As some may know I have been a Business Intelligence professional for over 12 years now. Most of this has been done for the banking industry but I have also spent some time in the mortgage and packaging industry also. In the past year or so I really started thinking more about the idea of what I like to call "Church Intelligence". I am going to do what will probably be a 2 or 3 part series on this due to the amount of information we could possibly get into.

Churches now more than ever are being run like a company. I don't think that is a bad thing, as churches continue to grow they need to not just keep track of data they capture but they need to understand it. That is where the intelligence comes into play. 

For example, many churches track attendance but how many take the step to understand the congregation? What are the demographics? Age, location/distance to and from church, do they attend bible study or just worship, what style of worship do they prefer? (Assuming you offer multiple services.)

In the business world we look at KPI's or Key performance indicators of the business, the metrics you are trying to measure, let me give you a more in depth explanation. The following is from a business perspective but if it gets over your head or makes your head spin around don't worry, we will break it down to make more sense out of it for Churches.

Here we go: 

A measure is quantifying something you can observe, like how many people opened a checking account if you are a bank, or how many people purchased a specific product if you are in retail.

Tip: Make sure the “thing” is specific enough to be a measure.

A performance measure quantifies an important result, that impacts an organizations success. These are usually taken over a period of time so that you can track trend.

Metrics and indicators are measures too. They indicate the extent to which something is happening. They are not always specific but bring you to the next step of saying this is not data, it is knowledge.

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are measures too.  KPIs are the most important measures for an organization, usually having the most value for impacting success, or change.

A target is not a goal or a performance measure but a value that represents a level at which you want performance to be. If you have a performance measure that tracks products sold, then a target for that measure is also an average number of products. But while your measure shows what you currently have your target would show an improvement on that.

If you are ready then go read Part 2.