Get Started with Indicators

Key Indicators

What indicators are for, how to create one, how thresholds decide the outcome, and how responses are recorded

Contents

• 1. Introduction & Context
• 2. Key Features & Functions
  • User Input and Automated
  • Thresholds and outcomes
  • What the latest value shows
  • What to watch: metric permission
• 3. Requirements
• 4. Step-by-Step Guide
  • Creating an indicator from a record
  • Completing the form
  • Adding and editing a response
  • Linking, editing and deleting
• 5. Common Issues & Troubleshooting
• 6. Related Articles

1. Introduction & Context

Indicators are statistics used to measure current conditions and to forecast trends. In Clew they can track something outside the system, or measure something inside it, such as the number of overdue actions.

A key risk indicator, or KRI, measures the likelihood that the combined probability of an event and its consequences will exceed your organisation's risk appetite and seriously damage its ability to succeed. KRIs give you:

• Advance notice of potential risks that could damage the organisation.
• Insight into possible weaknesses in your monitoring and control tools.
• Ongoing risk monitoring between risk assessments.

A worked example. A retailer might use the number of customer complaints as a key risk indicator. A rise in that number is an early sign that an operational problem needs attention, well before it shows up anywhere else.

Typical KRIs group into three areas:

Who is it for? Every business unit should be identifying its own KRIs. The risk management team's job is to make sure every stakeholder is trained and understands the process.

What does it impact? The harder part is not picking indicators but agreeing which ones are genuinely key, and communicating the warning so everyone understands what it means and can act on it. An indicator nobody reads is not monitoring.

2. Key Features & Functions

User Input and Automated

Every indicator has a Mode, set under Reporting Details on the form. It decides where the numbers come from.

How often a response is expected comes from Response Interval and Response Interval Unit, for example every 1 day, alongside Reporting Days and the Next Report Date.

Reporting Details, with the response interval and the Mode dropdown open.

The same panel with Mode set to Automated, ready to save.

Thresholds and outcomes

An outcome is not typed in with the response. It is worked out from the thresholds you set on the indicator. Each threshold has a Lower bound, an Upper bound and the Outcome that applies to values in that band. Use Add Threshold to create one.

That is also the answer to changing the outcome options. Edit the indicator's thresholds, and the outcomes available change with them. An indicator with no thresholds records every response as No Outcome, which is why a value can look recorded but unrated.

The Thresholds table, with the Add Threshold button that creates a lower and upper band and its outcome.

What the latest value shows

The header on an indicator shows a Latest Value, with the measurement unit, for example 3.0 Occurrences. That is the value from the most recent entry in the Indicator Responses sub-panel. It is a snapshot, not a total, so it does not add previous responses together.

On a record such as a risk, the header also carries an Indicators counter, showing how many of its indicators currently sit in each outcome band.

What to watch: metric permission

3. Requirements

• Access to the register you want to save the indicator against. The registers you can see depend on your level of access.
• To respond to a User Input indicator: you need to be set as the Reporter (Assignee), who is the person Clew prompts by email.
• To set a metric on an Automated indicator: the metric permission, granted through administrative teams. Read the warning above before requesting it.

4. Step-by-Step Guide

Creating an indicator from a record

These steps use a risk as the example. Indicators can be created from, or linked to, many modules including Risk, Control, Incident, Survey, Obligation, Audit, Finding, Business Objective and Declaration. You can also work from Modules, then Key Indicators, if you would rather start from the module list.

1. Select the register you want to work in, then open the record, for example a risk.
2. Scroll to the Indicators sub-panel.
3. Click Add and choose Indicator or Key Indicator.

The Indicators sub-panel on a record.

The Add menu on that sub-panel, offering Indicator and Key Indicator.

Completing the form

The indicator form, with Business Objectives under Organisation and the reporter fields under People.

Adding and editing a response

1. Open the indicator and scroll to the Indicator Responses sub-panel.
2. Click Add Response and enter the value.
3. The response is listed with its ID, when it was created, the date measured, the interval it falls in, the outcome its value earned, the value itself, and who recorded it.
4. To change one, click its ID in that sub-panel.

An indicator, with its latest value in the header and the Indicator Responses sub-panel below.

Linking, editing and deleting

5. Common Issues & Troubleshooting

Best practices:

• Set the thresholds when you create the indicator. Values recorded before there are thresholds sit as No Outcome and tell you nothing at a glance.
• Decide which indicators are genuinely key before adding them. A long list nobody reviews is worse than a short one that gets acted on.
• Complete the description. It is what lets someone other than the author interpret the number.
• Link indicators to the business objectives they inform, so the measurement connects to what it is measuring the progress of.
• Use Automated where the data already sits in Clew, and keep User Input for things the system cannot see.
• Treat the metric permission as privileged. It returns aggregates across the whole system, outside the access groups that protect the records themselves.

6. Related Articles