You cannot manage what you cannot measure

Unlimited Shared hosting & Unlimited Disk Space from $5.95 - Dreamhost
Solid Managed VPS with 4 IP's from $60 - Liquid Web
Lightning Fast Dedicated Servers & 1GB RAM from $149 - Liquid Web
#1 Domain Registration with WHOIS Privacy - Just $9.95

This web hosting review was started by Steve-Hostirian on 2009-04-17 15:07:10:

I stumbled across this phrase as I was reading about managing power consumption in data centers, and it occurred to me that this applies to all facets of business. Of course, some companies take measuring to extremes, right down to how many times their employees visit the restrooms. Yipes! My sister worked for a well known firm in St. Louis that allowed six recorded incidents per year before automatic termination, of those being one minute late punching into the time clock - didn’t matter if you were 20 minutes early 4 of 5 days each week.

What is measureable in business?

In a simple answer - everything is measureable. How you manage those measurements often determine the success of your business.

How does measuring relate to the web hosting industry?

Analytical programs reflect the strengths and weaknesses of our websites. The value we present to our prospects can be reflected in the average length of time visitors remain on our sites, how many unique visitors we attract, the keywords or phrases they used to find our sites, what they clicked through to, whether they bookmarked our site, and countless other measureable queries.

Measuring across the board

Measurements are done in:

Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Profit and Loss Statements

Balance Sheets

CPU and RAM Performance

Network Saturation

Firewall Analysis

eCommerce Conversion Ratios

Where I see a need for more attention to measurement in many buinesses

Shows

Analyzing show results and following up (promptly) with everyone who visited your booth. What was their interest - what drew them to you? If there’s any match for your service, set up an appointment to visit their business first (not yours). Let them open up opportunities for you. Showing interest in their business increases the odds that they’ll reciprocate.

Networking Events

Analyzing networking events - instead of just going for the meal and exchange of business cards, work on spreading the word. This essentially means to break away from your group and introduce yourself to other groups at these events. Log every business card and send them a personal, “I’m glad we had the opportunity to meet” postcard or memo. Meet them again for lunch, one-on-one. You’d be amazed how many business decisions are made over lunch.

Everything about your business is measureable

I’ve only scratched the surface here. We could go on about how measurements relate to disaster recovery, network monitoring, load balancing, power consumption, space and bandwidth allotments, and so much more.

As always, the best in your business

- Steve

Join in on the original post at Hosting Discussion, read more unbiased web hosting reviews or view our recommended web hosts.