I have an electric utility client who is eager to communicate the value of training that will be provided to market participants (suppliers and consumers) that they serve. Does anyone have any experience with relevant key performance indicators (KPIs), what contribution training has made to achieve them (the KPIs), and/or estimating the dollar impact? I've taken the ASTD ROI course, so I'm familiar with those concepts. I was wondering if anyone has experience from other utilities that we could leverage/learn.

Thanks!

Hi Don,

At the risk of sounding direct, let me suggest that you ask the market participants what the 2 or 3 key indicators for them are in respect of receipt of electric utilities. It is quite possible that the KPIs are not obvious.

For example, I'm working with a global container shipping and ports operator. You'd think that KPIs would be the cost and/or profit per container handled, the number of operations required in handling each container, and how quickly containers are moved through the system. Asking the customers produced a different picture. KPIs for the customers are berth on arrival, departure on schedule, waiting times of the trucking and rail freight companies, and transaction costs of each container handled wasn't even in the top 5!

Knowing this put the performance improvement and associated training activities in a new light - with very significant changes in focus, direction, and ultimately, resources (they went up, even as trading conditions tightened).

Good luck,

Martin

Colleague,

Martin is right. May I add you will most likely get different stories, KIP etc from each of your stakeholders, sometimes even conflicting. do you have to present something to the government(EPA) ?

Nero

Thanks Martin and Nero. Your advice to talk to the mkt participants is sound. Although we haven't officially started the project, I've picked up on the fact that internal KPI's (like the number of disputed transactions) may need some refinement (the number of disputed transactions that were rejected, for example). (A disputed transaction by itself doesn't imply that a mkt participant wasn't familar with the processes, for example, but a rejected one might). I'll definitely push for stakeholder participation in defining the business objectives of the training - and their internal Finance folks, too, since they need to buy off on our approach to isolating the training impact and quantifying the benefit.

I don't know for sure (again, we haven't officially started) but I believe the audience is internal and the mkt participants (they ultimately fund the training effort inasmuch as they fund the organization for which we're doing the project.)

Don Z, Very wise to include the financial types.

Nero