… Hoping to point to some future perfect day where the team was burning down faster than anticipated I added, “It’s just like when the sprint burns down faster than estimated. You pick the next story from the Product Backlog and start work on it.”

George replied “We’d never do that. We get graded on how well we complete our stories. If we have unfinished work it counts against us.”

via Integrating People, Projects, and Processes : Boomerang Measurements.

To effectively measure real value, advertisers may need to tie offline data (e.g., deposits, offline sales) to search marketing investments at the keyword/match-type level. This is not always easy to do, and can require complex technical integration. In addition, this approach means that value is generally not immediately transparent. It can take weeks, months or quarters to get a read on value when meaningful business activities take place offline. But this approach is essential in effective campaign optimization and investment decisions. I would go so far as to say that tying offline data to search performance at the keyword/match-type level is the single most important tactic that search marketers can employ to fully scale their search campaigns.

In the sourcing / vendor management world the offline data outputs range from bottom-line benefits such as realised cost savings and headcount reduction or redeployment from process improvements to customer satisfaction surveys. Getting at this data requires hard work and lateral thinking but it can be done.