Your team spends three days each month creating reports that take five minutes to present and generate zero follow-up questions. Meanwhile, the business units you support are making critical decisions based on gut feeling because they can’t find the insights they need in your 47-slide dashboard.
This is the metrics paradox of modern IT service management: more data than ever, but less understanding of what really matters. We’re great at tracking our efficiency, but we’ve lost sight of whether we’re being effective.
Data is not the same as insight
How often have you discussed service-related data with senior management or customers, only to be met with uninterest or a response like ‘So what?’ If this sounds familiar, likely, the metrics you’re producing aren’t aligned with the audience you’re speaking to.
Many service desks continue to produce a list of data, primarily based on ticket quantities. These offer very few insights to the audience, leaving them unclear on whether the data presented demonstrates good or bad performance.
Good management information tells a story and helps to turn data into understanding. It links metrics to objectives, identifies patterns, and enables data-driven decision making.
If your reporting consists only of numbers and no commentary, ask yourself: What story are we trying to tell here?
Are your metrics driving the right behaviours?
What we choose to measure and what we reward can have a strong influence on team behavior.
For instance, a team that is measured solely on speed may close tickets quickly without fully resolving the issue. This creates a poor customer experience. Similarly, if a team is overly focused on resolving everything at first contact, they may avoid escalating issues even when escalation is necessary.
The best metrics encourage the outcomes we want. These include customer satisfaction, process efficiency, and a culture of continuous improvement. Speed and volume are useful, but only when balanced with quality and context.
Too much time reporting, not enough time thinking
Many organisations still spend hours or even days each month gathering data, copying it into spreadsheets, and adjusting the formatting to meet perceived expectations.
If more time is spent generating reports than reviewing them, the reporting process is not delivering value. It’s simply adding administrative overhead. Automating reporting through dashboards or analytics tools can free up time to focus on analysis, reflection, and decision-making.
Don’t ignore the experience
Traditional metrics often miss how the service feels from the user’s perspective. While satisfaction surveys offer some insight, response rates are typically low and may not accurately reflect the views of the broader user base.
A balanced approach is essential. Strong performance metrics should be paired with experience data to give a full view of how services are operating and how they’re perceived.
Moving beyond vanity metrics
Just because something is easy to measure doesn’t mean it’s valuable.
IT teams often share long lists of statistics designed to showcase performance. But if these don’t align with what stakeholders care about, trust can be lost in both the data and the team providing it.
Understanding what is truly important to the business is essential. Focus your measurement efforts on outcomes that reflect real value. Here are a few examples:
| Metric | Business Outcome |
| Availability of clinical applications | Ensures doctors and nurses can access patient records and tools without delay, supporting patient safety and continuity of care.
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| Manufacturing cycle time | Shorter cycle times mean higher throughput and better delivery performance, which are essential for profitability in manufacturing. IT plays a key role by maintaining uptime for ERP, MES, and automation systems.
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| Success rate of digital transactions | High success rates lead to fewer abandoned transactions, reduced call volumes, and greater customer trust in digital channels. Reliable integration between front-end apps and back-end systems is critical. |
These examples show how the right metric can link IT performance directly to business outcomes that stakeholders care about — such as safety, speed, revenue, or trust.
Tailoring for your audience
Executives don’t need daily operational data, and service desk analysts don’t need executive dashboards. Relevance is everything.
Different roles need different types of insight. Executives want to understand risk, cost, and business impact. Analysts require specific data to help them manage their workload and improve service. When metrics are tailored to the audience, reporting becomes a valuable decision-making tool.
To achieve this, reports must be simple to interpret, clearly aligned with goals, and focused on outcomes. Endless charts without explanation can create confusion. Strong reporting, on the other hand, highlights what is happening, why it matters, and what actions should follow. Whether you’re surfacing a problem, showcasing success, or recommending change, your metrics should support meaningful progress.
The true value of metrics lies in their ability to drive decisions. Focus less on collecting data for its own sake and more on using the right information to move the organisation forward.
Actionable Insights
If your reporting feels like noise instead of insight, here are a few practical steps to begin shifting toward more meaningful metrics:
- Identify your audience
Start by mapping out who consumes your reports. What decisions do they need to make? What data supports those decisions? - Review what you’re currently measuring
List your current metrics and ask whether each one reflects performance, drives improvement, or informs decisions. If not, it might be a vanity metric. - Balance performance with perception
Blend operational data with experience data. SLA compliance is one thing — how users feel about the service is another. - Tell a story with your reporting
Add context, commentary, and trend analysis. Your reports should explain what is happening and what action is needed. - Test and refine
Pilot new formats or dashboards with a small stakeholder group. Collect feedback and adapt. Metrics are most useful when they evolve with business needs.
“But That Won’t Work Here…” and Other Reporting Myths
“We don’t have time to change how we report.”
You’re already spending time building reports. Shifting to a smaller set of focused, automated metrics will save time in the long run — and produce insights people actually use.
“Our leadership only wants the standard KPIs.”
That may be true today, but often it’s because they’ve never seen better. Show them metrics that link to risk, cost, or user satisfaction and see how quickly the conversation changes.
“Our tools don’t support advanced reporting.”
Start simple. You don’t need enterprise analytics platforms to move in the right direction. Even basic dashboards can be improved with narrative and better alignment to goals.
This is your call to take action!
Are your current metrics helping people make better decisions, or are they being ignored? At BRC, we help organisations move beyond reporting for the sake of reporting and focus on metrics that truly matter.
Our “Meaningful Metrics” workshop is designed to help you cut through the noise, align metrics to business outcomes, and create reporting that informs action at every level.
Get in touch to explore how we can help your teams measure what counts.
