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Do you manage teams and responsible for their outcome and answerable to your customer and to your internal leadership directly?
then you shall present a Quarterly review to your stakeholders…
A QBR is a quarterly review meeting you hold with your customers or stakeholders
- What is a QBR?
- Why is it needed?
- Who attends it?
- What should you discuss in a QBR?
- Some of the Do’s and Donts in a QBR?
What is a QBR?
In simple words, It’s a quarterly review with your customers updating them about the business you performed for them and telling them what you achieved during the past quarter and your plans to improve in the upcoming quarters and how are you going to achieve and add value to their business.
Why is QBR needed?
Ideally, your clients expects you to consistently showcase them the value you have provided during the past quarter and share them thought provoking observations about their own customers in a forum where all their senior management and the executives are present.
It includes the metrics you have performed and areas you are struggling and an opportunity to show them how you will improve in the upcoming months plus people involved, projects created and some high level charters
These reviews bridge the gap and provides value to the stakeholders. it is an opportunity for them to listen what the end user thinks about their products and actions they must take to improve and support you to be successful.
Who attends it?
Senior Management and C-level executives from your internal and external organization, and the respective cross functional teams directly impacted by your results.
You must involve your own key team members who are part of your management team – this helps them to understand the priorities first hand
Also it depends upon your customer, as they may include their other vendors who may provide similar services like you. Well it could be a pretty competitive forum to showcase and compare how each of their vendors perform and learn the best practices from each other.
it could be strategically arranged as well.
What should you discuss in a QBR?
I am sure the respective organizations shall have a clear agenda on what must be covered during this forum as this includes the senior management from both the sides.
It must be a very well planned event, in my organization we used to have dedicated calendars prepared and start involving the key members to prepare the analytics and hold several internal reviews before the final one
Here are some of my suggestions while you prepare for a QBR
- To start with – share the celebrations or your internal activities you had within your team – like the Annual party, Ramp awards, celebrations you conducted like Women’s day – can be anything this will showcase the culture you are trying to build while working which also showcases the efforts you put to take care of the project and the people involved in it
- Pending actions from last quarter: share the action items discussed during the last quarter and the status, this showcases the importance you have provided towards the feedback shared in the earlier meetings
- Executive Summary should contain
- Highlight the Initiatives you took during the quarter (include the projects you have been working on and add an immediate slides to showcase the achievements)
- Challenges you faced
- Focus Area for next quarter
- Previous Quarter Metrics:
- Deep dive on the contractual metrics in detail and share action plans to improve, if you have done a great job then share reasons on the factors or people who helped you to achieve these results
- Ensure there is no dispute with the numbers and it matches with the customer – involve your analytics team to coordinate and get the data and facts ready to avoid any discrepancy in the presentation you share
- Plans for the next QBR including goals to improve and Projects you are working on
- Highlight the bottlenecks or support needed from Senior management level
If you manage a Customer Services Operations team, from metrics perspective you must include
- Call & Email Volumes your supported on a regional level
- Customer Satisfaction (detailed analysis on your Positive/Negative/Neutral customers)
- Reopen analysis
- Escalations – why, RCA, and corrective actions to improve
- Cycle Time Attainment etc
- Abandonment Rate
Do’s and Donts in a QBR
Do’s
- Prepare the topics you want to share in advance, practice and take inputs from your team
- Review the data in advance and ensure there is no disputes before presenting to the senior forum
- Involve your key team members
- involving them gives them the confidence what needs to be achieved
- they will coach teams on the expected results and work on the actions proactively
- Share the projects you are working on and plans, especially the people behind it as it will give confidence to your stakeholders
- Celebrate your successes and share it with the larger forum
Donts
- Never go to the meeting without preparation
- Collect required data and analysis without it might backfire and bring negative experience to you and your entire organization
- Say what you can do and never overcommit or agree without valid analysis.
- If you are not sure with any of the information take time to analyze (ensure to reach back them as you promised)
For SME’s/team leaders who are aspiring to become a PMP or an existing manager facing hurdles, my personal recommendation is to study for PMP Certification this course provides you the foundation on
- People – soft skills required to run the projects smoothly
- Process – technical aspects
- Business environment – connection between projects and organizational strategy
personally, this course helped me to improve my operations and my understanding towards the above foundations better.
Conclusion
Quarterly business review helps your stakeholders to understand your teams performance, team culture and the value you are trying to bring to their business.
More importantly this is a great forum to get the visibility your team deserves.
Do you conduct QBRs in your organization, what are the top challenges you face while doing it. please share your comments below