Metrics Program Maturity

One of the polls we conducted during last week’s Comm Convo on measuring impact focused on understanding the maturity of metrics programs among our community’s companies and clients.

Architected by our guest speaker, measurement researcher Angela Dwyer, the poll asked attendees to assign their programs as just getting started, emerging, established, or expert.

About 80% of respondents ranked their programs among the first two levels of measurement, just getting started or emerging.

And the remaining 20% said their programs were established.

But no one marked their program as expert, classified as measurement being part of planning and evaluation and leaders understanding and using metrics to make business decisions.

No one!

I found that surprising and maybe even a little ironic, given that life sciences is a data-driven industry.

Angela says that this signals a big opportunity to improve, especially when it comes to leadership involvement and connection to business results.

When we looked at measurement challenges across attendees’ orgs, lack of budget for and cost of measurement programs was at the top of the list.

“While collecting data has real costs, the benefits must also be considered,” posits the Stanford Social Innovation Review, which goes on to say:

“A lack of data about program implementation could hide flaws that are weakening a program. And without the ability to identify a problem in the first place, it cannot be fixed.

Too little data can also lead to inefficient programs persisting, and thus money wasted.”

We hear all too often that funding should be spent on the science, and while any company worth its salt in our industry should absolutely have a science-first focus, by not adequately investing in infrastructure in other areas of the business, like communications, leaders are inadvertently doing themselves a disservice.

How are you making the case to elevate your measurement program going into the new year?