01: Metrics that Matter
In mid 2020 we sat down with a group of the countries most recognised and experienced corporate innovation leaders for their unfiltered and honest view of key industry issues. They represented both clients, customers and agencies servicing the industry.
David Parfett
ex Qantas and Scentre group innovation Strategy and Venture leader
The metrics that matter for innovation are put into two camps. There’s strategic benefits around learnings and how it expands our scope of view and also the financial metrics that drive value. Typically, the strategic ones will come earlier.
Be really upfront around the metrics. The strategic metrics where there might be new insights or accelerating learnings into a particular category or understanding how it can streamline our internal processes. And then the financial metrics around cost outs or revenue gains or even investment returns.
Agreeing success metrics upfront before launching into a pilot or a commercial deal is really important because you need to benchmark actual outputs back to those success metrics down the path to either a go or a no-go. If this is what a success look like for us to then go to the next level, whether that be a commercial deal or investment.
Daniel Biondi
CTO at DXC
When I talk metrics and want to get people’s attention I quote a Mckinsey survey that only 6% of corporate executives are satisfied with innovation performance. Which means there’s a lot of work to be done before we can actually do innovation or scale properly.
Innovations value is tied to traditional business metrics, whether it’s improved productivity, increased customer experience or satisfaction, reduce cost, improved profitability.
Colin Weir
CEO at Moroku
When it comes to metrics and measuring whether your succeeding or not, always make sure that you define the problem statement upfront. What are you trying to change, are you trying to build for opportunity, or are you trying to solve a problem? And then make sure that you generate metrics around that and try and quantify that as much as we can.
Lorraine Thomas
Chief Officer, Product & Innovation at HCF Australia
Metrics that matter are about the financial objectives and the customers’ satisfaction.
So when we’re talking about the metrics of success and what makes success, we’re talking about does it deliver financial benefit, whether it’s to our bottom line or whether its about customer satisfaction and ultimately customer engagement.
Anthony Johnston
CEO at CoVentured
Data can mean different things to different people. By establishing upfront what you need to know and being vigilant to make sure you’re capturing that as you move through whatever the stages are, when you get to the end data will either say yes or say no.
If you don’t understand the data upfront then it doesn’t ladder up to strategy, then by the time you get to the end you have insufficient data, wrong data, and you can’t make a decision and that’s when it can get complicated.
