How to Pick the Right KPIs to Measure Cloud Migration Success-II

This post is a second part in a two part series about KPIs for cloud migration success. You can read the first part here.

In a previous post about cloud migration success KPIs we talked about how technological KPIs are not the best way to measure whether cloud has been worth it, and why you should consider business led KPIs.

The KPIs that we had covered in the previous post are:

• Comparing upfront costs.
• Customer facing metrics like order fulfillment times, customer churn rate, cart abandonment rate, average revenue per customer etc.
• User satisfaction metrics like time to response, first contact resolution rate etc.
• Time to market.

In this post we will cover a few more metrics that you should be keeping an eye on.

1. Time taken for daily use

Think back to what you do with apps on mobile phone- those that are of no use get uninstalled.

Monitor usage patterns after you have moved to the cloud. If more people are frequently using the app or product than before the message is clear- people are finding the product easier to use, and moving to the cloud has been worth it.

2. Monitor data governance

While speed is one of the biggest draws of the cloud it will count for nothing if you can’t ensure that the data is secure, user identities are protected and SLAs met. If data control and governance has degraded after the move to the cloud than you are doing something wrong, and the move might have to be re-evaluated.

3. Evaluate business continuity planning and disaster recovery

Disaster can strike anyone, and every business should have a BC and a DR plan. Evaluate whether the move to the cloud has made taking backups, and recovering them in case of disaster faster, easier and cheaper. If you find that the process has become more complicated than before it’s an indication that there are some issues with cloud implementation, or that cloud might not be suitable for you.

4. Calculate opportunity cost

One of the best KPIs for measuring cloud migration success is opportunity cost. Think of all the time and money invested in your on-premises set up which could now be invested in doing something that can give you a competitive advantage once you have migrated to the cloud.

Apart from employee hours conserved the cloud also lets you experiment rapidly, and in a cut throat environment this ability can have cascading effects on your competitiveness.

5. Measure ability to innovate

And this brings us to one of the biggest draws of the cloud- how innovative have you become since you migrated? In other words, has your time to innovation come down?

Cloud services let you collaborate more easily with partners regardless of where they are located.  The cloud makes it super easy for businesses to scale up and build game changing products without having to worry about the underlying infrastructure. Additionally there is a plethora of cloud based third party software tools and resources that you can use to build products where it was not possible before.

6. Calculate ability to solve user problems

The proliferation of cloud services has also another added advantage- companies can actually think about solving knotty business issues knowing that there would be a cloud can handle the underlying technology.

In a non cloud environment, routine business problems can prove to be insurmountable- for instance, before cloud there was no way for a salesperson to issue invoices while they were in the field. Now, companies can develop a custom cloud compatible invoicing application or use a third party SaaS app.

7. Find mean time to completing tasks

This metric has to do with user efficiency and productivity. A cloud based setup generally shortens the time needed to complete routine tasks. Analyze everything, from time taken to fix bugs, development of apps, completion of sales cycles, filing invoices, updating inventory, reporting and analytics etc.

If your cloud deployment has been done right you will see that usually plenty of tasks have speeded up, and the velocity of the organization has increased.

Conclusion

We have looked at 11 KPIs in the part I and part II, and they should be a good starting point for measuring the success of cloud migration.

However sometimes the move to cloud should be debated based on KPIs like security and uptime, especially in regulated industries like finance and healthcare.

What would you pick as your success KPIs?