Blog · Board and management reporting · Telecoms and connectivity
The ten sales KPIs a B2B telecoms or managed services provider should run on, each with its formula, the export it comes from and what it tells you: estate currency, site penetration, product attach per site, renewal calendar coverage, order to activation time, sites near capacity, revenue retention at renewal, orphan and ghost services, account contact recency, and customer concentration. Also the three measures most providers miss, the figures to drop, the identities, and who owns what.
A telecoms provider serves customers with many sites, on contracts that run for years, from records that drift away from what is actually billed. The measures that matter start with getting the estate right.
| # | Measure | Formula | Export | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Estate currency | Services agreeing on estate and billing ÷ distinct services on either, per account | Estate record; billing file | Whether the account plan describes reality |
| 2 | Site penetration | Customer sites served ÷ customer total sites | Estate record; customer site list | Sites served by a competitor |
| 3 | Product attach per site | Products at the site ÷ products relevant to a site of its type | Estate record; billing | Connectivity-only sites |
| 4 | Renewal calendar coverage | Contract value ending in 12 months with an owner, a plan and a recent contact ÷ value ending | Contract file; CRM | End dates nobody has in view |
| 5 | Order to activation time | Median days from order to live service, against quoted, per customer and product | Order and provisioning system | Customers let down by delivery |
| 6 | Sites near capacity | Sites with peak utilisation above the threshold for a sustained period | Usage data | Upgrade conversations before the complaint |
| 7 | Revenue retention at renewal | Renewed contract value ÷ prior value, for contracts due; repricing separated from scope | Contract file | Price given away to retain |
| 8 | Orphan and ghost services | Billed and not on estate; on estate and not billed; count and value | Estate record; billing file | Unmanaged revenue; wrong records |
| 9 | Contact recency by revenue | Revenue of accounts with a two-way contact within cadence ÷ revenue | CRM; billing | Accounts heard from only when something breaks |
| 10 | Customer concentration | Top ten customers' share of recurring revenue | Billing | Dependence |
Every one of these is computed per account, per account manager and segment, and in total, and every one carries an identity that must hold before the table is shown.
Estate currency. Reconciling estate to billing is done at renewal, in a hurry, when it costs most.
The renewal calendar. A thirty-six month contract signed by a predecessor ends next quarter and is on no one's list.
Activation delays. Owned by delivery, invisible to sales, remembered by the customer.
An account has fourteen services on the estate and fourteen on the bill. Twelve match. Two are ghosts, including a circuit ceased six months ago and still on the account plan. Two are orphans, including a mobile bundle of $1,250 a month sold by a partner. Currency is 12 of 16: 75 percent. The contract ends in five months, and the renewal quote has been prepared from the estate record.
Number of connections. A broadband line and a gigabit circuit counted alike.
Orders taken. Activated, on time, is what the customer experiences.
Average revenue per account, alone. Penetration and attach explain it.
| Table | Must hold |
|---|---|
| Estate | Estate services = matched + ghosts; billed services = matched + orphans |
| Sites | Customer sites = served + unserved + unknown |
| Contracts | Contracts ending = renewed + lost + in negotiation + not yet contacted |
| Orders | Orders = activated on time + activated late + open + cancelled |
A table whose identity fails is a table with a row missing or counted twice. It is not shown until it is fixed.
| Measure | Owner | Reviewed |
|---|---|---|
| Renewal calendar coverage; contact recency | Account managers; sales director | Monthly |
| Estate currency; orphans and ghosts | Sales operations with billing | Monthly, with the billing run |
| Order to activation; sites near capacity | Delivery; account managers | Weekly to monthly |
| Site penetration; attach; retention at renewal; concentration | Sales director | Quarterly |
A measure with no owner is a metric, not a KPI; see KPI versus metric versus measure.
Ten measures from billing, the estate record, provisioning and the contract file. Reconcile the estate first, put every end date on a calendar, and watch the activations. Covirage computes all of them from the exports telecoms providers already produce, files only, with the definitions stated and the identities checked. See Covirage for B2B telecoms providers.
The share of services that the estate record and the billing file agree on, over every distinct service on either. The estate is what the account team believes the customer has; billing is what the customer is charged for. They drift apart by a service or two a month on a large account. At 75 percent currency, a quarter of the account plan is wrong.
Customer sites with at least one service from the provider, over the customer's total sites, from the customer's own site list, public data or what account managers record. A retailer with 300 stores where 90 have the provider's connectivity is 30 percent penetrated, and the other 210 are served by someone else. Product attach then asks what each served site takes.
Because a customer who waited ninety days for a circuit that was quoted at thirty remembers at renewal, and orders the next site from someone else. Order to activation per customer, against what was quoted, by product, shows which accounts have been let down by delivery and need a conversation before the contract ends.