Scorecard Best Practices
Great tips for maximizing your Ninety Scorecards.
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What is a Scorecard
Scorecards collect the KPIs associated with every Seat and every team member, making it easy for teams to assess performance at each level. While creating great Scorecards takes time, they enable a seamless way to check in each week and discuss any Issues, especially during Weekly Team Meetings.
Tool overview
Three components make up the Scorecard:
- KPIs keep track of how we’re getting our day-to-day work done.
- Targets show points below, above, or equal; the team leader and team member agree if there is an Issue.
- Time frames can be weekly, trailing 4-week, monthly, trailing 13-week, quarterly, and annual — allowing us to see trends at both the micro and macro levels.
The Seven Truths of Scorecards
- KPIs help our team members make smart decisions.
When our team members have more tasks than they can complete in a week, KPIs help us prioritize work and focus on the most important tasks. - Managing KPIs saves time.
Deciding which KPIs to track may take some discussion, but once the Scorecard is set up, teams spend less time tracking down and comparing data. - It’s easier to monitor individual, team, and company performance.
Regularly tracking KPIs lets individuals and teams quickly gain insight into what’s working and what’s not. - Scorecards enhance a team’s ability to make predictions.
Reviewing data regularly can help identify trends, spot problems, and anticipate a drop or rise in numbers most important to the organization. - “Inspect what’s expected” has new meaning.
Scorecards help develop accountability. A healthy, high-trust company has a culture where people face issues head-on. - As a business changes, so will its KPIs.
The KPIs that matter most to a business now may be less important in the future. Regularly review and refine KPIs to get the most out of the Scorecard. - Scorecards take work, but they’re worth it.
Developing and using Scorecards requires hard work, discipline, and consistency. The benefits make them worthwhile.
Building a Great Scorecard: Improve Your Data
Track weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual KPIs
The weekly Scorecard in the Data tool comprises 5–15 KPIs, and for the Senior Leadership Team, that typically means 2–3 from each functional area.
When you are ready to start building your Scorecard, use the + next to Weekly and select "Create and Add a New KPI." You can add existing KPIs from other Scorecards by selecting “Add an Existing KPI” from that same drop-down menu.
Ready to track KPIs at different intervals? Go to the Monthly, Trailing 4 or 13 Week, Quarterly, or Annual tab to add KPIs that you do not track weekly. Looking for a monthly or quarterly view of your weekly KPIs? Learn how to aggregate this data below.
Build Accountability
When choosing the owner of a particular KPI, look at the Responsibilities Chart to see which seat is responsible for a business function. Every seat should have 3–5 KPIs.
If there is more than one person in the seat, it may make sense to have the same KPI with different targets depending on experience levels or priorities of specific responsibilities.
This level of ownership drives accountability for the individual areas of the business and helps you focus on structure first and people second.
Customize for Growth
The target should be something other than a number you are trying to hit. It should allow for future growth and, more importantly, be reasonable enough that if it’s missed, the team leader and seat owner can agree there’s an issue. Choose your default target when editing the KPI, and if your target varies, change the custom target.
Each KPI can have a unique “Unit,” meaning it can be tracked as a Number, Currency, Percentage, Time, or a simple Yes/No. Use the dropdown menu to choose a unit for your KPI and enter a “Target” value in the adjacent text box. Next, enter a “Target Orientation Rule” to define how to measure the target: Greater than, Less than, Equal to, Outside min and max, etc.
Enter Your Projections
Target forecasting allows you to enter your goals for future weeks. You probably know what quarterly or annual target(s) you want to hit months from now, so have it all pre-loaded into Ninety so you can look at week-over-week results.
This custom target setting is perfect for the ebb and flow of business with seasons or just constantly pushing the limit and increasing your targets over time.
When entering targets, the Target Orientation Rule will remain the same; however, you can add specific notes to each cell to specify why a target may be changing in that specific way.
Have a lot of goals to enter? Send us a chat and we can upload them for you!
Aggregating Weekly Data
Eager to see your weekly data in a monthly or quarterly view? Because the start of the week isn't always perfectly lined up with the calendar month, we developed a way to see your weekly data aggregated together in the trailing 4 weeks (T4) or trailing 13 weeks (T13) view.
For each KPI, you can choose if it should be a 4-week total or a 4-week average (by default, KPIs are an average).
You can also add all KPIs from the weekly Scorecard to the T4 & 13W view, or choose specific KPIs to view.
Once on the page, the values aren’t edited; you’re simply reading the target and the last four weeks over time for the most accurate monthly and quarterly view.
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