Analysis
Time to rethink
traditional event KPIs?
Matthias Baur says a changing environment requires
a different framework for measuring successful performance
inancial reward may
be the driving force for
most businesses, but
it is not the only way
to measure business success. Our
business environment is not the
same as it was 20, 10, or even five
years ago and the way in which we
measure performance should reflect
this. Companies assessing their
performance by measuring outdated
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
run the risk of performing within an
outdated framework.
As the basic formula, KPIs should
align with a company’s strategic
objectives, ensuring each department,
every unit and all employees, are
unified towards the predefined goals
and in what needs to be achieved to
celebrate success.
Although financial health and
sustainability remain imperative to
any business, KPIs of today should be
purpose driven to motivate change,
inspire and empower employees
towards growth and innovation. Most
importantly, KPIs should remain
relevant to what drives today’s world
of business.
Are we using the most relevant
KPIs as our measurements?
Exhibitions have long since moved
away from being simple transactional
events to large educational and
immersive marketing platforms
and now, with the integration
of artificial intelligence seeping
onto the show floor, they have the
potential of growing in complexity,
increasing interaction and integration
of participantsin these dynamic
environments.
w w w.exhibitionworld.co.uk
the years more companies have
made greater effort in understanding
their customers and what KPIs they
need to zone-in on to maintain a
loyal customer base. We all talk
about customer centricity and
measuring the levels of customer
satisfaction but, is it not time to start
pushing past what we already know,
beyond quantifying simple levels of
satisfaction and start dissecting these
layers, delving deeper into the specific
details of the customer experience?
It is also insufficient to only
benchmark ourselves within our own
industry, we need to reach beyond
our borders, specifically focusing on
other customer-driven enterprises,
including online services such as
Amazon and Alibaba, which continue
to grow and progress at a rapid rate.
To ensure we do not lag behind other
customer-committed platforms,
we need to deep dive into other
customer-focused industries, to gain
a broader understanding of how they
measure their performance when it
comes to customer satisfaction.
With exhibitions evolving, so too must the ways
in which we measure their success also adjust.
Measuring non-financial performance and efforts
to secure repeat business may help to determine
the likelihood of future financial success, however
we need to push this even further and start to
consider return on investment alongside return on
engagement, return on time, and so on.
The revenue an exhibition generates may well
indicate its current financial success, but it is not
necessarily an indicator of its future sustainability
and potential.
Customer experience has also been highlighted as
one of the most important markers when assessing
the success of a service-orientated business. Over
Customer centricity and the
modern KPI
Each event is unique, where attention
should be given to the type of
customer it attracts. The customer
category can tell what type of
business is being done at the event.
Whether it is largely transactional,
rather than based around marketing
or education. If it is largely
transactional, then people with
spending power should be flagged as
a priority more so than those looking
for production partners. It may
be that you’re seeing visitors with
Issue 2 2019
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