Getting to results

Digital advisory boards or physical ones - you better be clear on their KPIs in advance.

According to a research done by Ignite Advisory Group you can expect 95% retention rate. According to our own numbers at Insights.US, you can also minimize your preventable mistakes by 82%. Hence, we should be measuring impact, and not participation.

Types of advisory boards

Different advisory boards would probably focus on different issues:

• Product advisory boards - will be tailored around product changes.
• Customer advisory boards - will be tailored around strategic questions.
• User advisory boards - will be tailored around user experience.
• Employees advisory boards - will be tailored around HR goals.
• Experts advisory boards - will be tailored around concrete challenges.

However, whereas the issues can vary, the KPIs cannot. We need to measure the impact of an advisory board, regardless of the questions asked.  

Two KPIs to measure

All advisory boards can be compared to each other based on two business parameters: how much money they saved, and how much revenues they generated.

Savings occur when an insight coming from an advisory board saves you time or money, by stopping you from going in the wrong direction. Revenues are generated when customers buy more services and products, because of the advisory board’s insights.

These two parameters can be measured in each of the boards: how many product insights changed our road map and saved our developers time? How much have we reduced the churn rate of customers by consulting with them on strategy?

Size matters

In order to generate tangible impact from advisory boards, they cannot be tiny. A sample of 10-15 customers is far from being representative. We should be tracking results from a few hundred customers, users or employees.