When’s The Last Time You Measured Your Measurements?

Before we get into all that, I just want to ask how you’re doing. It’s been a long couple of years – hard years on all of us – and because I care, I want to know how you are.

You know, financially.

Okay, so there’s a conversation your mother would never allow you to have. You just don’t ask people about money. And it’s generally true, but you have to wonder if we should start asking more questions about what’s coming in and (more importantly) what’s going out – at least when it comes to your business.

Sure, you have KPIs to keep yourself in line on spending. But if you haven’t noticed, (see the aforementioned “hard years”) spending has changed, considerably, and if your key performance indicators haven’t been adjusted to reflect those changes, you could be measuring the wrong things the wrong way and getting the wrong information.

And no matter how you’re doing financially, your company can’t afford that.

So how do you measure this stuff?

As a finance leader, you know just about everything there is to know about staying on top of your spending. You’ve got the tools in place to capture the data, report on the findings, and steer your financial strategy. But if you haven’t updated your indicators, how do you know how you’re doing?

We recently created spend management KPI scorecard designed to help companies rethink their spending measurement. It’s a way for you and your team to measure risk, improve program performance, gauge the accuracy of your budgets, and make the most of your investment.

Just what, for example, are you doing to make sure you’re not spending cash when corporate cards give you a better deal, say, at the negotiating table? And if your organization sends out fleets of road warriors, how are you ensuring that the mileage they turn in is accurate? Because, as the scorecard points out, duplicate mileage submissions increased 2,127% in the last quarter of last year. That’s a jump that would make any CFO, well, jumpy.

And where do you stand on things like the employee experience, or audit coverage, or data integrity? And are you bogged down in invoice exceptions? These are KPI categories that can make or break your budget, and they need to go on the list of things to watch – and watch out for.

Rethink about it.

Things have changed more in the last two years than most businesses have seen since their ribbon cutting, and while you and your peers are doing everything possible to stay ahead of this fast-motion evolution, it’s time to rethink not only your processes, but the gauges that protect them. The KPI scorecard offers 17 new indicators to consider, and it’s certainly worth seeing how you measure up.