Measure for measure: assessing performance

KPI lights up a room

Despite the value of sophisticated models and analyses, sometimes simplicity beats complexity. Sisense, a provider of business intelligence software, recently introduced an application called Sisense Everywhere. As part of that program, Sisense is introducing an application for an IoT light bulb, which converts key performance indicators (KPIs) to a signal that illuminates a light bulb in one of three colors: green for having reached or exceeded the KPI, blue for an interim range and red for falling below a predetermined threshold.

“Not everyone in a department or company is going to be reading reports or using a dashboard,” says Guy Levy-Yurista, head of product at Sisense, “but they still can benefit from feedback that operates at a very immediate and visceral level.” The goal is to open up awareness at a different level as well as to a new category of users.

Sisense first tested the technology internally. “Our VP of customer success tied it to measuring customer satisfaction using the NPS indicator,” Levy-Yurista explains. “She is an overachiever who sets a very high bar. After she started using the light bulb as an indicator, her numbers for customer satisfaction went off the chart.”

One of Sisense’s beta testers for Sisense Everywhere was CTSI, a supply chain management company. CTSI was adopting a new software system but was having trouble getting people to log in. “The color went from red to green in two days,” reports Levy-Yurista. “People don’t like to see the red; it is a very effective emotional trigger.”

Time will tell whether users will habituate to the signal and begin to tune it out or whether they will end up relying on it routinely as useful and available feedback. Some customers have come up with ingenious ways of deploying user-controlled feedback, indicating that so far, they are engaged and have bought into the concept.