An effective metrics program can ensure IT performance success - Digital Perspectives - information technology

Healthcare Financial Management, Nov, 2001 by Mark Budd, Christine Malcolm

10. Internet/intranet sessions. The number and types of Internet/intranet sessions should be monitored to assess utilization, with target usage rates established for business-related activities (eg, 100,000 user sessions per month in the employee human resources portion of the intranet).

11. Physician access/utilization. The number of physicians accessing the clinical information system and the frequency of access on a monthly basis should be tracked to measure physician satisfaction with the system.

Help Desk

12. Time to answer phone calls. A target should be set for the time it takes the help desk to answer phone calls (eg, 80 percent of calls answered within 30 seconds).

13. First-call resolution. A target should be set for the percentage of problems resolved during a customer's first phone call (eg, 60 percent).

14. Call abandonment rate. A limit should be established for the percentage of callers who hang up before the help desk answers (eg, between 2 and 10 percent).

15. Process e-mail/intranet service requests. A target should be set for responding to user requests submitted by e-mail or the intranet (eg, within 24 hours of receipt).

16. Help desk calls per user. The number of calls received per user should be compared with standards issued by the Help Desk Institute (http://www.helpdeskinst.com) for expected ranges of calls per user (ie, 0.25 to 0.35 calls per user per week).

Desktop

17. Problem resolution time. A target should be set for the rate of desktop problem resolution (eg, more than 80 percent resolved within one business day). If severity codes are used, different targets will be needed for each code.

18. Password updates. A target should be set for responding to requests for password updates (eg, 95 percent of requests resolved within 30 minutes).

19. New user accounts creation. A target should be set for responding to requests for new accounts and completion of new accounts (eg, 95 percent of requests answered within two hours and completed in less; than two days).

20. Installation time. A target should be set for the time it takes to install equipment after it is received (eg, 95 percent of equipment fully installed within three days).

File Servers/Midrange/Mainframe

21. Platform system availability As with network and application availability, limits should be set for platform system down time (eg, 1 percent).

22. Disk-space usage. Disk-space usage should be monitored and compared with system capacity.

23. System backup. Backup systems should be monitored daily to evaluate the success of incremental backups and weekly to evaluate full backups, and targets should be set for successful backups (eg, 95 percent).

24. Security compliance. Systems should be monitored for compliance with security standards and reports issued on incidents of noncompliance.

25. Restoration of files. Targets should be set for restoration of lost files (eg, response to 90 percent of requests within one hour, and complete restoration of files for 80 percent of requests within 40 hours).