KPI Dashboard

Use of KPI’s to drive change in Electric Utility Operations

Key performance indicators (KPI’s) and the Balanced Scorecard have become important tools for utility managers. The executive dashboard is seen as a way to bring higher visibility to these tools. The purpose of this research is to look at the current state of performance management, and how software tools can facilitate the process.

Literature Review Goals

We will review written information and case studies about how performance measurement systems are used in the electric utility industry:

We will review the theory behind key performance indicators and the types of measures being used in the Electric Utility Industry. These measures have tended to concentrate on Customer Service, Reliability, Safety/Employees, and Financial Performance, perhaps because these can be benchmarked across other companies. The focus will be on Electric T&D organizations.
We will investigate how the executive dashboard is enabled to support KPI’s and the balanced scorecard. The emphasis will be on how these tools are actually used in organizations, with particular emphasis on drill down capabilities. Many software solutions are being offered, and dashboards have become linked to Enterprise Management solutions and the larger topic of “Business Intelligence”.
We will look for tangible efforts to drive specific change initiatives or continuous improvement based upon the dashboard. While the theory says measurement is a step towards action, we will look for evidence that supports the claim.

Questionnaire/Case Study Goals

The primary research will focus on individual utilities’ use of their executive dashboards. We’ll investigate:

Metrics

Importance of standardization and definition of measures
Numbers and types of measures
Leading vs. Lagging indicators
Comparisons to industry benchmarks
Underlying strategy maps

Dashboards

The level and detail of dashboards
Levels of drill down capabilities to underlying organizations

Uses

 Who owns measures
Who the information is shared with, in what manner and how often
Pros and cons of ties to incentive compensation
Use as an overall strategy for Business Intelligence
Top level support vs. bottom up consensus
The dashboard as a “real time” indicator
How to update KPIs; how to handle variances
How to “Balance” competing goals
How to promote cross-functional measures
Experimentation and “play”
Which organization maintains the scorecard (and resources employed)

Software

Software to support an executive dashboard

Based upon the answers to these questions, we will identify those utilities that have made significant use of executive dashboards to support performance measurement and improvement
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