For the past 10 years, MB&A has helped organizations to identify the “thin slice of information” they need to gain a market advantage and then collect data, perform evaluations, and optimize decision-making processes. Much of ExAM4Inspections.com and ExAM4Enterprise.com has been focused on getting external inspection, assessment, and compliance data inside Salesforce, and then helping organizations evaluate and act on that information.
By listening to our customers, we learned that:
- Salesforce is great for building the front-end of an app to support business processes while the back-end (data) is being built, but the user is left with list views of single types of objects.
- While list views enable filtering, they are limited in terms of their interactivity and can create challenges for end users who are trying to complete business processes in as few clicks as possible.
- Since most people implement metric tracking in Salesforce on an object-by-object basis, it is hard to adopt frameworks like ITSM to coherently and consistently measure or evaluate object records.
- Many customers would benefit from portfolio-based strategies to manage, prioritize, and measure objects that meet specific criteria over time. Yet, in Salesforce, creating bounded groups of object records is typically done using custom objects or “groups” – both of which have limitations that make them inadequate for many applications.
- To achieve the functionality they desire, customers often need to develop custom software.
Through ExAM Tracker, we empower users to organize, prioritize, and measure data once it is in Salesforce. We do this by offering a flexible framework that allows customers to develop portfolios that cut across objects, intelligently group records, and perform actions against those records to move business processes forward.
ExAM Tracker Configuration Screen
ExAM Tracker Key Concepts: Units of Work, Portfolios, and Metrics
ExAM Tracker treats all of your Salesforce objects (cases, exception requests, releases, and opportunities) as records within a portfolio. Through this type of grouping, you can manage, prioritize, and execute tasks at a glance, and monitor critical milestones along the way.
More broadly, you can create common metrics that can be applied to any Salesforce object and used to filter items based on your needs
Consistent Measurement Framework
ExAM Tracker (Spring Release) enables you to:
- Create portfolios of records (i.e., units of work) that cut across objects
- Track user time, lifecycles, and prioritize tasks
- Support execution and planning for sprints (time-based portfolios)
- Work with editable multi-object record grids
- Format objects in grids and use field-to-column name mapping
- Work with advanced object record filters
Summer release
- Use “Assess Anything” to create a common set of dimensions across these objects (e.g., user time tracking, sizing, and advanced prioritization)
- Send to ExAM Connect to share portfolio records with another Salesforce org or third party system using our data exchange tools
Metrics (Summer Release)
ExAM Tracker includes a metrics object that allows you to measure, track, notify, and respond to changes in your work and the service you’re providing across all of your Salesforce objects through:
- Measurement type – tracker column or object field
- Theme
- Measure label
- Process owner
- Goal
- Objective
- Description
- Indicator Type – lag/lead
- Frequency – daily, weekly, monthly, field value change
- Unit type (%)
- Polarity – (high values good)
- Danger value (in unit type)
- Target value
- Low
- High
- Threshold actions
- Accountability
- Formula
- Baseline
- Target
- Target rationale
- Related initiatives
Metric Templates (Summer Release)
Through ExAM Tracker, you can establish templates for a common measurement framework by:
- Choosing an object to track
- Filtering against record fields
- Configuring metrics, frequency of measurement, and thresholds for tracking against the configured “Metric Tracking” template
- Tailor notifications and events against the Metric template
These templates will then: (1) monitor the associated metrics against the configured conditions, and (2) enable notifications, tracking, and analyses of the associated data. Note, Metrics can also be applied to ExAM Tracker Portfolios, so that entire portfolios can be measured against your metrics.
ExAM Tracker: Supporting your Measurement Program (ITIL, etc)
ExAM Tracker represents a significant breakthrough for users who want to take a portfolio-driven approach to their business – from individual tasks and work orders to properties and IT assets. Through Tracker, you can leverage ExAM’s data collection capabilities to automate your record-keeping processes and prioritize portfolios, business process execution, and analyses. Ultimately, it gives you the peace of mind and the knowledge you need to take decisive actions, make informed decisions, and keep your records up to date and to the highest quality.
Effective measurement and monitoring processes help organizations to manage change by:
- Validating decisions
- Offering direction and measuring achievements
- Justifying (with evidence) that a course correction is necessary
- Intervening when corrective action is required
While ExAM Tracker provides the capability to track and measure things in Salesforce, it’s up to you to develop an approach that will enable you to take advantage of this capability. Since executives are often overcome by the challenges and competing priorities they face, metrics can help you to navigate them, when used within a measurement framework, by:
- Making it easier to spot danger, correct it, and focus on what’s important
- Helping to align IT and business process goals
- Improving service levels and providing clarity on how to attain a service level
- Drawing on information to support decision making
- Accessing tools for management control
Using ExAM Tracker to Deliver an Effective Measurement Framework
ExAM Tracker can help you to foster success across the prioritization, grouping, and monitoring areas of your measurement framework by:
Validating the strategy and vision
- Aligning measurement with IT goals and objectives
- Confirming goals and objectives are met
Providing direction with targets and metrics
- Set targets through metrics
- Control and manage processes
- Verify targets are being met
Determine the value created
- Use a solid fact base to verify performance improvements
- Improve decision making
- Quantify the benefits that were achieved
- Draw on factual evidence to demonstrate the value added
Intervene and provide corrective actions
- Identify deviations as soon as they occur
- Gain a “big picture” of the root causes
- Take corrective actions to minimize consequences
Easily Capture Program Performance Metrics
Since you can apply ExAM Tracker Metrics to any of Salesforce’s object records, identify patterns, and capture metrics at specific frequencies, it is easy to gather key performance metrics on just about anything, including:
- Overall customer satisfaction
- Processes that are overdue for measurement
- Number of outstanding improvements carried out
- Percentage of service improvement initiatives that are on-target
- Overall improvements since the last benchmark
Are you interested in learning more about prioritization, grouping, and monitoring in support of ITSM or your preferred measurement framework? Reach out to us at sales@mbaoutcome.com
