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God-Awful Art and Operational Measurement

3 November, 2013 by James Lawther 4 Comments

stand back and look

I can’t draw I am not bestowed with an artistic talent. That is not a defeatist attitude, just (another) realisation that I am less than perfect. At school I took art lessons.  They were possibly the most painful hours in my life; my school friends would sketch away with alacrity creating images of great beauty […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: clarity, key performance indicators, measurement, monitoring, service improvement

The Two Reasons why Your M.I. is Always Wrong

8 June, 2013 by James Lawther 7 Comments

Counting steps

My 4-year-old daughter is learning to count.  She is obsessed by it.  She counts everything: 1.. 2.. 3.. 4.. 5.. 6.. Everywhere we go. Most of all though she counts steps.  Particularly in castles and cathedrals (which is fun) and car parks (which when you are laden with bags full of shopping… that you just […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: data integrity, defects, key performance indicators, measurement

What Can Your Mother Teach You About Incentives?

13 November, 2012 by James Lawther 6 Comments

Dirty Dishes

In 2003 the economist Anton Suvorov developed the “principal agent theory”.  He investigated the way agents (think employees or children) react to the interventions of principals (think bosses or parents).  He looked at the way rewards and bonuses act.  All very clever and insightful stuff. I was discussing it with my mother.  She smiled at […]

Filed Under: Blog, Employee Engagement, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: Daniel Pink, employee performance measures, incentives, key performance indicators, performance management, targets

Call Centre Metrics the Zappos Way

10 November, 2012 by xAshley Furness 6 Comments

Call center metrics

This is a guest post by Ashley Furness Zappos is renowned worldwide as a standout performer in customer service, partially for the e-retailer’s unique approach to customer performance and productivity management. Zappos invests in its call centres, seeing them  not as cost, but as an opportunity to market. Recently, I sat down with the company’s […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: abandon rate, average handle time, best practice, call centre, key performance indicators

Big Data: How to Cope With It

22 September, 2012 by James Lawther 4 Comments

Big Data

We are accumulating data at a truly alarming rate: Loyalty cards Phone bills Search queries E-mails Blog posts You name it, it has data and it is all being squirreled away.  Gigabytes, Terabytes and Petabytes of it.  Before long there will be Yottabytes of the damn stuff.  Big Data. A new world full of opportunity […]

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: big data, clarity, data is not information, key performance indicators, measurement

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