Conversations from the Mirror42 Team

According to our KPI Library community members the following KPI categories have the highest priority.

1. Service levels

KPIs may be used to measure (quality of) service levels of IT services such as network, applications, storage, email, etc. Examples of service levels are availability, performance, service failures, customer satisfaction, and (customer) support levels.

2. Finance

KPIs may be used to measure and monitor the financials of IT. Examples of finacial KPIs are costs of support, cost of units of IT services, cost of innovation, budget variances, Return on Investment (ROI), and asset value.

3. Maintenance and support

KPIs may be used to measure and monitor work related to keep existing IT services running as required by the business. Examples of KPIs in this category are workload (on e.g. incidents and changes), size of overdue work, and size of to-do queues.

4. Innovation

KPIs may be used to monitor IT innovation i.e. the delivery of new services in programs and projects . Examples of KPIs are budget and time variances, Return on Investment and Net Present Value, and resource utilization.

5. Security

KPIs may be used to measure IT security based on KPI such as detected intrusions and attacks, cost of patch management, latency in virus and spyware updates, and stopped and unstopped email spam.

6. Business to IT benchmarks

KPIs may be used to measure and benchmark business to IT ratios such as percentage of IT Budget to Total Revenues, percentage of outsourced labor and percentage of IT time invested in investment/innovation.

7. Human resources

KPIs may be used to manage the human capital in IT. Examples of KPIs in this category are average time and costs to recruit, absence rate, employee satisfaction, percentage of overtime and staff turnover.

8. (Out)sourcing

KPIs may be used to manage and control (out)sourcing based on costs, service levels, customer/supplier satisfaction.

9. Software development and quality assurance

KPIs may be used to measure quality of software development. Examples of KPIs in this category are number of defects in production, percentage of overdue software requirements, and percentage of work used for fixing bugs.

10. Compliancy

KPIs may be used to control compliance for e.g. Sarbanes Oxley and ISO 27002 (information security). KPIs in this category are used to verify compliance.”

This top 10 was brought to you by Mirror42 with usage data taken from KPI Library

03/31/08

Royal Dutch Shell will spend nearly $4 billion during the next five years on outsourcing contracts with AT&T, T-Systems and EDS. The petroleum giant awarded $1.6 billion to AT&T, $1 billion to T-Systems and $1 billion to EDS.

An amazing outsourcing deal. Surprisingly enough, Shell has gone with a multi-vendor outsourcing strategy rather then naming one of the MSP to take the lead and manage the others on behalf of Shell.

Now it is up to Shell to implement a framework that allows them to keep a tight contol on the entire supply chain. After all, the service is a sum of its components: The SAP environment managed by T-Systems -> over the network managed by AT&T -> to the desktops managed by EDS. My advise to Shell:

• A common set of KPI definitions and control framework for the IT supply chain
• A role and web-based information hub where all suppliers will participate
• Agreement on what KPI information the suppliers will share, how they will share and how often they will share.
• An audit trail on the reliability of this information

Such an information hub should allow Shell to monitor the costs & quality of services, and drive improvements across the entire IT supply chain. The result: there is an incentive for all vendors not only to focus on their own component, but also on the entire value chain.

If anyone at Shell is reading this and thinks this make sense…. We are Dutch & Direct too and we believe we can be of help in implementing a control framework for your outsourcing contracts.

We are proud to announce the availability of Mirror42 version 4.3.

Highlights

Save portal tab as PDF

This new feature allows saving a portal tab (dashboard) as a PDF document. This PDF document can be send by email for example.

Constants

Constants allow defining metrics that have a constant value, for example costs of people or other resources. These constants can be then used in formulas to calculate KPIs

Templates

Currently templates of domains and KPIs structures are stored in XML files. These XML files are for example used to generate KPI structures based on extracted Metamart instances from external data repositories. This new template feature will allow maintaining template structures in the Designer, and using these templates by applying them to create new structures in the Designer.

Option “top” instances in group-by portlets

In dashboard portlets that show dimension instances such as, for example, a pareto graph of open changes per workgroup, it is possible to show automatically the workgroups that have assigned the most changes.

Password encryption

Password encryption is enforced in prefs.inc, datasources and LDAP integration for security reasons.

Search box integrated in list

The search box is integrated in each list of items, making it easier to search and select items.

Meta Mart and metric maintenance enhancements

Several enhancements have been included to improve the maintenance of Meta Marts and metrics.

License registration

This new features allows on-line registration of the license.

Ability to design KPIs without target

This enhancement allows defining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) without target. KPIs without target are not consolidated in the index of the domain (e.g. process, workgroup, SLA), but are available on the scorecards.

KPI Library available as templates

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as available on www.kpilibrary.com are available as templates in Mirror42. This allows using a predefined set of KPIs for a large range of IT domains.

Furthermore numerous smaller enhancements have been implemented.