Outcome Engineering: The Key to Success

Organisations purchase and implement technology or cloud solutions on the assumption they will deliver a benefit. Much energy and effort is expended in getting the solution up and running. In contrast, the steps required to realise the business benefit were historically not given sufficient attention. In recent months we’ve seen organisations wanting to address this issue but not understanding how to go about it.

Crucially, business outcomes aren’t achieved automatically. A focused and systematic approach is required. Organisations must define the specific goals they hope to achieve and the activities required to achieve them. Our experience is that Outcomes Engineering is the best way of approaching this. What is Outcomes Engineering? It is defined as the ability to systematically deliver customer outcomes in the form of meaningful and measurable business impacts.[1]

The starting point is to capture the Business Outcomes the solution is expected to deliver. Why was the solution purchased? What will constitute success? There will almost certainly be a gap between where the organisation is at present, and the desired future state. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) articulate this gap and turn business goals into specific targets with realistic timelines. An example of a KPI is “reduce average time-to-repair by 20% within 3 months of go live”. Using this approach to defining outcomes makes them actionable and achievable.

Once the KPIs are captured then the gap between the organisation’s current state and the KPI is understood. The next step is to define the strategy to close the gap. This strategy may include executive sponsorship, change management, communications, learning, coaching, process definition and policy change dimensions.

Business outcomes are only achieved when the solution is widely and appropriately used. A key barrier may well be resistance to change. Organisations must therefore get buy-in from users to benefit from the solution. That is done by placing emphasis on solution adoption. This has a much higher chance of success if users fully understand the reason the organisation is changing and internalise the benefits for them personally. In addition, users must have confidence when using the solution.

Typically, Business Outcomes are not achieved overnight. It’s therefore important to measure progress toward reaching KPIs with metrics and analytics. Usage data gives the organisation a picture of how users are using the technology; can indicate when further change management or adoption remediation is required.

Technology can be a hefty investment, so it only makes sense that organisations want to see a return on that investment. Outcomes Engineering provides organisations with a disciplined and rigorous approach to getting measurable, and provable results. We expect that more organisations will embrace it in the next twelve months as they look to achieve their business outcomes.

[1]  Video: “What is Outcome Engineering?” https://www.tsia.com/blog/video-outcome-engineering