Settings Metrics
Being able to count on accurate and up-to-date objective progress lends to confidence and promotes transparency within an organization.
Betterworks has enhanced metric tracking features and flexible objective progress calculation to make sure progress is measured accurately. However, these settings are optional. Objectives can be as simple or complex as needed.
Metrics enhance and add measurable detail to key results. Key results have metrics associated with them during the creation process (i.e. 0/100 percent complete), but you can change these units as desired. To edit a metric after an objective is created, locate the key result that you'd like to edit, then click:
- Additional Actions (...)
- Quick Edit
A side panel will appear and you'll see the option to change the metric or clear it altogether:
If the metric is cleared, it will change the key result's status to incomplete with a checkbox to "Mark as complete":
Automatic Progress Settings - Average of all key results
By default, objective progress is calculated automatically when progress to the associated key results are made:
Automatic Progress Settings - Only key results with the same metric
Some users may only want the objective progress to be calculated by the progress of key results using the same metric.
For example, an Account Executive with a sales revenue objective may judge most of her progress by the revenue metric, but also wishes to show the actions she is taking to achieve that objective. She tracks her work by revenue, calls, etc. and she wants to see all of them in her objective, while only calculating progress based on revenue earned.
As such, she can use the "Use only Key Results with the same metric unit" option to calculate her objective’s overall progress based only on the revenue metric, while continuing to track her work with other, non-metric key results:
- Progress Settings
- Update progress automatically using key results
- Use only key results with the same metric
- Set a target metric for this Objective
- This section will determine which of metrics will be tracked for progress
Manual Progress Settings
Some users may not want objective progress to be calculated by averaging all key results (or key results with the same metric). If so, they use can use the "Update progress manually on the objective" option:
Using Metrics for Overall Progress
If an objectives metrics are all tracked with the same unit (for example, five different metrics, each with a unit of dollars), the overall progress for the objective is calculated as a sum of all metrics corresponding to that unit.
In this example, the five metrics have targets that total up to $800,000 dollars. Once this objective is created, its progress is tracked by adding up the values of the metrics and comparing the total against the overall target value.
Reduction Settings
To create a reduction metric, you'll simply want to enter a starting value. For example, as part of the sales qualification process an Account Executive is taking 20 minutes on each qualification call. However, she wants to bring it down to 10 minutes so that she can make more calls each day and bring more business to the organization. As such, she can set a target metric of 10 minutes and a starting value of 20 minutes.
Range Settings
Range settings are most often used when measuring various Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). For example, an organization may measure customer churn this way (i.e. less than $2.4M churn). They'd set the target metric as $2.39M, then the ceiling red amount to $2.4M. When updating progress, anything over $2.39M is considered red.
In addition, they may include a yellow ceiling point of $2,391,000 where anything greater than or equal to $2.39M is at risk. The red ceiling point signifies that anything greater than or equal to $2.4M does not meet the objective. This is because the outcome they are trying to achieve is the reduction of churn during the year. As such, anything less than $2.39M is considered success.
Progress: $1.2M in churn. The progress displays as green because they are below the risk threshold (yellow ceiling point).
Progress: $2.5M in churn. The progress displays as red because they are above the red ceiling point.
The primary use case for a range objective with both a ceiling and a floor limit would be when an objective is to hit a specific target, where falling short of or exceeding the target are not desired outcomes. Otherwise, only a ceiling or a floor should be used.
To set a range metric, go to your objective and enter a target value and unit for an associated key result:
- Range Settings
- Input floor and/or ceiling breakpoints
- Save
Range floor
- Values < the yellow breakpoint will fall within the yellow range
Range ceiling
- Values > the yellow breakpoint will fall within the yellow range
- Values > the red breakpoint will fall within the red range