A Small But Useful Thought

I’ve been continuing my research into marketing performance measurement. Nothing earth-shattering to report, but I did come across one idea worth sharing. I saw a couple of examples where a dashboard graph displayed two measures that represent trade-offs: say, inventory level vs. out-of-stock conditions, or call center time per call vs. call center cross-sell revenue.

Showing two compensatory metrics together at least ensures the implicit trade-off is visible. Results must still be related to ultimate business value to check whether the net change is positive or negative (e.g., is the additional cross-sell revenue worth more than additional call time?) But just showing the net value alone would hide the underlying changes in the business. So I think it’s more useful to show the measures themselves.