KPI targets

”Better stories, together.”

This is still the vision for Artmann Studio after the split where we separated film production and film distribution into two separate legal entities.

We updated our businesses plan in December last year with targets for revenue, profit margin, cash-flow, equity ratio and FTE. KPI targets from a business perspective and part of the annual report.

What is better stories? One answer could be, "In the eye of the beholder", but that is hard to measure.

Technical quality is easy to measure and should be part of the QA-process. Artistic quality is harder to evaluate.

Then there is a financial perspective about artistic quality. In the end, is the film profitable? If film critics love the film, but no paying audience, then we have a financial problem.

Today, we are lacking Quality KPI for film production projects, but the process are described in our film production handbooks, and partly implemented. E.g. not all productions in a consistent way.

Next, easy to measure or where we need to improve?

The biggest constraint we have is time, time is money, but also a limited resource. We must therefore assure that we are doing the right thing, as fast as possible.

Question is what to messure, and what is relevant from a business perspective.

Film production is based on projects. The classic love triangle is cost, time and quality, and you seldom get all three.

First one. cost is easy to measure as we follow up cost per project. Quality is more difficult as discussed before.

Then we have time. When we do activities on set, how long time do they take? Bottlenecks? Can we improve? Avoid doing them?

Data quality, does it matter? When shooting documentaries, the ratio of actual shots time compared to edited film time is a factor of 1:50 to 1:100 and good KPI in it self. Less footage, less time to find and select.

If we have better metadata about each clip, the editing will be faster and as a bonus, we have improved artistic quality.

Another KPI could be % of clips with meta data. If the coverage is low, then we probably need more time to find the correct clip for editing.

A third KPI could be % of technically correct clips. If too low, we have an equipment and/or skill issue to resolve.

Finally, sustainability. If you have production grants in Sweden, you must follow up on a number of sustainability targets, otherwise you have to pay back. Examples are CO2 emissions or percentage of vegetarian meals.

How does this relate to Enterprise Architecture?

Business goals, busuness. capabilities, value streams, processes, activities, information and data are all part of what we describe in our EA models. Without this, you can't measure or follow up.

The logical conclusion is that we have different types of KPIs depending on what we want to measure; business goals, processes or data quality.

What's important? Can we set targets and can we messure? Is it sometimes enough to be aware of the target, and have it as a guide?

The discussion can in it self be more valuable than an individual KPI that is easy to measure, like % number of remote employees.

Rådighet

Rådighet is a Swedish word without a direct translation to English, like smorgasbord or ombudsman.

Rådighet is the ability to maintain control and act independently when the system is no longer there to help you.

If something is critical for our society, then we need rådighet.

This is what Platinum is about. Designing whole systems that continue to work even when dependencies fail, in energy, healthcare, or defense.

Normally, when we talk about maturity, it goes up to level five — where IT systems are designed to adapt within themselves.

Rådighet starts where those models stop.

It is about managing the situation when the system breaks. A maturity level where business continuity is part of the design of the entire system.Platinum.This is something we already have in industries like nuclear power and aviation, and what we need when designing society‑critical systems.

From Rock to Platinum, where do your systems fit?

Rock — no control, only visible blocks

Ore — beginning to structure for control

Bronze, Silver, Gold — classic levels of maturity

Platinum — rådighet

I live in Skåne, in the south of Sweden.We need electricity even when it is cloudy and there is no wind. We need electricity without dependencies on external factors we cannot control.

This is rådighet in practice.

Switching the lights off

What would happen if someone pushed the switch?

The answer for my film production lies some where between I don't know, to not good at all.

The back of a napkin evaluation pf main cloud platforms is at least a start.

Microsoft Offce 365 down means no e-mail, caledrar and no Teams & Sharepoint or Copilot. Everything that is Azure goes into this big bucket.

Yamdu, our ERP is hosted i Germany by a german company. If not available, we don't know when, where, with whom and with what we would film next time.

Shared storage in cloud for media edit in FCP or other programs would be affected as well as version control. ProTools license validation in cloud. However, all media stored locally.

Sales, Finace and HR is in Visma, really, I don't know which platforms the use.

On-line banking and reporting tax authorities relies on digital access control.

Public home pages are on SquareSpace. DNS outside US for primary domain and in Sweden for secondary domain.

Next step to assess risks and mitigate them where consequences are high.

KPI's for information governance

If you want to measure , think big, startIf you want to measure, think big, start small. Avoid large complex tools, instead use Excel and some simple scripts.

Think big

For information governance, you both need to understand your process performance and the quality of the data,

This is why I have a defined two types of KPI's related to either process or data quality. An extra benefit is that I can have all KPI’s in one place.

Using DAMA and APQC (Broadcasting) as best practices, I try to find out a few valuable KPI's that are relevant for us to measure.

• Is information about customers, e.g. organizations updated regularly?

• Are projects initiated in Finance, updated into CRM, ERP (Yamdu) and all other platforms?

• Do we have duplicate individuals, crew and cast, in our ERP?

• How many businesses terms are approved per business capability?

Initially, I define a dozen of KPI's, and related them to either information objects or governance processes, except one that I took from APQC, (% of workforce working remote). If this goes to low, then we are not following our strategy.

Start small when you start to measure you KPI. Just very few.

Information quality in practice

What do we really mean with information quality? How is it relevant for your own organization?

I will explain my thinking of how to manage information quality, using my film production as example.

My standard approach is to look for best practices and DAMA is my goto reference for information governance.

Their framework describes six core categories for data quality and it is a good start.

• Accuracy

• Completeness

• Consistency

• Timeliness

• Validity

• Uniqueness

The caveat is that DAMA as a framework is generic and it is not enough for film production.

Hollywood have stringent rules for security after the Sony hack a couple of years ago. Personal information is very sensitive, especially for A-level actors. Sustainably is a must for receiving grants today and must be managed as quality. This is why I need to add more dimensions.

• Confidentiality

• Availability

• Accessibility

• Privacy

• Sustainability

What i do is combining classic governance with security policies and other important policies to support my business model. Thus, adapting DAMA to the real world.

The next question is what are the most important areas to start with for me?

• I would say availability, as film production runs on tight schedules and you must be able to shoot on time. Live broadcast is the prime example,

• Confidentiality is really important, information is not allowed to leak.

• Privacy would be the third, as we manage sensitive information. Something that makes the implementation of policies even cumbersome.

Say that we have a A-level actor in our production, his or her information would be even more sensitive then other cast.

At some stage in time, information goes from confidential to public, e.g. when you release the film, actors name will be known.

This means that data quality must be context aware, mange life cycle and we need business rules to manage both of them.

Your primary task will be to find out what type of data quality that matters for your business and the rules for them.