The crucial role of outcome measurement in investigations

Intelligence and investigations teams are constantly seeking ways to improve the pace and efficiency of their operations. But one crucial aspect too often receives inadequate attention: the measurement of outcomes.

In our first Measuring for Success webinar as part of Clue Communities, we brought Clue users together to explore how intelligence and investigations teams can ‘set up for success’ and achieve better efficiency, increase value from data and optimise resources.

In this blog post, I reflect on talking points and dive deeper into the importance of outcome measurement, its potential benefits, and how it can be achieved using our leading intelligence and investigation management tool.

Objectives and outcomes – working backwards

Before deciding which data you want to collate in order to measure success you need to decide where you want to get to.  Which improvements do you want to see in your processes? Once you have agreed on these, you will need to map out the process.

Each of the steps within your process should be quantifiable, but to do that you will need to ensure that all the fields required to measure the outcome are mandatory.  Educating your ‘data inputters’ on the importance of the data being captured is vital to the success and accuracy of your measurements.

How to measure prevention

Quite often the objective across the investigative landscape, from Fraud to Safeguarding to Burglary, is to Prevent. But how do you record and measure something that hasn’t happened? As one of the contributors to the webinar said, ‘absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence’.

Therefore, by recording the process and measuring the outcomes you will be able to benchmark current performance. Following changes to wider business activities, management of intelligence and investigations, the impact of those changes will be reflected in the outcomes. For example, if the number of cases has declined, it could be evidence of prevention working.

Other benefits of measuring success

All business departments need to evidence return on investment (ROI). Business cases need to be written to increase resources or to invest in technology. Having the data to reinforce these business cases makes it very compelling and increases the likelihood of the investment being maintained or enhanced.

But a word of advice…know the audience and tell a story.

Displaying outcomes through reports and graphs isn’t for everyone. Most people are only interested in what the outcomes mean to them and their area of business, so understanding what drives your audience will help you convey the data in a meaningful way.

Also, tell a story. With large datasets, it can be difficult to articulate the impact of changes in processes on people. Therefore, identifying an individual case that is representative of the wider dataset can really grip the attention of the audience.

The most requested topic for the next webinar in our Measuring for Success series is ‘How to convince everyone of the value of good data?’. We will be looking at running an event exploring this at the end of September.

Clue is committed to facilitating the sharing of experiences and approaches to challenges faced by investigators across all markets and sectors through Clue Communities.

My role as Head of Communities is to encourage open dialogue and knowledge exchange. We aim to elevate the standard and consistency of standards through the collaborative effort of our communities so that organisations can benchmark their performance, learn best practices and drive continuous improvement.

Want to talk about upcoming Communities? Drop me a message.