“The impact of key indicators on the overall performance of Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies”

Performance management helps organizations to ensure that they are on the right path. Thus, this requires increasing the ability of organizations to understand their own key indicators to manage and measure their performance. The purpose of this study is to determine the key performance indicators used in Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies. Moreover, it examines whether these indicators im- pact the overall performance of Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies. This study adopted a quantitative method based on a survey questionnaire. Participants were reached through human resources officers in the telecommunication companies. Questionnaires were distributed to 247 employees at middle and top manage- ment levels in Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies using a convenience sampling technique. However, 212 responses were returned completely filled with a response rate of 85.8%. This study used statistical software of SPSS and SmartPLS for data analysis. The results revealed that customer satisfaction, delivery reliabil- ity, learning and growth, employee satisfaction, cost, financial performance, flexibility, and quality are the key indicators used in Saudi Arabian telecommunica- tion companies to measure performance. The results also revealed that customer satisfaction, delivery reliability, learning and growth, employee satisfaction, cost, financial performance, flexibility, and quality have an impact on the overall performance of Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies. These indicators can be used to determine the state of organizations, help measure the implementation of strategies, evaluate the organization’s current performance, design strategies for improvement, and evaluate organization’s departments and employees. al., Kraus et al., Lee D. Zamanan al., Simply, performance management helps organizations ensure that they are on the right path (Jetter et al., 2018). Meanwhile, this requires increasing the ability of organizations to understand their own key indicators in order to manage and measure their performance (Hristov Chirico, Singh et al., 2019). Key performance indicators are quantitative scales utilized to evaluate performance in achieving strategic and operational objectives (Jahangirian et al., 2017).


INTRODUCTION
Performance is an essential factor for organizations to obtain a competitive advantage, obtain assurances regarding the achievement of their goals and organizations strategies, maintain employees inside the organization, and deliver high-quality products at lower costs while boosting diversity (Aburumman et al., 2020; Kraus et al., 2020; S. Lee & D. Lee, 2022;Zamanan et al., 2020). Simply, performance management helps organizations ensure that they are on the right path (Jetter et al., 2018). Meanwhile, this requires increasing the ability of organizations to understand their own key indicators in order to manage and measure their performance (Hristov & Chirico, 2019;Singh et al., 2019). Key performance indicators are quantitative scales utilized to evaluate performance in achieving strategic and operational objectives (Jahangirian et al., 2017).
Using key performance indicators offers an incentive for the organizations to determine their condition and help measure the strategy's implementation (Moktadir et al., 2020). Key performance indicators can be used as a management tool for assessing an organization's current performance and designing improvement strategies (Jiang et al., 2020). Moreover, these indicators can be used to assess the entire organization's function, its particular divisions, and current employees (Jahangirian et al., 2017). However, the profits and market share of Saudi Arabia's telecommunication companies are shrinking over time and losing a growing number of customers (Anaam et al., 2021). As a result, Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies are suffering from significant financial losses year after year since their establishment (Kadasah, 2014). Meanwhile, there is a decrease in the overall performance of Saudi Arabia's telecommunication companies (Almuqren & Cristea, 2022;Anaam et al., 2021). However, the use of key performance indicators may contribute to ensuring that organizations are moving in the right direction, assessing the achievement of desired strategies and objectives, and evaluating and controlling the overall business processes (Ishaq Bhatti

LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES
Generally, the performance measurement process begins by defining the key performance indicators according to the nature of the organizational activity, whether it is commercial, service, or non-profit (Ishaq Bhatti et al., 2014;Singh et al., 2019). According to Carlucci (2010), key performance indicators include five main characteristics: accountability, assimilation, timely, relevant, and consistent. Accountability means that key performance indicators should be connected with the manager or team responsible for the test result. Assimilation means that key performance indicators should be quantifiable and reliable, as well as each employee inside the organization should understand their purpose. Timely means that key performance indicators should be frequently calculated which represent current priorities. Relevant means that key performance indicators should promote strategic organizational objectives. Finally, consistent means that key performance indicators should not interfere with any other measure of success (Carlucci, 2010 The contemporary view of safety explains that organizations must be able to proactively assess and manage the safety of their activities (Sarkheil, 2021). Various safety indicators significantly provide information on current organizational safety performance (Donnelly, 2022). There has also been an increasing focus on the role of indicators in providing information for use in predicting and developing organizational performance (Ma et al., 2011). Flexibility is the ability of organizations to respond to market changes within a shorter period and at a lower cost (Reichmuth et al., 2021). Flexibility reflects responding to changing customer requirements, changes in production, changes in product mix, changes in design, and changes in quantity ( , 2007). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to determine the key performance indicators used in Saudi Arabia's telecommunication companies, as well as to examine whether these indicators impact the overall performance of Saudi Arabia's telecommunication companies. Based on the above discussion, this study suggests the following hypotheses: H9: Flexibility has an impact on the overall performance of Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies.
H10: Quality has an impact on the overall performance of Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies.

Sample and procedures
This study adopted a quantitative method based on a survey questionnaire (cross-sectional study). Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies have been visited in order to gain approval to distribute the questionnaire to employees. Participants were reached through human resources officers in telecommunication companies. The study objectives and procedures have been explained through an accompanying letter describing the study and soliciting voluntary participation. However, all participants consented to partake in this study by filling out a questionnaire. The technique of convenience sampling was used to collect the data. This technique helps easily collect data from an available set of respondents, providing helpful information for answering questions and hypotheses (Karim et al., 2021). It is also the most widely used sampling technique because it is fast, uncomplicated, and inexpensive (Etikan et al., 2016).
Questionnaires were distributed to 247 employees at middle and top management levels in Saudi Arabia telecommunication companies. However, 212 responses were returned completely filled. The survey questionnaire included three sections. The first section contains the demographic information of respondents. The second section measures key performance indicators (customer satisfaction, delivery reliability, social performance, learning and growth, employee satisfaction, cost, financial performance, safety, flexibility, and quality). The third section contains items to measure overall performance.

Measures
Key performance indicators were measured by ten dimensions which were developed by Ishaq Bhatti et al. (2014), namely (1) customer satisfaction (e.g., customer loyalty index), (2) delivery reliability (e.g., perceived delivery reliability), (3) social performance (e.g., donate to the community), (4) learning and growth (e.g., number of internal promotions), (5) employees satisfaction (e.g., turnover rate), (6) cost (e.g., cost relative to competitors), (7) financial performance (e.g., net income), (8) safety (e.g., level of risk and safety perceived), (9) flexibility (e.g., expansion flexibility), and (10) quality (e.g., product features). Each dimension has three items to measure it. Respondents were required to respond to these items based on a five-point Likert scale from 1 "very high" to 5 "very low." Overall performance was measured using a scale of Khan et al. (2019). This scale includes eleven items. One of these items is "My organization quality of product/services of the organization increase within the last 3 years." Respondents were required to respond to these items based on a fivepoint Likert scale from 1 "strongly disagree" to 5 "strongly agree."

RESULTS
Data analysis started with demographic information analysis and descriptive analysis of constructs using SPSS (version 25). Then, the assessment of the measurement model and structural model was conducted using SmartPLS (version 3.3.7). As indicated in Table 1   The assessment of the measurement model included internal consistency reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Table 3

DISCUSSION
The results of this study revealed that customer satisfaction, delivery reliability, learning and growth, employee satisfaction, cost, financial performance, flexibility, and quality are the key indicators used in Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies to measure performance. These results are consistent with previous findings (   . Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies use key performance indicators to determine their current status, measure the implementation of their strategies, and evaluate the current performance of the organization. Moreover, these indicators help design strategies to improve performance, evaluate the function of the entire organization, evaluate current employees, obtain a competitive advantage, evaluate and control the overall business operations, and compare the organization's performance with other organizations inside and outside the sector. Thus, key performance indicators should form a balanced set of indicators by combining the customer satisfaction indicator against the financial performance indicator, and the cost against quality and flexibility indicator. Moreover, key performance indicators should be set in the work context, showing trends and absolute performance. Logically, when organization objectives are reviewed, the key performance indicators will change over time; thus, they must be checked and updated accordingly. The results also revealed that customer satisfaction, delivery reliability, learning and growth, employee satisfaction, cost, financial performance, flexibility, and quality impact the overall performance of Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies. Increased customer satisfaction contributes to enhancing financial performance by strengthening current customer loyalty, reducing price elasticity, lowering marketing expenses through positive word-of-mouth advertising, lowering transaction costs, and improving the company's reputation. This result is consistent with Almuqren and Cristea (2022) and Fida et al. (2020). Delivery reliability contributes to increased customer loyalty and reliability through an organization's ability to deliver products and services on a predetermined date. This result is consistent with Ahmad and Dhafr (2002) and Heckl and Moormann (2010).
Learning and growth contribute to increasing the employees' ability to be creative and innovative, through the development of new projects and products, the introduction of new technological developments into the organization's environment, the continuous increase of training courses, and the interest in the research field to increase employees' knowledge of everything new. This result is consistent with Al-Omari et al. (2020) and Alanne (2021). A high level of employee satisfaction contributes to organizational success, where if employees are satisfied, there will be satisfied customers. On the other hand, it seems logical that those employees who enjoy a higher level of satisfaction have a high intention to stay longer in the job with a higher level of performance, which contributes to enhancing the overall performance. This result is consistent with Bauman and Skitka Flexibility contributes to increasing the ability of organizations to respond to market changes within a shorter period and at a lower cost. On the other hand, flexibility reflects responding to changing customer requirements, changes in production, changes in product mix, changes in design, and changes in quantity. Despite the many contributions of this study, there are some limitations that should be reported. First, this study employed a survey questionnaire based on a cross-sectional study as the primary technique for data collection. However, the use of secondary data may contribute to obtaining accurate and detailed results. Therefore, this study recommends examining the model of study using secondary data as the primary technique for data collection. Second, this study was limited to ten main indicators to measure performance, in-cluding customer satisfaction, delivery reliability, social performance, learning and growth, employee satisfaction, cost, financial performance, safety, flexibility, and quality. Thus, future studies may use more indicators to measure performance. Finally, this study focused on telecommunication companies; thus, it is difficult to generalize the results to other sectors. Therefore, future studies should address the above limitation by examining the model of this study in other sectors such as hospitals, hotels, and banking.

CONCLUSION
The purpose of this study is to determine the key performance indicators used in Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies, as well as to examine if these indicators affect the overall performance of Saudi Arabia telecommunication companies. The results of this study revealed that customer satisfaction, delivery reliability, learning and growth, employee satisfaction, cost, financial performance, flexibility, and quality are the key indicators used in Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies to measure performance. Moreover, the results revealed that customer satisfaction, delivery reliability, learning and growth, employee satisfaction, cost, financial performance, flexibility, and quality impact the overall performance of Saudi Arabia's telecommunication companies.
Saudi Arabian telecommunication companies use key performance indicators to determine their current status, help measure the implementation of the strategies, and evaluate current performance. In addition, they help design strategies to improve performance, evaluate the function of the entire organization, evaluate current employees, obtain a competitive advantage, evaluate and control the overall business operations, and compare own performance with other organizations inside and outside the sector. Thus, key performance indicators should form a balanced set of indicators by combining the customer satisfaction indicator against the financial performance indicator, and the cost against quality and flexibility indicator. Moreover, key performance indicators should be set in the work context, showing trends and absolute performance. Logically, when organization objectives are reviewed, the key performance indicators will change over time; thus, they must be checked and updated accordingly.