Best Practices

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BEST PRACTICES · 03.

July 2015

KPIs: Monitoring the


Performance of Document
Control
‘KPIs’ stands for ‘Key Performance Indicators’ and it is a type of performance
measurement. It evaluates the success of an activity, and in our case we can use
them to monitor the efficiency and performance of Document Control in an
organisation.

Defining KPIs
To work with KPIs, we must start by defining the KPIs that are relevant to our group
(Document Control), but also to the specific organisation we work for (for example,
KPIs can be different whether you work in a project or non-project environment).

To define the relevant KPI, the starting point would be to answer questions such as
‘What is important for us in this organisation?’ and ‘What do we want to achieve?’

The idea will be to define the KPIs and then to monitor the performance against
each of the KPIs.

How to find the right set of KPIs


As many things in Document Control, it is not possible to use the same set of KPIs
and statistics for all the companies and all the situations.
The reason for that is that every company has a different Document Control
system (including different procedures, workflows, processes, tools, organisation
and software packages).

Therefore defining KPIs has to be a customized approach. Transposed to the


Fashion industry, it's a "designer's house" approach, and not a "ready-to-wear"
approach. There is no "one-size fits all" in Document Control, especially with KPIs.

So how to find the right set of KPIs? Start by sitting down and try answering the
following questions:
 What are the main objectives of Document Control in this Company?
What is the reason why there is Document Control in this Company? (for
example, the high level management wants to: monitor effectively the
progress of project or avoid safety incidents or increase production by
increasing productivity, etc)

 What are the KPIs of my main "clients"/stakeholders? (for example, my


main internal stakeholder is the Project Manager, and his/her KPIs are about
delivering the project on time and on budget).

 Then try and think about how can Document Control help them to
achieve these KPIs? and what kind of data would be useful for your
stakeholders? (for example, if the Project Manager wants the project to be
delivered on time, I can monitor the percentage of late documents, or the
percentage of documents we issue on time)

 Finally, try and also think about what kind of performance indicators
you can monitor to show the added value of the Document Control
Group: for example, percentage of documents rejected when not seen by
the Document Control team first compared to percentage of documents
rejected when seen by the Document Control team
Document Control Specific KPIs
In the Document Control area, different types of KPIs can be used. For example:
 Performance indicators to measure the performance of the Document
Control Group

o Average time to respond to queries

o Incoming document: Average time between receipt of a


document and validation (or rejection) of the delivery (includes
quality checks on documents)

o Incoming document: Average time between acceptance of a


the document delivery and distribution of documents to
stakeholders

o Percentage of users having been trained to the DC


procedure and processes

o Percentage of users having been trained to the DC software


package

o After a review cycle: Average time between close-out of the


review and distribution of comments to relevant party (author, or
external company)
 Performance indicators to measure documentations' performance & status:

o Percentage of documents rejected due to quality /


compliance issues

o Percentage of documents rejected by clients (for document


control related reasons)

o Percentage of late documents

o Average review time

o Percentage of documents in the various statuses (for


example: x% of documents in "Issued for Review", x% of
document in "Issued for Construction", etc)

o Return Codes received from Client


Example of a Document Control KPIs Dashboard:

A good set of KPIs also helps anticipating issues and problems, as well as avoiding
recurrent Document Control problems and issues.

In that sense too, their are critical to maintain a good Document Control practice.
Challenges
The challenge with KPIs is two-fold: First, defining the right KPI can be difficult. But
in addition, there is no point defining KPIs if they cannot be easily monitored.

Special attention should indeed be given to the monitoring aspects when designing
the KPIs: for example, any KPI being about an ‘average time’ means that you should
have the means to easily measure this time (for example using data tracked in your
EDMS, or helpdesk/ticketing software package).

To monitor KPIs a good level in MS Excel can be very useful for Document
Controllers. We have published a video tutorial on useful Excel functions that you
can find here:
 Video tip: Useful Excel Functions for DC Reports
Using KPIs to monitor one's performance

KPIs can be used to monitor performance and to ensure a fair assessment of the
performance of Document Controller, as we have been discussing here. Assessing
fairly the performance starts with setting fair objectives.

You cannot indeed assess the performance of an individual if the objectives were
not set and communicated clearly first and in advance. Typically, at the beginning of
the year, objectives are set and they are assessed at the end of the year. One of the
situations where people do not feel that they have been evaluated fairly is in fact
situations where there were no real individual objectives set first. KPIs can be used
to set S.M.A.R.T. objectives and to assess performance fairly.

Good to know
The Consepsys 'Advanced Document Control Training Course' is going into more
details about KPIs, statistics and reporting.

Video tip on designing reports


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Fair assessment of performance

Avoiding recurrent Document Control problems

Is efficiency a luxury or a necessity?

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Write a comment
Comments: 1
 #1

Leigh (Wednesday, 27 November 2019 23:56)


Good article.
Do you have any article on how to measure productivity of document
control?

 #2

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