What are case studies?
Case studies share what people and organisations have learned from delivering or developing a project or programme. They can help you to see what has worked on the ground and can give you ideas about how to tackle problems. They can also signpost you to people and organisations you may want to talk to.
Key contact
Pauline Larsent
Research and Strategy Consultant
Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area
Tel: 00 1 416 597 0255
Email: plarsen@downtownyonge.com
In a nutshell
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) have become an essential part of town centre management. For the management of an area to be strategic - with performance being monitored as it evolves - identifying trends and comparing aspects of your centre to others is necessary. Furthermore, comprehensive data on your town centre can give investors, consumers and partners confidence of the vision they are buying into.
Town centre performance management can be defined as:
Using comparative and longitudinal data, performance management enables place managers to create, monitor and adapt strategies to align a location's objectives with the needs of its stakeholders.
The issues addressed
This is the second of three case studies, developed in partnership by the Scottish Centre for Regeneration and Association of Town Centre Management, is designed to help Town Centre Managers (TCMs) deal with three particular issues when it comes to using KPIs:
- benchmarking your town centre against others
- ensuring the long term use of KPIs
- informing your retail planning
Although the context in which each town operates is unique, there will be much in common between the underpinning principles of these three case studies and the issues all TCMs face when developing a programme for KPIs.
To demonstrate these common issues and to build knowledge of progressive international approaches to using KPIs, this second case study comes from Toronto's Downtown Yonge, with the other two case studies focusing on Washington DC and Fife.
Long-term data collection: Downtown Yonge's vision for sustainability
About Downtown Yonge business improvement area
The Downtown Yonge Business Improvement District (BID) was formed to revitalise the heart of Toronto City Centre on June 26, 2001 by the former Yonge Street Business Association. The spine of the BID is Yonge Street, the major north-south road through, not only the city, but through the greater region.
Need to professionalise through data collection
In recent years, the operations behind Downtown Yonge have been growing in sophistication. With this growth there has become a greater need for the team to quantify their work, both to monitor the quality of their efforts to improve Toronto and to provide clear evidence to their members of the effective use of funding.
A dedicated Research and Information function was created in 2007, to formalise both data collection and research for the BID, and from the outset, this function was closely linked to the BID's strategy processes.
Using specialist knowledge from their areas of expertise, data is identified by Downtown Yonge's staff. The management team then use a broad range of private and public data sources to collate the KPIs, including sources such as Statistics Canada, the city of Toronto and the BID's own internal sources. The data strands are brought into a central point to help produce an Information Tool Kit and are used to develop an informed strategy.
KPIs can have two applications: an internal one, for strategic purposes, and an external one, for communicating successes and challenges to the BID's stakeholder group.
Indeed the BID has collected data in some form since 2002, but in a more comprehensive fashion since around 2006. From 2007, the idea of sustainable, reliable time series data started to take shape.
The sustainable approach
What has been unusual in the case of Downtown Yonge is the deliberate attempt to put in place a foundation which can allow for the comprehensive collection and dissemination of data for years to come.
This foundation has been produced through the careful consideration and implementation of a number of activities including:
Ensuring that data is not published prematurely
Downtown Yonge acknowledged that the early publication of isolated data sets can be ambiguous in terms of determining how representative they are. Unrepresentative data could lead to inaccurate assessments of Toronto's performance.
Despite demand for instant information from expectant stakeholders, the BID team opted to build a database progressively starting with a few key KPIs and expanding over time allowing for trends and patterns to emerge, before publishing to avoid misinterpretation and to allow time for the system to be adequately reviewed.
Developing a methodology to provide consistency over many years
Consistency is very important when collecting data from one year to the next. If longitudinal comparisons are to be made then datasets must be comparable - but as staff change, ensuring consistency is a big challenge.
Recognising this challenge, Downtown Yonge have sought a sustainable approach by working closely with a local academic from Ryerson University to devise and build a methodology which can be followed regardless of staff changes.
The resulting procedure for data collection and analysis can be implemented consistently creating a process which is system dependent and not dependent on specific individuals.
Also, only a limited number of staff have access to the KPI database to change data, although all staff have access to a read-only version. The aim is to ensure the consistent input of the data over time.
Consulting with all areas of the organisation to ensure the appropriate KPIs are used
Consultation was seen as the optimal way to assess what KPIs should be collected for the different operational areas. The goal was to ensure that individual KPIs were not only appropriate and relevant, but also possible to track.
Downtown Yonge used the simple but effective tool of consultation to gather knowledge on the strands of data it should be collating. A consultation exercise with all staff members and partners with responsibility for different aspects of the performance of Toronto's commercial centre were able to feed into the methodology to give confidence that the KPIs are adequate from the outset.
Lessons Learnt
KPIs which provide TCMs with a snapshot of the performance of their area can be useful but are often misleading and become obsolete very quickly.
A continual assessment of a town will ensure that the data remains up-to-date, and will uncover trends which will allow TCMs to better manage a town centre's performance as it evolves. Unveiling trends, which is key to developing an informed strategic approach, can only be achieved by developing a sustainable evidence base over a number of years.
As the Toronto case demonstrates, this is not necessarily easy, but is possible if a sustainable infrastructure is conceived with the consultation of all key stakeholders and sound management of expectations.
What is important is that TCMs bear the issue of sustainability in mind from the outset, giving careful consideration to using resources in a way which will create consistency of data collection over many years.
Further information
- More information on Downtown Yonge is available at: www.downtownyonge.com
- For any other enquiries regarding the Yonge case study, please contact:
Pauline Larsen
Research and Strategy Consultant
Downtown Yonge Business Improvement Area
Tel: 00 1 416 597 0255
Email: plarsen@downtownyonge.com
Scottish Centre for Regeneration
This document is published by the Scottish Centre for Regeneration, which is part of the Scottish Government. We support our public, private and voluntary sector delivery partners to become more effective at:
- regenerating communities and tackling poverty
- developing more successful town centres and local high streets
- creating and managing mixed and sustainable communities
- making housing more energy efficient
- managing housing more efficiently and effectively
We do this through:
- coordinating learning networks which bring people together to identify the challenges they face and to support them to tackle these through events, networking and capacity building programmes
- identifying and sharing innovation and practice through publishing documents detailing examples of projects and programmes and highlighting lessons learned
- developing partnerships with key players in the housing and regeneration sector to ensure that our activities meet their needs and support their work
Scottish Centre for Regeneration
Scottish Government
Highlander House
58 Waterloo Street
Glasgow
G2 7DA
Tel: 0141 271 3736
Email: contactscr@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.partnersinregeneration.com
The views expressed in case studies are not necessarily shared by the Scottish Centre for Regeneration or the Scottish Government.
March 2010