From ensuring the safety of your firewalls to dealing with complex technologies and keeping the software running to avoid data breaches and system malware - a chief information officer's role is one with a lot of heavy lifting. As enterprises become more digital, this role is evolving continuously.
A chief information officer is a key contributor towards drawing up organizational goals, especially concerning storage, transfer, and analysis of electronic data. He acts as a blanket for technology, from overseeing day-to-day IT operations to managing teams for specific IT areas. Sometimes a CIO has to work with business functions to negotiate technological capabilities based on long-term operational requirements, costs, and security factors that the operating functions might overlook. He should be able to ensure compliance with corporate technology standards and the legacy of the same so that adequate resources can be devoted to updating and exploring new technology, enabling the portfolio to contribute towards operational excellence, innovation, and central functions of the enterprise.
A CIO must deal with regulatory frameworks amidst high-cost infrastructures in sync with crucial determinants like innovation and the customer experience in a rapidly evolving digital environment. He is both a manager and an internal services provider.
Here are the Top KPIs you should be tracking to ensure that you are providing your bank or credit union with the information technology functions it needs and at the same time be able to put information technology on the business scorecard.
We can divide the KPIs of a chief information officer into four categories :
- Keeping the lights on
- Security
- Help Desk
- New Development
A. Keeping the Lights On
It is quoted in a report presented by Procullux Ventures that most IT departments spend at least 80 percent of their resources and budget on maintaining existing infrastructure and budget on maintaining existing infrastructure and applications- otherwise known as "keeping the lights on." Keeping the lights on KPIs includes the necessary metrics to maintain the regular operations and ensure that Information technology enables the business to generate revenue and enhance customer experience.
1. System availability/downtime
System availability is the extent to which technology systems are operational and can function and be used for fulfilling a role or function of the enterprise. It is a metric used to determine the overall performance and compare the system's actual performance statistics to its execution. Some measures for evaluating the online application availability include- application uptime and downtime, number of completed transactions, application responsiveness. Qualitative factors like system reliability and recoverability can also be considered while determining this key performance indicator. In addition, the system should provide excellent support, updates, and improvements, minimizing the cost spent therein.
2. System maintenance ( backup and restores, system upgrades, process completions)
In the ordinary IT sphere, backup and restore failures are mostly inevitable. These failures lead to extra costs and huge data losses. Hence to avoid these predicaments, you should establish high backup success rates and more favorable restore performances. System upgrades are either driven by hardware updates, or the new software requires new hardware. These upgrades should be performed as seamlessly as possible.
System upgrades can be more vulnerable to bugs, more cumbersome than older versions, and cost more revenue and time. Management should always take feedback from employees as to whether an upgrade is necessary and then analyze and weigh the options available to reduce expenses and contribute to maintainability. The average process overdue time, the percentage of overdue procedures, and process completion rates should be periodically tracked since they determine the software and systems' efficiency.
3. System capacity to meet business goals
Capacity management of systems is essential to ensure that the IT capacity is sufficient to meet the present and future needs of the enterprise in a specific duration.
It helps to reflect on the current and future needs of the business and guide IT on performance-related issues. It encompasses the capacity of both hardware and software and the complete IT environment. A delay in service response time or inability to meet future needs indicates the incapability of system capacity to perform efficiently in a cost-effective and timely manner.
4. Maintenance cost as a percentage of total IT cost
Every software needs maintenance, and to measure the total cost of IT, estimating maintenance cost is a crucial benchmark. It is possible to minimize this maintenance cost through careful execution, but it is also possible to spend more than required on maintenance than estimated. It should be possible to determine the constraints involved in the maintenance and then work towards minimizing the costs therein. Maintenance costs should be minimized to make further investments in terms of operational and system capacity. Unnecessary upgrades, perpetual software licenses, third-party dependency are some areas where the maintenance cost can be minimized.
B. Security
Security key performance indicators assist in keeping data and its environment secure.
5. Security compliance rate
It can be seamlessly used to evaluate employees and their compliance with security standards and whether your security programs meet specific security standards as laid down by the regulatory organizations as well as the organization's security policies. Violation of these standards can lead to situations equivalent to conundrums. When security is consistent, it is easier for banks and financial institutions to focus on their core businesses. Knowing your security compliance rate will help you determine the risk your data is susceptible to.
You can maintain a compliance and audit checklist, including the specific security controls or technologies used to measure the security compliance rate.
C. Help Desk
Helpdesk indicators indicate the performance of customer support operations. Customer experience is best designed by monitoring these indicators.
6. Percentage cases where SLAs met for time to resolution
Resolution time is the amount of time taken to resolve a client's problem from the minute the incidental complaint was filed. The SLA resolution times are usually relative to the business hours. A high percentage of SLAs met for resolution should be a significant priority since it indicates a strong capacity for IT to support operations. Tracking SLAs and aligning them to the business priorities can benefit customer service and the percentage of resolutions met.
7. Internal NPS for support cases
For an enterprise to become customer-centric, the internal net promoter score should be central to its efforts. It is a survey to extract direct feedback from the customers concerning support provided through IT solutions. An NPS score between 9-10 is the highest benchmark, and it indicates the excellent support capacity of the portfolio. NPS survey directs the portfolio towards adapting solutions that lead to improvement in the feedback provided by the customers, determines the ultimate source of failure or progress, and acts as a reporting system.
D. New Development Indicators
New development indicators are metrics of progress in the portfolio.
8. Deployment success rate
IT deployment projects, in the absence of a well-guided rollout system, will burden the internal resources of the enterprise. Smooth IT deployments should save costs time and ensure a successful rollout. Failed implementations can take the services down, be a driver is losing revenue, and lead to frustrated customers. Getting a 100% success rate in large deployments is rare, but a reasonable percentage should be ascertained according to the systems deployed.
9. Project satisfaction survey
The post-project satisfaction survey is directed towards all stakeholders, employees, customers, and team members. It consists of key satisfaction determining questions about the project executed, and the candidate is supposed to pick an answer from among the following options- "not at all satisfied," "slightly satisfied," "moderately satisfied," "very satisfied," and "extremely satisfied." The questions can be centric to service provided, the technology used, or support assigned.
10. Development cost ( actual v/s planned)
The cost which IT is incurring on research, evolving processes, or introducing /developing a new service is the development cost for the research, process, product, or service. These costs also include expenses like marketing analysis, customer surveys, etc.
The actual development cost should be less than the budgeted development cost, and as independent the budget seems to be concerning operations budget, they are interrelated. Therefore, resources should be prioritized among operations and the development of systems that enable them based on your priorities.
Conclusion
While discharging executive functions in sync with regular IT operations, CIOs must ensure that maximum value and customer satisfaction is delivered with the available resources and periodically track this progress through the indicators that align with the business priorities.
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