By establishing clear goals for your technology transformation, you also create a framework for evaluating the impact of the solutions you adopt. You may be surprised to learn how often those results are expressed in impressive dollar amounts.

Getting this done means developing metrics to monitor your technology’s performance. Putting the right technology metrics in place can help you:

• Discover where you’ve been under-invoicing, overpaying vendors, or haven’t been tracking discounts included in vendor contracts;
• Uncover losses incurred due to lax oversight of inventory; and
• Determine emerging needs and target future investments.

“An effectively implemented inventory system will save a distribution or manufacturing owner tens, or sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in losses,” says Julie Goldman, founder and CEO of The Original Runner Company, which makes aisle runners for weddings.

Take, for example, inventory metrics. “One of the things we’re looking at right now is an inventory barcoding system that would work directly with our sales program, so that we can see what we’re selling versus what’s going out the door,” she says. “We always are looking at those numbers. Inventory is critical to understanding how the sales numbers work, how much is coming in, and how much is going out. That’s one of the areas I’m trying to drill down into more, to make sure we’re as efficient as possible and that I’m not letting inventory sit and not sell.”

If your technology isn’t delivering that level of performance, you’re leaving some of your company’s productivity and profitability potential untapped.

Read the third guide in our Connections to Growth series, The Power of Transformative Technology, to learn how metrics and benchmarking can give you the data you need to grow.