My friends and I met up recently at a coffee shop that had a section where you could shoot darts. I got a chance to shoot some darts for the first time in my life. For some reason, I had never shot darts before. Like ever. It took some practice but eventually, I found a way to get better. Every time I threw a dart, I calculated how far it landed from the center and adjusted the subsequent throw to make up for it. It took a while and a lot of totally avoidable damage to the surrounding walls before my darts started to land right in the center. OK, "sort of" right in the center.

The most important learning here is knowing how far you're off center and making necessary adjustments to hit a bullseye. Similarly, knowing the difference between the number of requests that are supposed to be resolved in a particular time frame and the actual number that was resolved tells you how far you're off your target, and gives you an idea of the ground you have to cover. 

There are two ways in which this gap can be visually represented using advanced analytics-

1. By calculating your off target percentage

In the following report, each data point represents the percentage of requests that were not resolved in the same week as they were due. For example- 80% off target signifies that only 2 out of 10 requests were resolved in the week they were due. The lower the percentage, the closer you are to your target. Also, analyzing reasons behind your off target set could give valuable clues to avoid delays in the future. 

2. Representing the on target and off target percentage in the same report

This is a slight variation of the previous report. This includes the percentage of requests resolved on target and percentage off target 

3. By comparing your target with the actual numbers

In the following report, you have two data points for each month. The green bar represents the total number of requests that were due in a particular week. In other words, this is your target. The blue bar represents the number of requests that were actually resolved. Comparison of these two bars will show you how far you're off target. 

Steps to replicate this report yourself-

You will need these formulas to create these reports. Click here for text instructions to create formula fields. 

% Off target - ((count("Request"."RequestID")-Countif(absweek("Request"."Resolved Time")=absweek("Request"."DueBy Time")))/(Count("Request"."RequestID")))*100

% On target - ((Countif(absweek("Request"."Resolved Time")=absweek("Request"."DueBy Time")))/(Count("Request"."RequestID")))*100

On target count - Countif(absweek("Request"."Resolved Time")=absweek("Request"."DueBy Time"))

Learn more about advanced analytics