Transformation Over Transactions: Measuring Success Beyond KPIs

I’ll admit I’m kind of a metrics guy.?

I’ll get a bit cranky if I’m halfway through my workout and realize my watch isn’t tracking it. If I’ve reached the front door but haven’t made my distance exactly, you better believe I’ll be running back and forth until I reach a whole mile number.

When I started at Lenovo 25 years ago, the world of work was very different. This mindset was pretty useful because we, like most businesses, used to look at units sold, churn rates, or revenue growth as our greatest indicators of success.

However, as we shift from traditional product-based models to solutions-oriented approaches, the type of key performance indicators must evolve to reflect more complex and strategic goals.

They say, ‘If you can measure it, you can manage it.’ This is true, and we have core metrics around transactional product purchases that remain crucial for us to ensure we’re meeting shareholder expectations and contributing to our quarterly goals.

However, the business shift to solution-focused KPIs requires a careful balance between meeting these traditional, short-term KPIs and aligning them with longer-term strategic goals. Don’t get me wrong - customer experience has always been one of our biggest goals. Still, the added complexities of customer-focused engagement, advisory, and problem-solving have meant additional layers to consider.

We might approach KPIs as precursors or predictors of genuine successes, such as customer engagement and relationship quality. These metrics signal the likelihood of achieving ultimate revenue targets by aligning with the solutions customers genuinely need. But they can only tell one part of the story.

Transformation over transactions

Take my team member, for example, who noticed how slow the check-in and checkout process was at his kid’s daycare. At the next parent and child get-together, he chatted to the center manager about the technology they were using. They admitted they couldn’t get the budget to update their systems. Internally, it was a constant battle for them, with a mix and match of hardware and software.

My team member returned to work, found a way to get some donated machines to give to the daycare center, put the solutions together, and then paid for the installation and migration with a request for a reference for Lenovo if it worked.

The teachers and parents could not have been happier with the new system, and the center is now being used as an example for the business to refresh and update all the other nationwide locations. What started as a small pilot has led to a much bigger conversation and built a deeper relationship that, over time, will provide far more value than it cost us to set them up.

Transforming our customers’ and their customers' lives with seamless solutions that help them save time and do their jobs better is very gratifying. But for me, the joy of this story is that it didn’t happen because someone was chasing a numeric target. Our teams believe in what we do so passionately that they will go above and beyond, genuinely advocating for the solutions we provide outside of the workplace, whether it leads to sales or not.

And that’s a cultural phenomenon that no figure, percentage, or grade can foster.

Cultural adoption of KPI Shifts

Shifting understanding of the role of KPIs hasn’t been without internal challenges. Legacy systems and tools at Lenovo, initially designed for hardware transactions, need to be adjusted to meet the needs of a solution-oriented business model.

Transitions like this are not easy, but we are rising to the challenge by identifying change agents within the company who can champion the new outcomes-first approach and educate those who may be resistant. We need legacy experience and fresh talent to balance the transition, educating those who need it and retaining those essential to the legacy business.

The new metrics also bring complexities in workforce incentives. Unlike one-off bonuses in a product-centric model, Lenovo’s sales teams often work over extended periods to close and service solutions, receiving incremental, non-salary-based rewards that reflect the lengthening lifecycle of technology sales.

The Strategic Value of Transformational KPIs

In an environment where customers want more than the products delivered — they want the expertise they are delivered with — shifting my focus from quantitative metrics to qualitative stories has been a journey!

But I’ve seen firsthand how, by positioning itself as a leader in the industry, Lenovo has built long-term partnerships with its clients, rather than just remaining another technology vendor that people go to because it has the logo they recognize best or the best price on the shelf.

Emphasizing relationship-focused metrics and getting to work on the development of innovative solutions that people genuinely care about and talk to their friends and family about outside of the workplace — achieves far more gratifying results, lifting my spirits higher than a positive trend on a graph line.