Ask a leadership team whether last year’s improvement programme worked and the answer is usually a confident yes. Ask how they know, and it gets vaguer: a dashboard that changed definition halfway through, a before-and-after slide built from two different systems, a number someone remembers.
The before is usually reconstructed
Most programmes measure the after carefully and the before not at all. By the time anyone asks for a baseline, the process has changed, the data has been overwritten and the starting point has to be estimated. An estimated baseline can be argued with — so every result built on it can be argued with too.
Three rules for a baseline that holds
Name the measure and its source system — not a spreadsheet someone maintains on the side.
Take the reading before anything changes, over a period long enough to include a normal bad week.
Have it signed off by finance, in writing, before work starts.
Why it changes every decision that follows
Once the baseline is fixed, every proposal has to say how far it moves the number, and every weekly review is a comparison rather than a conversation. Priorities sort themselves. The initiatives that can’t name their effect on the baseline tend to quietly disappear.
Without a baseline there is no result — only a story.
From the work · PRV-014
Sample data
Order-to-cash cycle ·
Regional logistics operator
Before
62 days
−28 days
After
34 days
The baseline was agreed in week three; the result was measured on the same ERP export in week fourteen.
Source
Client ERP export, Q1 vs Q3 2025; reviewed by the client's CFO.
Illustrative sample data. Provan, its people, clients, figures and sources are fictional and shown for demonstration only.