Developing Key Performance Indicators using the Delphi technique

Abstract

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) serve as steering wheels which help to direct the resources of organisation to facilitate coordinated improvement on their levels of effectiveness, productivity, customer satisfaction, achieve their goals and gain competitive advantages. The KPIs are either adopted from generic list or mutually developed between the relevant stakeholders. The resulting KPIs developed from this mutual cooperation are the product of the consensus of opinions garnered from the anonymous opinions of the participants. The need to develop KPIs through consensus building effort gave rise to the use of the Delphi technique which allows participants to interact with a common subject anonymously; the end result can be trusted for addressing the purpose of the research. This technique was adopted for the development of operational KPIs for measuring the performance of the Facilities Management unit of a Higher Education institution in South Africa. The findings revealed that the developed KPIs was classified into categories which serve as guide to the service provider on how to invest its resources to achieve improved performance, customer satisfaction and the goals of the institution.

Keywords: Customer satisfaction, Delphi technique, Facilities Management, Key Performance Indicators, Service provider