TL;DR
Ticket counts don’t prove business value. Measure IT by outcomes that a CEO, CFO, and Ops leader care about:
- Hours of downtime avoided
- Cost of incidents prevented
- Employee productivity unlocked
- Risk reduced (insurance, compliance)
- CX/NPS impact
Roll these into a single IT Impact Score (0–100) plus a monthly $ impact so everyone sees how IT protects revenue, reduces risk, and powers growth.
Why “tickets closed” doesn’t cut it anymore
“Tickets closed” is a workload metric, not a value metric. If tickets go down, did IT do a great job—or did something break silently and nobody noticed? If tickets go up, is IT failing—or is the business growing and onboarding faster? Leadership needs a score that answers a simpler question:
“How much revenue did our technology protect and enable this month?”
The five outcome pillars (and how to calculate each)
1) Revenue Hours Protected (Downtime Avoided)
What it means: How many hours of production, sales, or service did IT keep online?
Quick formula:
- Define Avg Revenue per Hour (ARH) with Finance (e.g., daily revenue ÷ 8.0)
- Downtime Avoided (hrs) = Prior period downtime − Current period downtime
- Revenue Hours Protected ($) = Downtime Avoided × ARH
Source systems: Uptime monitors, service desk major incident log, phone/point-of-sale uptime, manufacturing line PLC/SCADA trends.
Tip: If you don’t have historical downtime, use a conservative baseline (industry averages or last year’s worst quarter) and document assumptions.
2) Cost of Incidents Prevented
What it means: Expected losses you avoided because controls worked (e.g., ransomware blocked, wire fraud prevented, email attack filtered).
Quick formula:
- Expected Event Cost = Likelihood × Impact
- Use conservative likelihood (e.g., 0.5–1.0% for filtered phish that would likely fool users) and documented impact ranges (for your size/industry).
- Sum across meaningful events for the month.
Source systems: EDR/XDR, email security, firewall/IPS, SIEM, finance loss scenarios.
Tip: Align with your cyber-insurance control list; underwriters love evidence.
3) Employee Productivity Unlocked
What it means: Minutes you gave back to people by removing friction (SSO, faster logins, new laptops, workflow automation, better Wi-Fi).
Quick formula:
- Minutes saved per user per day × #users × working days ÷ 60 = Hours saved
- Productivity $ = Hours saved × Loaded hourly rate (Finance can provide)
Example: 3 min/day × 70 users × 22 days = 4,620 min = 77 hours.At $45/hr loaded rate → $3,465 of productivity unlocked.
Source systems: M365/Google login telemetry, app analytics, time-to-task studies, help desk categories.
4) Risk Reduced (Insurance, Compliance)
What it means: Tangible financial impact of a stronger security posture.
Ways to score it:
- Insurance premium impact: If your carrier gave an 8% credit on an $18k policy because of MFA/EDR/backups, that’s $1,440 saved.
- Compliance exposure reduced: Fewer gaps found in audits; tie severe findings closed to modeled loss reductions (work with your auditor/CFO).
Source systems: Insurance binders, audit reports, policy attestations, GRC tools.
5) CX/NPS Impact
What it means: Better customer (or internal user) experience due to reliability and speed.
Proxies you can trust:
- Faster response and resolution times on customer-impacting tech
- Fewer missed/abandoned calls due to phone outages
- Higher NPS/CSAT tied to a specific IT change (new portal, faster quotes, fewer POS failures)
Optional value method:
- CX $ Impact = (At-risk revenue × ΔRetention/Win rate) or conservative revenue protection from fewer missed calls/orders.
The IT Impact Score (0–100) + Monthly Dollar Impact
There are two outputs your leaders will love:
- Dollar Impact ($): Sum the five pillars’ dollars for the month.
- Impact Score (0–100): Weighted, normalized view for a quick read.
Suggested weights (tune with your CFO/CEO):
- Revenue Hours Protected: 30%
- Cost of Incidents Prevented: 25%
- Productivity Unlocked: 20%
- Risk Reduced: 15%
- CX/NPS Impact: 10%
Normalization option: Score each pillar 0–100 vs. target (agreed ahead of time), then apply weights for the overall score.
Example: One-page monthly scorecard (template)
|
Pillar |
Unit |
This Month |
Target |
Pillar $ |
Pillar Score (0–100) |
|
Revenue Hours Protected |
hrs avoided |
5 |
6 |
$27,500 (ARH $5,500) |
83 |
|
Cost of Incidents Prevented |
$ |
$18,000 |
20,000 |
$18,000 |
90 |
|
Productivity Unlocked |
$ |
$3,465 |
4,000 |
$3,465 |
87 |
|
Risk Reduced |
$ |
$1,440 |
1,500 |
$1,440 |
96 |
|
CX/NPS Impact |
$ |
$6,000 |
8,000 |
$6,000 |
75 |
|
Totals |
$56,405 |
Overall Impact Score:(83×0.30) + (90×0.25) + (87×0.20) + (96×0.15) + (75×0.10) = 86.7
In one glance: $56,405 protected/created and an 86.7/100 IT Impact Score this month.
How to adopt this in 30 days
Week 1 — Align & Baseline
- Meet CEO/CFO/Ops: agree on ARH, loaded hourly rate, and weights.
- Pick conservative baselines (last quarter or last year) and set monthly targets.
Week 2 — Instrument & Evidence
- Turn on the minimum telemetry: uptime monitoring, EDR/XDR reporting, email security stats, help desk tags for customer-visible issues.
- Create a shared evidence folder (screenshots, reports) for CFO sign-off.
Week 3 — First Draft Scorecard
- Fill the five pillars, document every assumption, and show calculations.
- Keep it to one slide in the exec deck—detail in the appendix.
Week 4 — Calibrate & Publish
- Review with Finance. Tighten assumptions, remove any double counting.
- Publish the first monthly IT Impact Score and lock targets for next month.
Common pitfalls (and how to avoid them)
- Double counting: If faster logins boosted productivity and also improved CSAT, record dollars in one pillar and note the qualitative benefit in the other.
- Optimistic assumptions: Use conservative likelihoods and impacts. When in doubt, cut values by 25–50% and document why.
- Hiding the math: Put your formulas and sources in the appendix so Finance can audit.
- Only chasing the score: The real win is the conversation it creates with leadership about what to fix next.
FAQ
How is this different from traditional IT KPIs? KPIs track activity (MTTR, ticket volume). The Impact Score tracks business outcomes in dollars and a single 0–100 score the C-suite can use to prioritize.
What if we don’t have exact data for a pillar? Start with proxies and conservative estimates (e.g., industry-average incident costs, measured login times). Improve fidelity over time.
Won’t seasonality skew the numbers? Yes—so compare against last year’s same month and use 3-month moving averages for trend clarity.
Small team—too heavy for us? You can do a “lite” version with three pillars (RHP, Incidents Prevented, Productivity). Add Risk and CX when you’re ready.
Want a one-page IT Impact Score you can present in 2 weeks? Book a 15-minute Impact Workshop with our team. We’ll help you set targets, wire up the minimal telemetry, and ship your first scorecard—no fluff, just outcomes.