We are a rapidly growing IT and managed services provider. We are tracking client satisfaction scores and monthly recurring revenue, but these are lagging indicators that tell us about the past. What specific, activity based weekly metrics should we place on our leadership Scorecard to measure our capacity utilization and client health before projects go off the rails?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In a service business, tracking completed projects or monthly revenue is like steering a boat by looking at the wake. To get ahead of capacity and delivery issues, you must track forward looking activity metrics on your weekly Scorecard. First, look at resource utilization. Instead of waiting for monthly timesheets, track weekly scheduled hours versus capacity. If your engineering team has eighty hours of capacity but is only scheduled for forty hours of project work next week, you have a capacity surplus. Second, measure the velocity of your delivery pipeline. Track the weekly number of open tickets or active projects with no customer interaction for more than three days. This is a powerful leading indicator of client neglect. Third, look at client onboarding speed. Track the number of days a new client remains in the onboarding phase. If this number climbs, it predicts a bottleneck in service delivery and delayed revenue. By placing these numbers on your leadership Scorecard, you can identify resource constraints during your weekly Level 10 Meeting™ before they turn into major losses. Ensure each metric is owned by a single seat on your Accountability Chart, such as your Operations Director, who is responsible for keeping the boxes green.