity defenses and ensure that everything is up to scratch and airtight.

Operations Metrics

Put simply, operational KPIs track the ability of your IT to manage both your workforce and your workflow. Your IT is essential for the day-to-day functioning of the company, so check these metrics to make sure you are getting what you are paying for:

HR Functions

If you use IT for functions such as payroll, PTO, overtime, and training, you should make sure that your existing tools are increasing efficiencies in these key areas, rather than slowing things down. If your digital HR is slower than if you had just done everything the old-fashioned way, you have a problem.

Capacity

This is another way of saying resource availability. Basically: can your IT system smoothly handle all of the work and processes required of it by your workforce? Are there bottlenecks with the tasks your IT system is required to facilitate? Knowing the answer to these questions is essential when measuring IT success.

Solutions & Services

Many businesses pay for outside IT solutions and licenses to meet their needs. This could simply mean paying for a Microsoft Office subscription or hiring an outsourced IT security provider to keep your data safe. You should check that your licenses all deliver good value for money and that service uptime meets your expectations. If not, now is the time to shop around for new service providers.

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Customer Metrics

In some ways, customer-facing IT metrics are the most important. Most customers will interact with your business online, so it is important that your web presence makes a good impression and that you are able to provide a safe and smooth digital experience. These are the critical IT metrics to keep in mind on the customer side of things:

Service Availability

Service availability describes two important sides of the same coin. On one side, there is the actual uptime and accessibility of your website and platform to your customers. Basically, how much downtime or planned outages are there?

On the other side, there is the availability of IT services that would make the customer experience and user journey better. Do you offer widely available and easy-to-use payment platforms? What about 2FA? Does your company offer a mobile app? You get the picture.

Latency

Latency describes the speed at which data is transferred and the length of any delay between the data transfer and the instruction being executed. In simpler terms, latency usually describes how long it takes for a webpage to load, at least on the customer-facing side of things. High latency is bad, as this means that your IT is slow and is not providing a good customer experience. Always check your latency and use troubleshooting tools to reduce latency wherever possible.

Support

IT is now the single most important tool in customer service. Chatbots, email queries, FAQs - all of these things have come to be expected by customers who are looking for easy and quick resolutions to questions and complaints. Therefore, it is important to ensure that your online customer support is up-to-scratch.

What is the average response time for your digital customer service? What ratings do customers leave after interacting with support? What is the success rate of your chatbot for answering customer queries? These are the crucial elements you should be looking at when assessing whether your IT network is good for your customers.

With a fine-tuned IT system, you can take your company to the next level. If your IT hits all of the right metrics, you can reduce downtime, lower your overheads, improve customer satisfaction, stay compliant with regulations, and so much more. If these are goals within your organization, now is the time to audit your IT and invest in tech that can deliver.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or the management of EconoTimes