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Industry KPIs to justify hiring/growing company


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Recently have switched from research and development contracting (DoD) corporations to staff augmentation/services (DoE) company whose primary contracts are under $1M labor hour contracts. As a leader in my former companies/industries, my contracts managers would average between 15-30 contracts at a time as they were mostly complex, cost-reimbursable or FFP with milestones (that constantly change due to R&D nature). This current company has over 700 active contracts with 100+ different customers. They have never had more than two contracts professionals historically but the business has nearly doubled in size in the last two years and the previous contracts professionals have all quit due to frustration. This company is the same size in revenue as my former company but had about 35x the contract volume.

The signs are obvious among the remaining department as they are vocal about burn out as they have had to work extra hours when individuals quit/while they're replaced. When growing small businesses and managing multiple different departments, I have always used my business acumen senses and listened to my people/look out for signs that the department needs to grow.

The current leadership here essentially doesn't believe the department needs more people but also has no experience with actual contracting workload (CEO). The previous 2 Directors/2 Contracts Managers quit due to frustration and they have replaced me as the Director and chose not to replace the manager, which caused a contracts admin to quit due to increase workload. 

When I had asked about volume during the interview, the company stated it had strong systems in place which is how 1 role could handle everything. What I have actually found out is the ERP system is very immature and it is held together by human glue/workers with good work ethic/attention to detail. They have asked me to provide some type of industry KPIs to show them how many people we need at how many contracts. 

I have looked at NCMI, this forum, and Google but not sure I can find consensus on how contracts leadership can use industry metrics to advocate for a larger team.

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There are no real metrics because -- as you've posted -- each company is different. 

You don't need KPIs when the situation is clearly evident for those who have eyes to see. Does your company conduct exit interviews? If so, what do they tell the company's executives?

The metrics that matter are all about attrition and retention. Those numbers speak loudly.

 

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On 10/23/2023 at 3:26 PM, here_2_help said:

There are no real metrics because -- as you've posted -- each company is different. 

You don't need KPIs when the situation is clearly evident for those who have eyes to see. Does your company conduct exit interviews? If so, what do they tell the company's executives?

The metrics that matter are all about attrition and retention. Those numbers speak loudly.

 

I conducted an informal exit interview with the employee to help my hiring process for the replacement as this is my first hiring decision since taking on this role. The feedback was the same that she had been telling me. Burned out, wanted WFH, and felt overworked. You bring up a good point about brining up attrition and retention rates for the department.

Still, I will be forced to come up with KPIs due to the CEO/COO having no contracting background and coming from program management backgrounds. I plan to track current open contracts, current contracts that need to be closed, mistakes on contracts, contract turn around time, percentage of contract management automated, contract compliance rate, customer satisfaction, backlog, etc just to provide the data. However, the data is irrelevant for hiring and justifying people.

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  • 1 month later...

The basic catalogue of metrics I refer to when measuring a process include these:

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Then you want to identify the leading and lagging indicators on the processes that you're executing and measuring.  Improving throughput and time (moving things through faster) can result in an increase in defects, for example.

I don't exactly know what is meant by contract "manager."  Our business has (1) engagement or project managers, who oversee delivery, and then (2) contracting professionals who award subcontracts, review Ts and Cs in contracts awarded to us and proposed changes to Ts and Cs when we award to subs, review solicitations for FAR clauses that we'll have trouble adhering to, updating reps and certs, etc.  I'm assuming the latter group of actions is what you're referring to as the work of your "contracts managers."  There are detailed processes that this group executes, triggered by new awards, new option periods, new RFQs being issued, etc.

Taking that catalogue of metrics and applying it to your processes, and by comparison to the processes of your former company, might yield some insights.  I looked around on line and couldn't find anything that would monetize yields, as in "cost of contracting." (That's "outputs," = contracts, over "inputs" = labor spent.)  Happy to dig in a little more offline if you wish.

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