6 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) For Government Contractor Executives and Management Teams

Serving as CEO and President of OakTree Solutions, a Federal services contractor, 5000fish’s CEO, David Ferguson is well aware of the many challenges executives and management teams of government contractors face. In fact, Ferguson’s time in the trenches of government contracting fueled his desire to build Yurbi and give executives and management teams the tools they need to lead their organizations effectively.

For more than a decade and a half, Ferguson experienced the difficulty of trying to extract important business driving data from a hodgepodge of systems. As Ferguson’s business grew, project managers and Project Support Analysts (PSA) relied on him more and more for the information they needed- taking him away from higher priority tasks. If Ferguson’s experience sounds painfully familiar, you’re not alone.

The good news is, leveraging the right business intelligence (BI) tool to automate key performance indicators (KPIs) can help you tackle these and other obstacles to success, and deliver critical, real-time data right to your fingertips.

Leveraging Key Performance Indicators to Improve Company Health

Whether or not you choose to leverage a BI solution, here are six key KPIs that executives and management teams need to know to help drive their organization down the road to success.

1. Tracking Backlog
   As an executive or member of management, you’ve got a lot on your plate. Tracking backlog shouldn’t derail your productivity, but there’s a good chance it does. That’s where a BI tool can be of assistance. In addition to helping you quickly and accurately determine remaining funding on existing contracts, as well as how many option years remain, the right BI tool can present you with a clear, insightful picture of your backlog trend. Plus, using a BI tool like Yurbi to track backlog will help you quickly recognize when that critical percent of contract funds have been used and you must notify the agency. If you’re not tracking backlog, you may miss this important contractual obligation.
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2. Pipeline
   Knowing what’s coming down the pipeline is essential to the success of every Federal contractor, and the right BI tool can help executives and management teams find out without digging through layers of their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program or sorting through Excel spreadsheets. Whether you want to know the current profitability of the business, potential of future sales, or identify areas ripe for development, a BI tool may be able to help. For example, from the Yurbi dashboard, you can click a smart link that takes you directly into the relevant data from the CRM system. Enjoy the convenience and time savings of having all the data you need in one place!
3. Trend Reports
   Leveraging the right BI tool will not only help you identify month to month fluctuations in your top-line revenue, it will also give you the power to drill down into direct and indirect costs, such as General and Administrative costs (G&A), overhead, direct labor and fringe. This feature is especially helpful when a month fluctuates significantly and you want to find out why. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll gain a greater understanding of what factors are influencing your net profit and if necessary, be able to take corrective action immediately- not weeks or months later.
4. Aged Accounts Receivables
   Aged account receivables (AR) is a constant thorn in the side of executives and management teams and more often than not, they are tackling AR from a reactive position rather than a proactive one. A BI tool can’t get you paid, but it can reveal important insights that give you the power to proactively manage your organization’s financial health.

In addition to helping you determine which agencies are taking the longest to pay you and how long they typically take, a BI tool can help you track important historical trends and cycles. For example, does it take Agency X longer to pay invoices during certain time periods, such as the end of the fiscal year? With a BI tool you’ll know before panic mode strikes and be prepared to tap lines of credit or make other adjustments to ensure your organization’s health while waiting on payment.

5. Profit and Loss Per Project
   As an executive or management team, you probably already have a good idea of which projects are overperforming, underperforming, and which ones are right on track. But a BI tool can give you greater insight. By leveraging the proper BI tool you’ll also be able to quickly uncover the driving factors behind project performance, such as Other Direct Costs (ODC), labor, etc.- providing you and your project managers the opportunity to make changes and modifications that maximize the profit of each project.
6. Wrap Rate
   If you don’t have a good handle on your wrap rate you could transform what was on paper a very lucrative contract into a money-losing one. Unfortunately, this happens more often than necessary in the world of Federal contracting and one reason why is that traditionally it’s been difficult and time-consuming to accurately track wrap rate. That’s where BI can help. A BI tool can help you monitor changes in wrap rate month to month, and provide you with trend reports that give you the big picture: although you may find monthly changes in wrap rate aren’t consequential, over the course of 12 months they may be significant enough to impact project profitability.

The Bottom Line: Using a BI tool to Automate Government Contractor KPIs

We aren’t sure if Yurbi is the ideal BI tool for your organization. But, we’re confident that the right BI solution can help your organization automate KPIs- improving communication across teams and provide you with the real-time information you need to drive your organization forward.

Business Intelligence Can Benefit Government Contractor Executive and Management Teams

You may have researched BI tools before and discovered most are not only cost prohibitive and complex but also require a team of IT gurus to deploy and maintain. Things have changed. Today there are innovative BI products on the market that are not only less expensive to purchase than traditional BI tools like Microsoft, Oracle and SAP Business Objects, but also less expensive to own and much easier for your project managers and other business users to leverage.

If you’re an executive or member of a management in a government contracting firm who wants to learn more about how a BI tool may help you revolutionize efficiency, we invite you to explore Yurbi. Take a look at dashboards, consider what’s possible, and discover how Yurbi helps give you real-time access to your unique KPIs.

Click here to download “5 Productivity Strategies to Transform Your Business”