Level 4: Defining Impact Objectives

To better understand the impact that was desired, Hansen met with the CEO, the executive vice president of sales and
marketing, and the executive vice president of operations. In a brief interview, she explored expectations of the meeting and
asked about specific impact measures, such as revenue, market share, profits, efficiencies and customer satisfaction.
With stakeholder input, business impact data was provided for three major categories for improvement: new auto policies,
revenue of all products (excluding new auto policies and new customers) and new customers.

After full implementation and within six months, the following should occur:

1. New policies for automobile insurance should increase by 10 percent (annualized).
2. Revenue of all other products should increase by 5 percent (annualized).
3. New customers should increase by 5 percent (annualized).

After full implementation and within one year, the following should occur:

4. Market share in the area should increase by at least 1 percent.
5. The customer satisfaction rating should increase by 2 percent.

Working your Plan
After meeting with key stakeholders and senior executives, Hansen was satisfied that she
had the proper focus. Now, the meeting could be designed and planned around very specific
objectives. These were then used as a roadmap to measure the success of the meeting
across multiple levels of impact.

Planning is only half the journey, though. Implementing your plan to achieve desired
objectives is the next step. Hansen realized that she had important challenges ahead. She
had to prepare the attendees for the goals of taking action after the meeting, securing results
and providing data. She realized that the data must come from the individual agents, as it
would be difficult to track the measures from headquarters. She decided that prior to
attending the conference, each agent would be asked to identify at least two business impact
measures (of the five) to improve after the conference. Ideally, each agent would set
measures for all five impact measures.

Agents were provided with a conference agenda beforehand with detail on the discussion
topics, as well as the pre-determined objectives. After reviewing the objectives, content and
list of speakers, the agents selected measures that they could improve based on the
anticipated meeting content.

Contacting the agents ahead of time created expectations, Hansen realized, and having them
set specific goals seemed like an extra effort — a step that might have previously been
considered unnecessary. However, the more she thought it through, the more she began to
realize that this could be an important step in the process — it would keep the meeting
focused and ensure that action was taken and results achieved.

This case study illustrates the importance of setting specific, measurable objectives across
multiple levels for each meeting. Identifying desired results at each level of evaluation will
address basic questions regarding program success. By planning to report outcome data at
all levels, you’ll have the information you need to explain to sponsors or funders why you
achieved the results you did and how you can improve them in the future.

So what was the result? In January, we’ll take things to the next level — level 5 of ROI
analysis, that is — so stay tuned for a discussion of how Hansen set objectives for ROI, the
actual calculation she made and (drum roll, please) the return CIC got on its investment.

                                                                              ###

Jack Phillips, Ph.D., who holds a doctorate in human resource management, is chairman and founder of the ROI Institute which represents over 30 years of experience in measurement and evaluation of training, human resources and technology.

Contact: jack@roiinstitute.net
Tel: (502) 678-8101

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