How do you measure and evaluate the impact and benefits of system changes on business processes and outcomes?

1 Define the scope and objectives of the system change

Before you implement any system change, you need to have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve, why you need it, and how you will measure it. You need to define the scope and objectives of the system change, as well as the expected benefits and outcomes. You also need to identify the stakeholders, users, and customers who will be affected by the system change, and their needs and expectations. This will help you to align the system change with the business strategy and goals, and to communicate the value and purpose of the system change to the relevant parties.

2 Choose the appropriate metrics and indicators

Once you have defined the scope and objectives of the system change, it is important to select metrics and indicators that are relevant, reliable, valid, and feasible. These metrics and indicators should measure and evaluate the impact and benefits of the system change on business processes and outcomes. When selecting metrics and indicators, you must consider the baseline, target, and actual values of the metrics and indicators, as well as how they will be collected, analyzed, and reported. Examples of metrics and indicators that can be used to measure system changes include process metrics such as cycle time, error rate, throughput, productivity, customer feedback; outcome metrics such as revenue, profit, market share, customer retention, employee engagement; and change metrics such as adoption rate, usage frequency, feature utilization, user feedback.

3 Use a balanced scorecard approach

A balanced scorecard is an essential strategic management tool that enables you to monitor and assess the performance of your organization from four perspectives: financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth. This approach can help you measure the impact and benefits of system changes on business processes and outcomes by aligning the objectives with the four perspectives, as well as utilizing the metrics and indicators that correspond to each perspective. Additionally, a balanced scorecard approach can help you achieve balance between short-term and long-term goals, quantitative and qualitative aspects, internal and external perspectives, and leading and lagging indicators of the system change.

4 Conduct a cost-benefit analysis

A cost-benefit analysis is a method that helps you to compare the costs and benefits of different alternatives or options for a system change. You can use this method to measure and evaluate the impact and benefits of system changes on business processes and outcomes by estimating and comparing the costs and benefits of the system change versus the status quo or other alternatives. A cost-benefit analysis will enable you to identify direct and indirect costs and benefits, quantify and monetize them, adjust them over time, calculate their net present value, return on investment, or payback period, as well as rank and prioritize the alternatives or options for the system change.

5 Collect feedback and lessons learned

Feedback and lessons learned are invaluable sources of information that can help you measure and evaluate the impact and benefits of system changes on business processes and outcomes. To collect feedback and lessons learned, you can use surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations, or reviews from stakeholders, users, customers, and other parties involved or affected by the system change. With this information, you can assess the satisfaction and expectations of the stakeholders, identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the system change, recognize best practices, challenges and risks of the system change, recognize gaps, issues and problems of the system change as well as identify improvement areas, actions and recommendations for the system change.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?