Question

think about a company you have interacted with in the past. It can be one you have worked for, or simply purchased products from. Choose three metrics for that organization that should be used to indicate successful performance for the company. Business analysts are regularly challenged with developing these types of metrics. After identifying three metrics, explain how you would use technology to report these numbers on an ongoing basis.

Here is an example to consider. Let's say you are the owner of a donut shop. You are looking to improve the experience of the customer, and the profitability of the company. So, decide to focus on the following three metrics. First, you will track the time that a person has to sit in the drive-thru waiting for their order. This addresses the speed at which the company operates, which is why people use the drive-thru. Second, you will track the number of coffee orders that include a donut. Tracking the number of up-sells will help in improving the company’s profitability. And finally, you will look at the number of incorrect orders per day. Reducing orders with errors will also improve the company's service and profitability.

All of these statistics will be on an electronic "scoreboard" located in the drive-thru area. The numbers will blink green when they are representative of good statistics for those categories, and red when the statistics are unfavorable.

Metrics can be measured at three levels of focus within an organization: strategic, tactical, and operational. In this scenario, the metrics being measured would be at the operational level because they are measuring activity in the daily operations of the company. As a point of reference, looking at the overall sales or overall profitability of the company would be more strategic metrics.

Answer 1

The three major metrics that would indicate the success of a supermarket is:

• Availability of products
• Location
• Pricing and billing time

Let us take the example of Big Bazar. Few big bazar runs very well whereas the rest run just normal. The profitability of Big Bazaar can be increased by proper product planning and space management. The location of big bazaar should be easy to access by the consumers. The billing process should be easy and less time-consuming.

The billing process, Product Planning, and space management come under operational planning. Whereas the location identification comes under strategical planning. The recruitment and staff allocation process come under tactical planning.

The software or technology which can track the inventory and make the billing process easy should be chosen. The software like EPOS now or NetSuite should be preferred for this business.