Using SharePoint to Measure Performance

June 2008

 

Is the performance for any of your departments or team members driven by metrics? Are the metrics tabulated frequently? Is a tangible amount of time and expense incurred every week, month, or quarter that the numbers are compiled? Does the IT department have to get involved to generate and deliver the reports? When they are tabulated, are the reports ever less than 100% accurate? Do managers and executives ever ask for the report to slice the numbers differently? Is there a problem with the current system?

 

If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, have you looked towards using your existing SharePoint investment as the solution?

 

At a Georgia-based utility company, the Member Services division is responsible for fielding and responding to calls and emails from its customers. The department and its employees are measured based on the volume that it can handle, as well as the speed in which they can resolve the issues.

 

Under their old process, the department would track issue status and assignment through public Exchange folders. As issues changed status or were assigned to team members, the issue would be moved from one folder to another.

 

At the end of each month, department managers would spend hours tabulating the month’s issues, noting who resolved them, how many were handled, and how quickly they were closed.

 

After the company adopted SharePoint, department managers identified an opportunity to leverage the platform to change the process, using the following built-in capabilities:

• A SharePoint team site became the dedicated place where department members could collect and track issues, and where managers could view reports.
• A list in a dedicated SharePoint Team Site became the main repository for all issues.
• SharePoint’s Incoming Email capabilities allow for emails from customers to be automatically routed into the Issues list.
• Custom properties on the list allow team members to assign issues, assume ownership, change the status, track notes, and record a close-out date.
• Custom views of the list allow team members and managers to view “Items Assigned to Me”, “Unassigned Items”, “Issues by Status”, “Issues by Year/Month/Etc.”, and much more

 

Finally, Abel Solutions’ custom-developed Executive Summary Web Part was installed and configured, allowing department managers to generate drill-down summary reports on-demand and on-the-fly based on the issues in the list. Built-in report filters allow them to easily create reports that filter issues based on any of the following: Year/Month/Week/Date Issue Received, Year/Month/Week/Date Issue Resolved, Assignee, Issue Type, Issue Source, Days to Resolve, and much more.

 

Using SharePoint helped the Member Services division address many of the common problems with metric reporting. Department managers can produce reports when they need them. Once the system was set up, the IT department did not need to get involved. Reports are always based on the most current data. And perhaps most importantly, reports can be produced in a matter of seconds, saving valuable time for the managers every month. This ultimately fulfilled SharePoint’s fundamental promise of making the right information available to the right people at the right time.