Explaining IT Metrics

Any business can benefit from data and use it to enhance its operations. This is especially the case where information technology is involved. By collecting the right metrics, you can better evaluate your business IT’s performance and identify areas for improvement.

Let’s review what some of these metrics should be.

What are Metrics, and Why Should You Track Them?

There’s a difference between data and metrics. Data is raw information you collect or generate. Metrics are the practical application of this data, crafting a narrative that can be used to help inform your business decisions and elevate your success over time.

To do so, you need to make sure that your metrics meet some specific guidelines:

• They should be focused on improving your business’ performance
• They should use business terms to communicate the data they contain
• They should reflect your business’ priorities and goals

However, let’s cover a few that very certainly apply to your business and its information technology.

Business IT Metrics to Keep Your Eye On

Return on Investment

To start, let’s go over the most familiar one to most. The return on investment your business sees effectively measures how worthwhile a given initiative turned out when all is said and done. Information technology, as valuable as it can be, tends to be a pretty expensive aspect of your business’ overall operations.

Therefore, you want to closely monitor your different IT investments to ensure they deliver enough value to justify them. If they don’t, it may be time to consider alternatives.

IT Spend vs. Plan

Your budget is crucial, as it largely dictates what your business is actually able to do over a fiscal year. Naturally, this means it has to be maintained over the course of that fiscal year. This metric considers your planned investments and spending and tracks how well your actual investment and spending align with them.

By tracking this consistently, you can spot occurrences where more money is being spent than expected, allowing you to correct them and adhere to your intended budget more accurately.

Percentage of IT Investment by Initiative

Every business has its priorities, often for each department. Its IT department should be no exception. This is especially true when you consider how much your IT investments influence the other aspects of your business. 

Every year, you should consider if your planned IT investments functionally align with your overarching business priorities—Will they help us attract more clientele? Will they help us keep our clients engaged with us? Will they generally help us operate on a higher level? If not, consider revising them.

Don’t Lose Sight of the Forest for the Trees

All this being said, there are endless metrics that you could potentially track based on your business, its priorities, and its operations, so it is important to identify which ones are most applicable to your goals and objectives. Fortunately, you don’t have to do this alone.

Macro Systems helps businesses around the Metro Washington, DC area with optimizing their technology, improving it and maintaining it so the business leaders here can focus on what they do best: providing their goods and services. Interested in learning more about our services? Give us a call at 703-359-9211 today.