In the age of big data and performance-based partnered agreements, it has become more important than ever before to know your numbers.
KPIs (key performance indicators) are measurable numbers that show how effective a company is at achieving a key business goal. Simply having this data can provide tremendous business benefits including increasing employee morale, influence business decisions and of course, insight into your performance.
It may be a lesser-known benefit from tracking performance, but this can actually help enhance corporate culture. When employees are responsible for their own KPIs, it can increase a sense of ownership over their job so they can be proud when they achieve their targeted metrics. It also provides an occasion for an employer to reward their staff for achieving their predetermined goals.
Tracking KPIs can also provide an added layer of insight into a business’ performance. Being able to prove a trend with data provides reasoning to implement change. For example, if the length of rental is high in your facility and you were debating making changes to your operational process, having KPIs to prove its correlation can influence your decision.
Finally, and maybe most obvious, having performance data helps provide insight on your store performance. Knowing is really half of the battle, so once you have this knowledge, it is important to know how to use it to your benefit. For example, touting the importance of customer service is fine, but having true numbers of customer service scores to back it up is more powerful. It is the response to the age-old saying, ‘actions speak louder than words’.
So, how do you decide what KPIs to track?
Keeping KPIs relevant to your business is most important. Of course there are several factors that can determine if a company is thriving or not, but zeroing in on the influential factors for your business will help create the most helpful KPIs. For instance in the collision repair industry, KPIs like customer service scores, length of rental and touch time are some of the most important metrics you want to use to track your performance. Oftentimes these KPIs are so important, they are what industry partners use to determine if they want to work with you. It is also essential to not have too many. Keeping the number to track down will help increase the likelihood of you being able to keep up with the practice.
Once you have a handle on what you should be tracking, the next question is, how do you track?
For small body shops, investing in a platform to track your performance can be hard to justify when there are so many other expenses at play. However, for networks like CARSTAR, it provides the independent owners within its network access to its exclusive analytics platform. This platform includes information on operational performance, sales and P&L (profit and loss). By uniting all of these larger categories into one platform, it becomes easier for owners to identify how particular metrics correlate with one another and how it all affects profitability. Owners are able to log into the platform and see how their store performance is trending on the most important KPIs – right away.
One thing is for sure, numbers do not lie. To bring additional support like this and more to your facility or to find more information on joining the CARSTAR family as a local owner and operator, call 844-906-9764 or visit CARSTARFranchise.com.
