Development Performance

How to Implement a Successful Information Technology Performance Program

2010-01-20T20:38:00.000-08:00

The IT/IS department's role is to provide technical support for the entire organization. While we know that this alone is a complex task, today's business model requires IT/IS to not only support users, but to align technology to meet the business needs of the organization. Understanding business unit objectives and translating them quickly and accurately into IT priorities is essential today. Just as critical is the ability to effectively communicate IT planning and performance data in a way that is useful to business unit management. The growing complexity of IT/IS, the frequent technology changes which take place, and its continuous impact on organizations, have made managing IT performance a critical function for most organizations. Executives are constantly looking for ways to use IT/IS more effectively, and identify uses which generate a higher value add. At the same time they must guarantee the effective integration and return on investment in order to achieve organizational goals and gain a competitive edge.

So how does a performance management team measure how well an organization's IT/IS is aligned to organizational objectives? To answer that, first let's take a look at the different vehicles for aligning and measuring IT performance. The IT Performance Management System utilizes the following vehicles to generate reports that help an organization understand how well they are measuring up to business objectives:

Service Level Agreements
Performance-Based Contracts
Products and services catalogs

Performance Based Contracting (PBC) and Performance Based Acquisition (PBA) are techniques for structuring all aspedcts of an acquisition around the purpose and outcome desired as opposed to the process by which the work is to be performed. Performance-based contracts are predefined by an agreement between the user community, the organization and external service providers.

A Service Level Agreements (SLAs) is a seamless contract that establishes specific services that the organization will deliver to the end-user community with regards to various timeliness, availability, performance, and problem resolution criteria. The metrics contained in a performance based contract need to be specific, measurable, trackable, and meaningful. Performance-based contracts state what a vendor will perform and how well they must perform that activity in order to fulfill its commitments. This gives the vendor the freedom to approach the task however it deems fit, in order to meet the agreed upon requirements.

Product and service catalogs document the products and services that the IT department provides. They underpin the service level management process. The service desk uses the product and services catalog to advertise IT services, and to assist in day to day activities. Documenting these services allow your organization and customers to negotiate SLAs, establish Operating Level Agreements (OLAs) and execute underpinning contracts.

These vehicles are all extremely important in ensuring that your IT performance program is aligned to organizational goals and objectives and that the metrics you are reporting drive your organization to achieve them.

Which Functions Does Your IT Department Support?

What functions does your IT department support? Help desk, capacity planning, data integration, security and custom business application development are a few of the functions most IT departments today support which are critical to the success of a business. It is the performance management team's responsibility to ensure that they identify and report on metrics that capture true business effectiveness.

Questions the performance management team should ask senior management regarding IT strategic alignment and performance:

Which of your business unit's processes support the organization's mission the most?
Do the metrics we report on drive those processes?
Are you satisfied with the current performance throughout your organization?
Do our metrics address the company's critical needs?
Do our reports provide the required information to make business decisions?
Do they identify areas of misalignment?
Do IT initiatives appear to be prioritized appropriately?

Inputs into the IT Performance Management Process

IT Performance success and organizational success in general begin with defining organizational goals and objectives. It is critical that IT functions are centered around helping the organization reach it's goals and objectives. If obtaining the best customer satisfaction results is important to your organization, then measuring how many tickets your help desk generates is not the most important metric to pay attention to. Customer satisfaction rating, customer loyalty and time to resolve issues would be more appropriate. When you are determining which metrics you'd like to include in your service level agreements, make sure you identify measurements that drive your organizational goals.

Budget, schedule and project risks are also important when managing your organization's IT performance. The key to successfully managing any project is to make sure you accomplish your tasks under budget and within schedule. By integrating these factors into your service level agreements and other performance based contracts greatly increases the success of your performance initiative.

Outputs to the IT Performance Management Process

Once you have setup the service catalog and performance-based contracts you can focus on the outputs that your performance team will produce. These outputs include:

data
internal reports (how well are day-to-day operations being executed?)
customer-based reports (how satisfied are your customers?)
performance reports (is your performance meeting the standards of the performance-based contracts?)
contractor-based reports (how well is the service that your contractors/service providers are providing?)

The IT Strategic Planning Process

The planning process involves asking such questions as who participates in the work group, who is responsible for the plan, how can user participation be guaranteed, how can coordination of the different departments involved be assured and how can the quality of the process be reached. The composition of the group responsible for IT/IS planning is a key factor in the planning process. Therefore, the team that finally approves the strategic plan for IT/IS is usually comprised of the top management of the company, the managers of the different functional areas and by the IT/ IS managers whom, with their teams, prepare the plan. Companies that fail to commit senior and departmental management to the strategic plan have a difficult, if not impossible task of aligning IT systems to Business Strategy.

Why is it important to evaluate strategic planning when it comes to Performance Management? Because measuring the right processes is the difference between an organization that is functional and one that's highly efficient. Measuring the right processes allows an organization to eliminate investments that are not producing favorable results. And because it allows them to focus on the areas that most affect the success of the organization.

Victor Holman is a performance management expert who helps organizations reach performance goals through best practice analysis and implementation and custom enterprise performance management products and services.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.
Victor's complete Lifecycle Performance Management Kit is a turnkey organizational performance management solution consisting of a web based organizational performance analysis, 7 guides, 39 templates, 600+ metrics, 35 best practices, 48 key processes, a performance roadmap and more.
His Organizational Performance and Best Practice Analysis measures how well organization's utilize the key performance activities that drive organizational success, and identifies cost savings opportunities and the critical path to reaching organizational goals.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

10 Simple Ways to Improve Sales Performance

2010-01-20T20:37:00.000-08:00

Are your business goals to sustain growth, increase revenue, and increase market share? While there are numerous ways to go about this, the simple fact is expanding your business is not possible without increasing sales. Often times, we focus so much on improving our products and services that we don't concentrate enough on sales performance. And when we do, we focus mainly on attracting new customers. So much so that we sometimes forget about our most prized possessions; our existing and past customers. This article discusses ways to attract new customers while at the same time enticing past customers to buy again.

1. Communicate organizational and sales goals throughout your sales department.

Are your organization's goals and objectives clearly stated and documented. Does your entire sale force (including managers, salespersons, and support staff) understand executive management's goals and objectives. Do they understand how their sales goals and objectives support the overall organizational objectives? This is the number one, first thing that must be in place in order to have a successful sales program. It's very easy to find out if this critical step is in place, just ask your team members.

2. Gain executive management Buy-In.

It is critical that executive level managers buy into your sales strategy. Studies have shown that senior level management that places value in leveraging sales performance data into overall strategy increase their organization's chances for success. Compound this with strong sales leadership that is able to translate the sales strategy into action and these organizations are often able to quantify extraordinary results through sales performance management. Executive management can also ensure that your sales program has the necessary funding it needs to implement a successful strategy.

3. Define and communicate competencies for salespeople.

You may already have sales competencies. If so, reevaluate them and make sure that they are specific, unique and drive organizational goals. Make sure that they are not generic job descriptions that don't support objectives. What makes your top salespeople successful. Document these characteristics and the processes that these top performers have in place. Mimic these behaviors throughout your sales force.

4. Strengthen your sales efforts on products and services that generate the most income.

Now I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to increase sales in many different areas. I encourage organizations to explore new avenues for generating sales. But if there is something that your customers really buy into and you see greater sales from that area, you should be maximizing your profits in these areas even if it means reallocating resources from weaker areas.

5. Link sales training and performance-management systems to your business goals and competencies.

Make sure that your sales staff are properly trained to most effectively execute their function. Do they have all the resources they need? Does training address specific challenges that your sales force encounters? A detailed, competency-based selection process will give you a profile of each sales person's strengths and development needs. Identify which areas each salesperson is weak in and provide the necessary training for them to improve in those areas. Identify their strengths and leverage their knowledge and processes to help train other staff. Integrate their development plan into the performance management process.

6. Set up a sales incentive program.

Let's face it. Most people are not the motivated goal reaching machines they are capable of becoming. Give your sales staff a reason to achieve great things. Reward them for their accomplishments. They will continue to return the favor. Be creative. If that dinner for two to the local restaurant isn't stirring up competition find something that will. Remember, the more people you can get to compete for incentives the more successful your sales team as a whole will be.

7. Encourage your sales staff to upsell.

Upselling involves persuading customers to buy additional products or services, which normally relate to, benefit and compliment the original purchase. But just throwing additional products at them won't work. For example, if you own a pet grooming business, you may try to upsell your customers to buy pet grooming supplies to maintain their current look. Not a great example, but you get my point.

8. Tier your customers.

This is an effective technique, however it must be used with care. Customer tiering is assigning different values to customers to ensure that your best customers get the best treatment. While there are customers that you want to ensure top level service, it's important that you value all of your customers. More and more companies are using this technique to decide whether you're a customer worth taking care of and it is very troubling to know that careless, almost discriminatory practices may be taking place. Ways you may want to show customers that they are important is by recognizing them, greeting them by name or going out of the way to contact them, and offering them discounts or referral bonuses.

9. Set up a customer rewards program.

We talked about sales incentive programs. Now we need to focus on customer reward techniques. Customer reward programs can be as simple as providing a discount for every additional product your customers purchase, to offering them referral bonuses and incentives, to providing them VIP status. These simple techniques can build customer loyalty and repeat sales.

10. Offer customers free valuable, products or services.

Giving away something for free to your customers is one of the easiest way to get viral marketing benefits. This means that your customers are more likely to refer a product or service to their friends or business partners if you can provide a free sample. This is why you see so many 'free trial' or 'test drive' offers.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Victor's complete Lifecycle Performance Management Ki is a turnkey organizational performance management solution consisting of a web based organizational performance analysis, 7 guides, 39 templates, 600+ metrics, 35 best practices, 48 key processes, a performance roadmap and more.

His Organizational Performance and Best Practice Analysis measures how well organization's utilize the key performance activities that drive organizational success, and identifies cost savings opportunities and the critical path to reaching organizational goals.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

11 Steps to Improving Performance Through Data Collection and Gap Analysis

2010-01-20T20:36:00.000-08:00

It is believed that metrics teams can only get 80% of the way to an effective set of metrics. The last 20% comes from deploying the metrics, seeing how they affect performance, and then adjusting them accordingly. The same can be said about the performance which these metrics guide. One of the main reasons we measure performance is so that we can identify weaknesses and areas of improvements. What we do once we identify these weakness and areas of improvement is what determines how effective our performance initiative, and in turn, organization will be. The purpose of performance improvement is not to point fingers and place blame on a group or individuals that are not performing well, nor is it intended to solve problems. Performance improvement is simply a way of looking at how an organization can perform better. The difficulty with performance improvement, especially in an enterprise organization, is understanding which processes are working well and which aren't and knowing what to tackle first when key processes are interconnected.

Other challenges of implementing a performance improvement plan enterprise-wide occur when performance management teams try to implement change on a large scale. Performance improvement is best accomplished by implementing small changes, mastering a particular process to achieve those changes and identifying the next change that will lead to further performance improvements.

The best way to ensure that your organization is constantly improving and identifying relevant areas for improvement is by involving all employees, from top management down. Most often, negative performance is a result of one or more of the following factors, and is best resolved when all levels of the organization participates:

Unclear team/job responsibilities
Unclear or lack of performance feedback
Inadequate physical environment, including improper tools, supplies, or workspace
Lack of motivation and incentives to perform as expected
Skills and knowledge required for the job
Ineffective processes

Lifecycle Performance Improvement is an eleven step, systematic methodology for identifying weaknesses and the root causes of performance problems, and implementing a solution that applies to those specific performance deficits.

1. Review organizational goals and objectives

Identify/review performance measures (quantity, quality, cost or timeliness) that focus on these objectives

2. Define desired results for the processes

As guidance, focus on results needed by other domains (e.g., products or services needed by internal or external customers). Performance baselines are a good place to start to determine reasonable targets.

3. Measure performance and document results

Ensure that report parameters and formulas are well documented and consistent as these measures are revisited throughout the performance improvement process.

4. Compare the actual results to the desired results

This gives you an idea of how much work you have ahead of you. The further the actual results are from the desired performance the greater the performance gap.

5. Weigh/prioritize the measures that need improvement

Some criteria that may be useful to consider are value of metric, organizational impact, ease of implementing improvement measures, time restraints, etc.

6. Identify other areas of weakness

Often times, investigation of a performance gap will lead you to other weaknesses, which contribute to that gap in performance. In fact, major cross-functional processes are often low performing because of an underlying or sometime unrelated area of weakness.

7. Identify root causes of performance gap

This step involves identifying situations which consume resources, adversely affect the organization, and tend to be repetitive, causing action to eliminate the problem so the situation does not occur again. Root cause analysis (RCA) is a method that identifies causal factors, including interpersonal bottlenecks and dysfunctions that keep a business from achieving financial success. There are several ways to outline root causes. Answering the following questions can aid in identifying root causes:

Why did this event happen?
What occurred to create it?
What occurred prior?
What occurred following?
What is the significance of the event with respect to customer?
Who allowed this condition to exist?
Who was supervising this activity?
When did it occur?
Where (physical location, environmental condition)?
How did this condition originate?

Once the root cause is determined then it has to be determined whether it costs more to remove the root cause or continue to treat the symptoms. In a performance improvement setting, removing the root cause is preferred, but again, organizational objectives are the main influence on this decision.

8. Identify solutions

This step involves developing a performance improvement plan based on the organization's weaknesses and root causes. This is where an organization maps out its plan to achieve the desired results, measures and standards that were previous unattainable. The root cause analysis performed in the previous step should assist identifying the best solution for each performance gap.

9. Implement solutions

Well, the hard part is finished. You've identified your problems and determined their root causes. You've generated numerous alternative solutions, and you've chosen the best alternative. If the solution is complicated, or if it requires a lot of work to implement, it might be best to prepare an action plan outlining the necessary steps to be taken. This plan may indicate who is responsible for each action, the target date for completing them, and available resources.

10. Exchange feedback

This is an ongoing process that is often undervalued. Continuous feedback can sometimes enable an organization to identify root causes long before they become problematic. But remember, feedback can only be effective if the organization acts on some of those suggestions.

11. Monitor and evaluate feedback

This is the most important step and extends throughout the entire performance improvement process. This is where you determine the effectiveness of the performance improvement plan. Monitoring and evaluation shows progress, problems and achievements against your goal and objectives. Monitor and evaluation stages help you:

make decisions and recommendations about future directions
identify the strengths and weaknesses of performance
enable judgments to be made about the worth of the measurement
determine the rate and level of attainment of the objectives
maintain accountability.

About Victor Holman

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Victor's complete Lifecycle Performance Management Kit is a turnkey organizational performance management solution consisting of a web based organizational performance analysis, 7 guides, 39 templates, 600+ metrics, 35 best practices, 48 key processes, a performance roadmap and more.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

Success Factors For Developing a Winning Performance Management Team

2010-01-20T20:34:00.000-08:00

The other day I was asked how to create a performance team that can tackle the challenges of the modern enterprise. The selection of the performance management team is critical to the success of any large project. This article focuses on the structure, skills and success factors for your next large performance management initiative.

Centralized vs. Decentralized

All performance teams have one thing in common, that is gathering key metrics and reporting them to key stakeholders. How they gather this information depends on the organization's structure. There are two ways performance teams gather and report information; centralized and decentralized. In a centralized structure, the performance management team has access to all of the organization's key resources and is responsible for running the queries, ensuring accurate results and reporting on performance throughout the organization. In a decentralized structure business units are responsible for gathering their own data, and the performance team sends out data calls where the business units provide the metrics to the performance team. The performance management team then assembles these collected metrics into dashboards, scorecards and other graphical displays. Many organizations, especially those with business units that handle sensitive data have a hybrid structure. This is where the performance team is responsible for producing some of the metrics while business units are responsible for providing some of their metrics to the performance team. The ideal situation is for the team to have full reporting access to all major systems, where accurate results can be guaranteed and where those reports are accessible for business unit managers to monitor and ensure desired service.

Performance Management Team selection

The key person on the performance management team is the team lead. A highly skilled team lead is the key to the success of your performance initiative. Whether this person is within your organization or an outside consultant, they should be dedicated 100% to this project, should be highly experienced with performance measures, more knowledgeable in the areas of performance than senior management, and should be able to motivate the people whose performance will be measured and reported on. The size of your team will depend largely on the size and complexity of your organization. A performance team in a centralized structure will be larger than a team in a decentralized structure, because more resources are necessary to gather the performance data and communicate with the business units. In most cases the management team will include subject matter experts in fields such as data integration and industry related processes. These roles will be discussed further in the execution phase. The management team should be well aware of the issues facing the organization from the customer, employee, senior management and key stakeholders perspectives. They should understand the financial and operational goals of the organization. And most importantly, they must be experienced with analyzing data and providing feedback on suggested measures, while constantly searching for new, creative methods of managing performance.

Performance Management Team Success Factors

There are several factors outside of the performance management team's power that will play a critical role in the success of the performance initiative. These are the factors that require support from the rest of the organization. The performance management team must have:

- support and commitment from the CEO

- a direct reporting line to executive management

- access to systems, data, organizational charts, and processes

- management support and full commitment from their staff

- a liaison for each business unit to bridge gap in communication and operational knowledge

There are other success factors to be mindful of when time and budget constraints are introduced. For instance, if your organization is looking for an advanced solution integrating existing systems with multiple business intelligence tools, the performance initiative will most likely be delayed at various points due to purchasing, compatibility and implementation processes. If your organization is looking to improve performance with existing systems, you may not have the luxuries of the new, emerging tool's bells and whistles, but the good news is much can be done with standard applications such as MS Excel, Access and SharePoint... not to mention the learning curve. In fact, one goal of your performance initiative may be to maximize efficiency with the existing tools while at the same time researching new tools that will be the best fit for your service and infrastructure. A performance management initiative with existing tools may require a larger team because some older tools require manual processes to retrieve and assemble data. Other success factors include:

Team Leadership - As mentioned earlier, team leadership is the most critical success factor for the performance management team. A leader with strong performance management skills and the ability to develop others virtually guarantees a successful performance initiative.

Shared vision / approach - The ability for an organization to clearly state it's goals and objectives and gain buy-in among the employees along with a synergistic team that can carry out their responsibilities is vital to performance success.

Technology support - While a skilled performance management team can improve performance with very little tools and only an effective approach, with proper technology to support the team's needs, and the proper data to drive decision making, there is almost no limit to the improvements an organization will yield.

Senior leadership buy-in - It is critical that senior level management and executives buy into the performance initiative. Studies have shown that senior level management that places value in leveraging performance data into overall strategy increase their organization's chances for success. Compound this with strong performance managers that are able to translate the strategy into actionable measures and these organizations are often able to benefit from extraordinary results.

About Victor Holman

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

10 Steps For Managing Key Processes That Drive Business Success

2010-01-20T20:32:00.000-08:00

When it comes to performance management, managing the performance of your processes can be your best avenue for driving performance gains. Identification of key business processes is critical to organizations as they execute your strategy by aligning the results of these processes with the strategic goals. Key business processes are those processes which have maximum impact on the success of your organization. Key processes are those that move you closer to your goals and have the greatest impact on your organization. In other words, these are the processes which would seriously impact revenues, should they fail. This article examines the steps necessary to manage and maximize the efficiency of your key processes.

A typical organization should only have less than 15 key processes. A few will be the generic processes within your industry, while others will be specific to your unique approaches, goals, service, geographic location, policies, etc. In my experience, organizations are aware of most of the processes that drive their success. Unfortunately, there are often many processes which have an equal or greater impact on the organization which never receive the attention they deserve. Many times, it's these latent processes that keep organizations from performing up to their potential. Identifying key processes using a structured approach, aligning their outcomes to deliver the business goals, designing appropriate measures and allocating sufficient resources for their improvement is the key to the success of an organization.

Many organizations struggle to identify their key processes. Most people within organizations understand their team's function within the organization, but they do not understand how their team's function interacts with other group functions. Business processes are streams of activity that flow across functional boundaries. For this reason, business processes are said to be fragmented, or scattered across functional silos. This is where the performance management team's services are so valuable. Assigning a process engineer as part of the performance management team can enable you to standardize processes and bridge the communication gap that exists between functional support groups. Below is a 10 step process for managing key processes that drive business success.

Baseline Current Environment

Every performance improvement initiation starts with a baseline. You must first know how well your organization currently executes your key processes before you can fully understand what you need to do in order to reach your desired level of process execution. This is the foundation and gives you your starting point for where you need to improve.

Identify Critical Success Factors

Critical success factors are the elements that must be present in order for an initiative to be successful. Some critical success factors in process management include:

Process alignment - aligning processes to organizational goals and objectives is critical to organizational success
Technology investment - the more you can automate your processes, the more efficient your organization will and the more you'll be able break down and identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies
Measuring performance - in order to truly understand your process execution, you must be able to measure your processes from start to finish.

Organize and Centrally Locate Processes

In order to fully understand how processes interact with one another, your processes must be organized. It used to be that each department managed their processes with very little interaction with other divisions. But in today's fast paced business models and the need for instant process execution, it is vital that organization's consolidate, standardize and manage cross-functional processes. This requires centrally locating processes and taking a look at the big picture.

Standardize Processes

Often times organizations have similar processes that are executed by multiple divisions and teams. One division may be extremely efficient at executing that process while another division executes at a much lower efficiency rate. Unfortunately, many organizations don't standardize their processes. By leveraging the processes that strong performing divisions employ and standardizing those processes among weaker performing divisions, the entire organization can benefit from extraordinary performance gains.

Redesign Inefficient or Ineffective Processes

This is where we take action. Once we've baselined and measured our processes, we are now ready to take action. Identify the inefficient processes within your organization and the processes that do not support the organizational goals and objectives. If you have a small organization or limited manpower, you can take one process a time. You'll see that over time you will have redesigned several processes and the impact will be clear.

Eliminate Workarounds and Duplicate Steps

How many times have you worked on a process that was flawed and you found a workaround? It's amazing the things we will do patch up a process error to get the job done. It always amazes my clients when we map out a process and find all of the inefficiencies and duplicate steps. I've seen some processes where two divisions basically passed ownership back and forth until it came to an escalation point and a decision was made by senior management. You'll be surprised at how much time you can cut out of a process when these flaws are mitigated.

Automate Processes Where Possible

This is the name of the game. The more automated your processes, the less chance for human error and the more predictive your performance will be. This sometime requires a significant investment. But in an age where we want things done yesterday, the investment is most times well worth staying ahead of your competition and establishing customer loyalty.

Identify Metrics and KPIs

This is where we quantify how effective our processes are. Establishing performance measurements for your key processes, especially those that span across multiple organizations will significantly improve your performance. How many times have you evaluated a failed process only to get the usual finger pointing across the divisions involved? When you can break down a performance measure and understand how much time it should take for each division (or individual) to execute their part of the process, then you can assign accountability. And accountability often means results.

Cross Train Employees

In order for an organization to be successful, especially large organizations, it's important that employees understand three things:

what are the organizational goals and objectives
how does their function contribute to the organizational goals and objective, and
how does my function impact the larger, cross-functional process

Understanding how each employee's function impacts the function of other division is the first step in gaining synergy among your employee and the processes that drive your organization.

Develop Plan for Process Reevaluation

So, you've baselined and centralized your processes. You have standardized where possible. You have eliminated inefficiencies and workarounds. You have applied metrics, automation and cross trained employees so that they understand their role in the bigger picture. Now it's time to do it all over again. Remember, process improvement is a continuous process. Your competitors are going to keep getting better, faster, more efficient and you must too.

About Victor Holman
Victor Holman is a performance management expert who helps organizations reach performance goals through best practice analysis and implementation and custom enterprise performance management products and services.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

5 Steps For Applying Performance Reporting to Any Project

2010-01-20T20:31:00.000-08:00

In an economy where information is an organization's biggest asset, how they analyze information, and create and distribute reports is the critical element which dictates success and failure. Most reporting has internal and external purposes. Organizations need to know where they stand on the issues that need addressing. They need to increase understanding and communications. They need to understand and address risks and threats. They need to change the way they do business and improve their impacts on their market. The Performance Reporting Process helps organizations understand the stages of data as it transforms to meaningful information and is distributed throughout the organization. The Performance Reporting Process consists of 5 phases:

Data Gathering
Data Extraction
Integration
Reporting
Distribution

This article will briefly discuss the different phases, as following articles will discuss in detail the different types of tools that are associated with performance management and how to differentiate among them.

Data Gathering

Gathering data is the first step toward solving problems and satisfying organizational curiosity. When we look up information to answer a question or to formulate new questions, we are gathering and analyzing data. When we conduct surveys and draw conclusions from them, we are gathering and analyzing data.

The following are tips to consider in the data gathering stage:

Keep it simple. The purpose of analysis is insight, and the best analysis is the simplest analysis which gives the needed insight.
The data gathering exercise should not interfere with normal work.
The people who work in the area under investigation should assist and have buy-in on data gathering methods.
Determine scope and purpose before deciding what data to gather. Pilot your data gathering method on a small scale and modify it if necessary.
The data gathered should be a reasonable representation of the whole process. For example, it would not be a good idea to gather data over a bank holiday, or only on Monday's night shift!
Don't reinvent the wheel. If the data you require already exists in an accurate usable format, all you need to do is map to it. If it doesn't, you will need to design a method of gathering the data.

Data Extraction

Data extraction is the process of extracting data from various tables within the organization and preparing it for integration into master data. Often combined with transforming and loading (ETL), this is where data is moved from these multiple sources, reformatted, and loaded into another data source for analysis or business process support. This step will be discuss in more detail in the following chapter under ETL tools.

Integration

Data integration, as mentioned earlier in the Data Quality Management Process, allows organizations to logically apply data across different sources. Data integration is especially necessary when organizations acquire other organizations or consolidate internal business units. This is where apples are compared to apples and organizational data can be clearly understood and utilized for decision making.

Reporting

Reporting allows companies and organizations to gain a better understanding of their business by providing critical information to employees, managers, partners, and customers. Performance reporting provides information against everything from metrics, scope, schedule, cost, risk, procurement, and quality. Performance reports are presentations and documents that summarize work performance information in the form of bar charts, S-curves, histograms, tables, etc.

Distribution

Report distribution is the methods an organization uses to share and deliver performance reports to stakeholders. Reports can be distributed manually; however this process takes a lot of time and resources from the performance management team. Automated report distribution allows the performance management team to develop a series of reports, obtain buy-in from all stakeholders, and ensure that the reports will be made available at specific intervals. Many report distribution tools allow flexibility as to what format the report will be distributed in, how it will be distributed, who will receive the reports and how often they will be sent.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

5 Data Quality Management Challenges

2010-01-20T20:24:00.000-08:00

In just about every field of work, there are quality measures in place to ensure customer satisfaction and product/service effectiveness. Manufacturing companies rely on quality control processes to minimize defects and reworks. Consultants measure the quality of their services to ensure repeat business. Journalist rely on quality information and leads to maintain integrity and credibility. But when it comes to corporate data, many organizations fail to understand the significance and drawbacks of unreliable or inconsistent data. This article discusses five quality challenges many organizations face and ways they can be more proactive in managing data.

Among the primary reasons for inconsistent or unusable data are:

bad data from human data-entry error
poorly-structured process
lack of data standards across functional units or divisions

Ensuring the quality of data can become extremely difficult when you attempt to integrate data from across multiple sources. Before your organization begins a data-driven initiative it is important that you address issues of data quality within your existing data sources. Aside from the complexity of the actual process of ensuring the quality of your data, below are five challenges you may face when beginning this initiative:

Data ownership
Non standard data requirements
Choosing the Right Data Management Tools
Placing Responsibility for the Quality of Data on the IT Department
Reactive vs. Proactive Mentality

Data Ownership

Data ownership, especially on the enterprise level, is a very complicated transition, and can contribute to significant pushback within an organization. Often the business unit managers or technicians entrusted with the implementation of an application assume ownership of the information used within that system. This introduces potential conflicts when these individuals must participate in enterprise-wide data initiatives and expose the internals of their information management to data quality audits and reviews.

Non Standard Data Requirements

Traditionally data management is structured where the business unit's management chain has authority over the information used within the business unit, and each business unit has its own requirements for quality of data. Once data management progresses toward an enterprise-wide set of standards, there is often push back or hesitation by the business unit managers to invest time and resources in addressing issues that were not relevant at the business unit level.

Choosing the Right Data Management Tools

A frequent response by organizations with respect to building a data quality management program is to immediately begin to research the purchase of automated data cleansing or profiling tools. While some data quality tools do provide some benefit right out of the box, without a well-defined understanding of the types and scope of specific quality problems, and without a management plan for addressing discovered problems, buying a tool will not have a significant return on investment in achieving long-term strategic goals.

Placing Responsibility for the Quality of Data on the IT Department

Business units often assume that any issues regarding the quality of data are IT issues, and should be addressed by the technical teams. However, the business rules associated with running the business is best managed by the business client?

Reactive vs. Proactive Mentality

Most data quality programs are designed to react to data quality events instead of determining how to prevent problems from occurring in the first place. A mature data quality program determines where the risks are, what the objective metrics are for determining levels and impact of data quality compliance, and approaches to ensure high levels of quality.

Ways your organization can be more proactive towards data quality management:

Ask for data quality performance measures as part of your business requirements gathering and prioritizing process.
Determine, along with the business, how you are going to handle data quality issues both during the development process and when your processes are operational.
Monitor data quality at every stage where data is touched
Create a data quality management dashboard to monitor the agreed upon data quality performance measures.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

Choosing the Right Business Intelligence Tools for Your Data and Architectural Needs

2009-12-01T14:27:00.001-08:00

This presentation takes you through the steps of understanding your business intelligence needs and identifying the right tools for you. We discuss the different types of BI tools. We to discuss the criteria for selecting each type of tools. We to discuss popular Business Intelligence vendors and how to rate them. And we are going to discuss the job functions and responsibilities for a typical BI implementation

Choosing the Right Business Intelligence Tools for Your Data and Architectural Needs

View more presentations from Victor Holman.

10 Ways to Keep Executives Focused on Performance Management

2009-11-27T11:40:00.000-08:00

Have you ever tried to launch a performance improvement plan, but didn’t have enough support from executive management? Chances are the initiative lacked focus, direction, and ultimately was unsuccessful. This is because executive management plays the biggest role in keeping leaders within the organization focused on what’s important…and that’s improving performance, increasing productivity, and sustaining growth. Truth is, all executives want these things, but often performance improvement is lost among the myriad of organizational objectives. This is why it’s important for performance management teams to learn effective techniques for keeping organizational performance on the forefront. This article focuses on techniques for getting support from senior executives and keeping leaders focused on organizational performance management.

Keeping senior management and executives focused on performance management can prove to be extremely challenging, especially with their busy schedules. This can be accomplished by keeping the topic of performance management in front of executives, keeping them involved with the initiative and informing them of performance management successes.

Keep the Topic of Performance Management In Front of Executives

This may seem simple, but if executives are not constantly reminded of the value that your performance management initiative will bring to the organization, performance management will get lost among all the challenges and obstacles that are put in front of them. Remember, these are the people who have the authority and influence to get things done. You are competing with the other important initiatives that are taking place within your organization.

Keep Executives Involved With the Performance Initiative

Once the leaders within the organization are focused on performance management, you have to keep them involved with the initiative. This is done by getting them to clearly state what their objectives are and what exactly they are trying to accomplish. This is especially important in organizations where executive management changes or where there are changes in the organizational structure. Don’t assume that you know what senior management objectives are. Often times, when there is new management and changes within the organizational structure, there are also changes in what is perceived as most important. Remember, every executive would like to leave a legacy. Find out what that is and identify how you can measure their successes.

Keep Executives Informed of the Performance Improvements and Successes

Senior management and executives love to hear about successful performance results, for these results are direct reflections of their impact to the organization. Find a way to quantify their efforts and they will be on board for other ideas you bring in front of them. Do this by highlighting successes in executive management initiatives, strategies and other influences. By the way, executives are not the only ones who benefit from positive performance information. When employees are made aware of their impact on the successes of the organization, they become more open to the idea of performance managers coming in and providing input as to how they can perform better. Hopefully, they are rewarded for their contributions and strong performance. But it all starts from the top. If executive management is not on board in the first place, neither will the employees who execute their plan.

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of getting executives focused on a performance management initiative, let’s discuss four techniques for successfully maintaining this focus.

Setup Meetings With Executive Managers

This seems like such an obvious step, but you’d be amazed at how many organizations have performance management programs that do not get the exposure and support it needs from senior management. With the busy schedule of executives, it’s easy to get put on the backburner. This is where you have to be persistent. You’ve already shown them the value of performance management and how it can support their objectives. Now you just need to maintain focus. Setup weekly or monthly meetings with executives. By getting on their schedule with regular meetings you’ll keep performance fresh on their minds.

Deliver Presentations to Executives That Highlight Your Organization’s Greatest Performance Challenges

This is where you sell executives on the value of the performance initiative. Create powerful presentations that not only illustrate how well the organization is performing, but also illustrate what the specific obstacles that confront the organization. Remember, anybody can gather performance data. Your responsibility as a performance manager is to present the data in a way that clarifies what the challenges are and how to overcome those challenges. Gathering the data is a science, but displaying that information so that executives can better understand what makes the organization go and what’s holding the organization back is an art.

Communicate Which Divisions / Service Areas Are Not Aligned to Executive Goals and Objectives

Performance alignment is the single, most important aspect to successfully executing a performance strategy. Unless performance is in alignment to organizational goals and objectives, the organization will be limited in executing the overall strategy. Executives know this very well, which is one reason the Balanced Scorecard has amassed so much popularity and become a common word in the business world. If you can communicate to executive management how well the organization is or is not aligned to the organizational goals and objectives, you will definitely get their attention and their time. But be careful as to how to display this information. As I have written in other articles, how you present performance data, especially poor performance, plays a major role in gaining employee acceptance. While executive management wants to know about these shortcomings, it is only fair and good practice to make sure that the groups that you are reporting on have been involved in the process and have access to your findings. Remember, performance management is only successful if everybody is on board. It is our job as performance managers to balance the negative perceptions, and sometimes egos that come with the performance initiative.

Deliver Supplemental Training and or Workshops on Specific Topics

While executive management makes the key decisions, it’s the employees that drive performance. Therefore , it’s critical that they understand, at a minimum, the basics of performance management, such as understanding organizational objectives, baselining performance, setting goals, and applying performance measures. The biggest mistakes many performance management teams make is that they carry the performance challenges on their shoulders, often defining all of the metrics, and developing the performance plans, which minimizes employee and management input. They understand what drives the business. Increase employee input and feedback by facilitating informational performance management workshops. Teach them about key performance indicators and how to develop winning performance metrics, how they will benefit, and how their contribution impacts the organization. Explain the objectives of executive management. Reassure employees that this is not an exercise to judge their performance and tell them how to do their job. The focus should be on improving performance and empowering everybody to grow. Have problem-solving sessions that address the challenges, bottlenecks and obstacles that limit performance. Remember, a high performing organization is a collective state of mind; a culture.

We’ve discussed what you , as a manager, must do to keep executive management and organizational leaders focused on performance management. We’ve discussed how you can get employees on board and in a high performance mindset. Now, let’s take a look at three things that executives can do to support your initiative and ensure organizational performance success.

Have Executives Reiterate Their Support of the Performance Initiative to the Organization

As mentioned earlier, this is the key to getting employees on board for the performance initiative. When executives make performance a priority, employees follow. Have executives send emails, hold town hall meetings, distribute flyers and anything else that sends the message that performance will be on their radar.

Have Leaders Provide Feedback on What Performance Areas They Feel Are Most Important

We should always be measuring how well the organization is reaching organizational goals. This will always be valuable to executive management. But, just as the organization is constantly changing, so is what’s important to executives on any given day. For example, if your organization is implementing an enterprise-wide application or other initiative, the success of that migration will be very important to senior and executive management. During that time, they will want to know how well the migration is going and how customers (employees in this case) perceive it.

Have Executives Re-evaluate Organizational Objectives Regularly

Have you ever implemented a performance strategy, and got great initial results, only to hit a wall and see performance gains come to a halt? This often happens when we measure the same things for an extended period of time, because what we‘re measuring may no longer support the direction the organization is trying to go. It’s important that executive management frequently (at least once a year) readdresses organizational goals and objectives. Remember, your goal as a performance manager is to make sure that your organization reaches its organizational goals. By constantly measuring what’s important to executives, you will no doubt become a key asset for executives.

About Victor Holman

Victor Holman is a performance management expert who provides fast, simple and inexpensive ways to transform organizational performance.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Victor's Complete Lifecycle Performance Management Kit is a turnkey organizational performance management solution consisting of a web based organizational performance analysis, 7 guides, 39 templates, 600+ metrics, 35 best practices, 48 key processes, a performance roadmap and more.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

Aligning Performance To Organizational Goals and Objectives

2009-11-13T10:01:00.001-08:00

Check out this Presentation which identifies 4 key areas for aligning performance to organizational goals and objectives.

Aligning Performance To Organizational Goals and Objectives

View more presentations from Victor Holman.

Ten Enterprise Performance Management Best Practices - Executing Phase

2009-11-02T21:23:00.000-08:00

This article continues where we left off discussing the 11 performance management best practices in the planning phase of the Lifecycle Performance Management Model. The Lifecycle Performance Management Model is an enterprise framework that is centered on 35 best practices. These best practices span across the five phases of the performance life-cycle: defining, planning, executing, monitoring and reporting. This article is the third of a series of five discussing the performance management best practices within Lifecycle Performance Management, and will focus on the executing phase.

The executing phase best practices involve implementing the planned activities outlined in the defining and planning phases. This is where we develop metrics, align performance to organizational objectives, identify cross-functional processes, and integrate data. During the executing phase the performance management team must maintain a climate of open communication with business unit liaisons and executive management, as this is where executive goals are transformed into action.

1. Employee Performance Management

Employee Performance Management is the systematic process by which an organization involves its employees, as individuals and members of a group, in improving organizational effectiveness in the accomplishment of agency mission and goals. The Employee Performance Management process includes planning work and setting expectations, continually monitoring performance, developing the capacity to perform, periodically rating performance in a summary fashion, and rewarding good performance. Functions within employee performance management are recruit and hire management, compensation management, incentive management, goals management, learning management, competency management and performance measurement.

2. Information Services Performance Management

Information Services Performance Management is the practice of measuring and monitoring information systems and services and aligning them to organizational goals and objectives. Information Services Performance Management involves supporting employees and customers, aligning business unit objectives to system capabilities and performance, communicating IT planning and performance data in a way that is useful to business unit management, and adapting to growing complexities and constant change.

3. Process Management

Process Management is a series of actions taken to identify, analyze and improve existing processes within an organization to meet new goals and objectives. Process Management involves identifying key business processes and aligning the results of these processes with the strategic goals. Lifecycle Process Management consists of baselining the current environment, identifying critical success factors, redesigning inefficient or ineffective processes, automating processes, identifying process metrics, and training employees on cross functional process.

4. Data Integration Management

Data Integration Management is the practice of gaining business value from information assets through the effective use of data management technologies and best practices. Key components of Data Integration Management include data integration, data quality, database management systems, data warehousing and enterprise information management. Data Integration Management enables an organization to secure a single, accurate, corporate view of key information.

5. Performance Metrics Management

Performance Metrics Management is the process of identifying quantifiable, results-driven metrics that enable informed decision making and encourages improved service delivery. Performance Metrics Management involves understanding the business and complexities of the organization, focusing on the desired outcomes, involving all participants for consensus and buy-in, ensuring that formulas and logic are valid, and storing performance results in a centralized location for easy access.

6. Performance Alignment Management

Performance Alignment Management facilitates the translation of business and functional priorities into strategy. Performance alignment consists of aligning corporate strategy to four areas: division/departmental, workforce, financial and resources. Ultimately, Performance Alignment Management develops a performance strategy that feeds strategic alignment, reflects organizational priorities, and leads to successful execution of organizational goals and objectives.

7. Cross-functional Process Management

Cross-functional Process Management is the process of breaking down functional siloed thinking and building the organization around core processes rather than specific functional areas. Cross-functional Process Management focuses on those major processes which require support from multiple functional support groups. Ultimately, a well managed cross functional process enables performance tracking throughout each of the functional "hand offs" and weak points within a major process are identified and corrected.

8. Systems Management

Systems management is an automated event management system that proactively and reactively notifies system operators of failures, capacity issues, traffic issues, virus attacks and other transient events. The tools allow monitoring of system status, performance indicators, thresholds, notification of users, and dispatch of trouble tickets. Systems Management provides optimal system performance, quicker resolution of problems, and minimizes failures. Automated solutions are used in support of distributed computing operations processes and policies for performance and failure detection and correction, as well as optimization.

9. Change Management

Change management is the procedure, policies, and tools established to monitor organizational assets to assure that unauthorized changes are not being implemented. It also affirms that a database of changes is available so that changes can be easily recognized during troubleshooting activities

10. Procurement Management

Procurement Management is a set of policies and procedures to manage the procurement process. Procurement Management does not necessarily designate that all procurement personnel are centralized in a single location; rather it involves the development of a common set of procurement policies and operating procedures, pooling of information about requests, vendor contracts, asset data, industry information, and qualified procurement skills to ensure the pieces required to get a cost effective deal are properly considered. As well, centralized procurement assures that standardization rules are in compliance.

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About Victor Holman

Victor Holman is a performance management expert who provides fast, simple and inexpensive ways to transform organizational performance.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Victor’s Complete Lifecycle Performance Management Kit is a turnkey organizational performance management solution consisting of a web based organizational performance analysis, 7 guides, 39 templates, 600+ metrics, 35 best practices, 48 key processes, a performance roadmap and more.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

11 Enterprise Performance Management Best Practices - Planning Phase

2009-11-02T21:20:00.000-08:00

This article continues where we left off discussing the eight performance management best practices in the defining phase of the Lifecycle Performance Management Model. The Lifecycle Performance Management Model is an enterprise framework that is centered on 35 best practices. These best practices span across the five phases of the performance life-cycle: defining, planning, executing, monitoring and reporting. This article is the second of a series of five discussing the performance management best practices within Lifecycle Performance Management, and will focus on the planning phase.

The focus of the planning phase is to start the buzz and get your organization prepared for the cultural changes that will take place during your successful performance initiative. Best practices in the planning phase enable you to gain employee acceptance into the performance initiative and put employees into a high performance mindset. They also include base-lining current performance and setting future goals, breaking down functional barriers, identifying key processes that drive business success, and ensuring a successful performance management implementation through training.

1. Employee Acceptance Management

Employee Acceptance Management is the process of gaining employee buy-in by emphasizing performance expectations from the top level down. Employee Acceptance Management involves transforming employees into a high performance mindset, communicating employee expectations and enabling them to understand the impact that their specific role has on the success of the organization.

2. Performance Management Planning

Performance Management Planning is the practice of defining the performance strategy and
prioritizing activities according to that strategy-to ensure operational alignment with organizational goals. Performance Management Planning involves planning, budgeting, forecasting and allocating resources to support strategy and achieve optimal execution. The Performance Management Plan includes consolidating, monitoring, and reporting on performance outcomes for management, regulatory, and statutory purposes. The ultimate goal of Performance Management Planning is the ability to plan and budget in real-time with dynamic plans that provide real-time feedback to everyone who is part of the process.

3. Time Management (Planning versus Implementing)

Planning is an essential item on the critical path of every project. Our studies have shown that cutting corners on planning can triple the cost and time to implement enterprise level projects. Planning requires adequate information about the current and target states and accurate estimates of the time and financial investments required to perform all the steps necessary for change.

Planning also involves putting together a team of committed and motivated individuals with defined team roles, outlining all tasks, assigning responsibilities, and proactively managing and mitigating risks. The planning process should include the development of a vision/scope
document so that each team member understands the project vision, goals, objectives, schedule, and risks. The planning team should allow adequate time for team members to understand, investigate, document, and communicate prior to design and implementation.

4. Leadership Development

Leadership Development is the strategic investment in, and utilization of the human capital within the organization. The practice of Leadership Development focuses on the development of leadership as a process. With the rapid rate of change in our global economy, leadership has taken on the critical role of adaptation and innovation in the workplace. As companies restructure their business processes and employees, they need solid leadership training to communicate effectively, influence others, maximize creativity, and analyze your business. How leadership is demonstrated within an organization will determine how successful that organization will be and how successful those who follow will become.

5. Employee Training

Employee training is one of the most powerful cost reduction drivers. Our research shows that the under-trained employee consumes two to six times the amount of technical support (including peer support) than an adequately trained user. Employee training should be performed on systems and applications, being careful to match the training that is delivered in relation to the employee's job. Training should include a mix of instructor-led classroom training, computer-based training, and just-in-time training to help increase user productivity and reduce support costs.

6. Staff Motivation

A motivated staff is one that will operate as a team and will pitch in when needed to solve any problem or challenge at hand. They will often exceed expectations and provide critical back up for each other. A motivated staff works harder to meet the goals set by the organization.

7. Automated Asset Management

Electronically supported life-cycle driven asset process. Automated asset management consists of electronically supported procurement, automated inventory, and centralized data repository that are available to financial, administrative, technical planners, system administrators, and the service desk. Managed data within the asset management system consists of contract terms, hardware inventory, software inventory, accounting, maintenance records, change history, support history, and other technical and financial information.

8. Systems Scalability

Systems Scalability is a technology infrastructure that can logically and physically increase in performance and capacity with continuity to meet reasonable growth and change over time. A scalable architecture contains a strategic migration plan for continuous growth and progress. Commitment to scalable architectures enables the roll-out of homogeneous hardware and application platforms across users and departments with different processing requirements, while providing technical staff with a common platform to support.

9. Capacity Planning

Capacity planning is a process by which the capacity of the network and assets is measured, compared against requirements, and adjusted as appropriate. The process of capacity planning involves mapping new initiatives to existing infrastructure, understanding the cost
dynamics of network bandwidth and storage, memory, and other system resources.

10. Enterprise Policy Management

Enterprise policy management is a managed user environment in which a network or desktop administrator can control, with rules-based logic, which applications, settings, network resources, databases, and other IT assets a user can use. This environment is defined by user ID and is not necessarily machine specific. It is typically implemented by user profiles maintained at the server and synchronized with the client device that a user is logged onto.

Enterprise policy management precludes the user from making changes to the system; such as introducing unauthorized software or changing settings that may cause conflict with other system resources. As well, a managed environment controls the ease of use of the desktop, providing a common set of applications and access for groups of users or individuals. In this manner, the user is presented only with the tools they have been trained on and need for the job, and assures that changes are managed. This process, integrated with a system management and change management policy, can reduce service desk calls and unplanned
downtime, as well as create a more predictable platform for system upgrades.

11. IS Training

IS professional training is critical in preparing the IS staff that are delivering support and service to users to confidently plan and implement initiatives and solutions, and resolve user issues quickly and effectively. IS professional training should be obtained for all staff members on the systems, tools, and applications that are utilized in their daily jobs. Training should include instructor-led training classes,certification courses, seminars, and computer-based training.

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About Victor Holman

Victor Holman is a performance management expert who provides fast, simple and inexpensive ways to transform organizational performance.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

Eight Enterprise Performance Management Best Practices - Defining Phase

2009-11-02T21:19:00.000-08:00

Have you ever tried looking up performance management best practices? If so, then you probably discovered the same things I did, that there is very little documentation or standard best practices dealing with performance management. You may find human resources best practices or IT best practices, and even best practices dealing with various departments within an organization. But chances are you will have little luck finding a comprehensive set of enterprise performance management best practices. The truth is, performance management is a complex process that affects every aspect of your organization. Even with a detailed plan on how to reach your organizational goals this can be an overwhelming task and take years to fully understand. I've put together a set of enterprise performance management best practices that drive organizational success and help you avoid the obstacles that can bring a performance initiative to a halt.

The Lifecycle Performance Management Model is an enterprise framework that is centered on 35 best practices. These best practices span across the five phases of the performance life-cycle: defining, planning, executing, monitoring and reporting. This article is the first of a series of five discussing the performance management best practices within Lifecycle Performance Management, and will focus on the defining phase.

The defining phase is where preliminary management processes are performed. These preliminary processes are those outside of traditional performance management, but which are critical to the success of your performance management initiative. Defining phase best practices are the executive processes that don't necessarily include participation from all levels within the organization.

1. Organizational Mission and Goals Management

Mission and Goals Management is the practice of ensuring that organizational mission and goals are well documented and communicated throughout the organization. Identified by executives and executed by management and staff, Organizational Mission and Goals Management is a process that includes participation at all levels and requires continuous validation throughout the maturation and growth of the organization. Organizational Mission and Goals Management includes identifying objectives throughout all business units, personnel, processes and systems and monitoring the progress of meeting those objectives. The objective is
to control costs by having people, processes and systems within the organization working toward supporting the mission and goals of the organization.

2. Performance Scope Management

The practice of defining the outcomes, documenting assumptions, and defining the scope of your performance initiative. Performance Scope Management can be approached in several ways such as defining deliverables, functionality and data, technical structure, and enterprise/organizational structure. Performance Scope Management involves setting the high level processes for which the performance management team will approach divisions, support teams and individuals in order to align performance to business objectives. Performance Scope Management ensures that expectations are met by clarifying roles, processes and expectations.

3. Performance Team Development

Performance Team Development is a critical process in Lifecycle Performance Management. It involves ensuring that the performance team is well aware of the issues facing the organization from the customer, employee, senior management and key stakeholders perspectives. Performance Team Development includes ensuring that there is support and commitment from the CEO, a direct reporting line to executive management, access to systems, data, organizational charts and processes, and liaisons form each of the business units to bridge the gap in communication and operational knowledge.

4. Vendor Performance Management

A low risk vendor conforms to the Gartner Group vendor suitability models. The vendor/service provider model assesses the viability of vendors against a set of characteristics that have been proven a low risk, high quality purchase. An organization that utilizes low risk, as well as high quality vendors and providers, will be less likely to encounter quality, reliability, or supply issues. This practice compares vendors and service providers on their financial viability, organizational stability, quality control, stringent testing for compatibility, independent market support for technology differentiation, and responsiveness to field service issues. We believe that vendors that have best in class capabilities will reduce the risk and associated costs compared to vendors that may offer lower priced products without sound testing, field support, or management practices.

5. Vendor Standardization

Vendor standardization limits the number of vendors that an organization purchases from. For given assets, an
organization selects a limited set of vendors from which products or services can be purchased. Vendor Standardization usually consists of a primary and secondary vendor. By standardizing on fewer vendors, an
organization can gain purchasing leverage and reduce incompatibility issues, support issues, vendor liaison requirements, testing of new technology, and administrative costs of vendor management. While it may limit the available selection of technology and features somewhat, it enables larger discounts with volume purchasing. Vendor standardization is part of a comprehensive asset management process that includes establishment of procurement procedures and policies, and compliance monitoring and management.

6. Organizational Stability

Stability of an organization is critical to keeping the staff members and teams consistent and focused. It enables the maturation of processes, procedures, and talent. Constant reorganization, management changes, and political infighting take a toll on moral, turnover, costs, risk and progress.

7. IT Cost Management

IT Cost Management is the financial management of your network that measures the total cost of IT services on a regular basis, compares the costs to industry benchmarks, and makes decisions on changes that include financial, not just technical, objectives. The process, policies, and tools are continuously and regularly applied to track progress and optimize spending. With IT Cost Management frameworks, such as TCO Lifecycle Management, proper technology refresh cycles can be established and investments can be verified as having positive financial impact and returns prior to implementation.

8. Performance-Based Budgeting

A results focused planning and budgeting framework which focuses on three elements: the strategy (how to achieve outcome), outputs (activities to achieve final outcome), and the result (final outcome). Performance-based budgets use missions, goals and objectives to justify funding. Through the allocation of resources, performance-based budging achieves specific objectives based on program goals and measured results. As a result, it is possible to understand which activities are cost-effective in terms of achieving the desired result.

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About Victor Holman

Victor Holman is a performance management expert who provides fast, simple and inexpensive ways to transform organizational performance.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

Twelve Basic Predictive Analytics Techniques

2009-11-02T21:17:00.000-08:00

Predictive analytics is a solution used by many businesses today to gain more value out of large amounts of raw data by applying techniques that are used to predict future behaviors within an organization, it's customer base, it's products and services. Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of techniques from data mining, stastics and game theory that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future events.

Predictive models examine patterns found in historical and transactional data to identify opportunities and risks. Predictive models capture relationships among many factors to allow assessment of risk or potential associated with a particular set of conditions, guiding decision making for candidate transactions.

There are some basic and more complex predictive analytics techniques. Three basic techniques include:

Data Profiling and Transformations
Sequential Pattern Analysis
Time Series Tracking.

Data profiling and transformations are functions that analyze row and column attributes and dependencies, change data formats, merge fields, aggregate records, and join rows and columns.

Sequential pattern analysis discovers relationships between rows of data. Sequential pattern analysis is used to identify frequently observed sequential occurrence of items across ordered transactions over time. Such a frequently observed sequential occurrence of items (called a sequential pattern) must satisfy a user-specified minimum support. Understanding long-term customer purchase behavior is an example of the sequential pattern analysis. Other examples include customer shopping sequences, click-stream sessions, and telephone calling patterns.

Time series tracking tracks metrics that represent key behaviors or business strategies. It is an ordered sequence of values of a variable at equally spaced time intervals. Time series analysis accounts for the fact that data points taken over time may have an internal structure (such as autocorrelation, trend or seasonal variation) that should be accounted for. Examples include patterning customer sales that indicate product satisfaction and buying habits, budgetary analysis, stock market analysis, census analysis, and workforce projections.

More advanced predictive analytics techniques include:

Time Series Forecasting
Data Profiling and Transformations
Bayesian Analytics
Regression
Classification
Dependency or Association Analysis
Simulation
Optimization

Time series forecasting predicts the future value of a measure based on past values. Time series forecasting uses a model to forecast future events based on known past events. Examples include stock prices and sales revenue.

Data profiling and transformation uses functions that analyze row and column attributes and dependencies, change data formats, merge fields, aggregate records, and join rows and columns.

Bayesian analytics capture the concepts used in probability forecasting. It is a statistical procedure which estimate parameters of an underlying distribution based on the observed distribution. An example is used in a court setting by an individual juror to coherently accumulate the evidence for and against the guilt of the defendant, and to see whether, in totality, it meets their threshold for 'beyond a reasonable doubt'.

Regression analysis is a statistical tool for the investigation of relationships between variables. Usually, the investigator seeks to ascertain the causal effect of one variable upon another-the effect of a price increase upon demand, for example, or the effect of changes in the money supply upon the inflation rate.

Classification used attributes in data to assign an object to a predefined class or predict the value of a numeric variable of interest. Examples include credit risk analysis, likelihood to purchase. Examples include acquisition, cross-sell, attrition, credit scoring and collections.

Clustering or segmentation separates data into homogeneous subgroups based on attributes. Clustering assigns a set of observations into subsets (clusters) so that observations in the same cluster are similar. An example is customer demographic segmentation.

Dependency or association analysis describes significant associations between data items. An example is market basket analysis. Market basket analysis is a modeling technique based upon the theory that if you buy a certain group of items, you are more (or less) likely to buy another group of items.

Simulation models a system structure to estimate the impact of management decisions or changes. Simulation model behavior will change in each simulation according to the set of initial parameters assumed for the environment. Examples include inventory reorder policies, currency hedging, military training.

Optimization models a system structure in terms of constraints to find the best possible solution. Optimization models form part of a larger system which people use to help them make decisions. The user is able to influence the solutions which the model produces and reviews them before making a final decision as to what to do. Examples include scheduling of shift workers, routing of train cargo, and pricing airline seats.

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About Victor Holman

Victor Holman is a performance management expert who provides fast, simple and inexpensive ways to transform organizational performance.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

Three Basic Predictive Analysis Models

2009-11-02T21:11:00.000-08:00

It used to be that basic data was enough to make successful decisions within an organization. A CEO could look at common key performance indicators such as net profit margin, debt to income ratio, and return on investment and be able to make the best decisions available at the time.

For the past several decades, companies have collected large amounts of data in order to evaluate why they performed the way they did and to understand their customer's needs and preferences. They built data warehouses and advance reports to improve accuracy to improve key processes, and optimize performance.

As time went on, companies learned that they could use historical data and trends to predict future behavior, and to make decisions. This was seen in examples as when a call center manager uses call volume by hour statistics to staff a call center for peak and non peak times.

Then organizations moved beyond reporting capabilities and began gathering even larger amounts of data to apply statistical analysis to further predict future trends and behavioral patterns. This was seen in examples like the banking industry using credit history, residential information, job information, debts, etc to calculate a credit score to determine if a person is likely to pay off a loan. This is an example of predictive analytics, and organizations in all genres are learning to apply it to their reporting capabilities. Predictive analytics applies large volumes of data to capture relationships between explanatory variables (variables used in a relationship to explain or predict changes in the values of another variable) and predicted variables from past data, and applying it to predict future outcomes.

Predictive modeling is the process by which data is modeled and diagnosed to try to best predict the probability of an outcome. In many cases the model is chosen on the basis of detection theory to try to guess the probability of a signal given a set amount of input data. Models can use one or more classifiers in trying to determine the probability of a set of data belonging to another set.

There are three main types of models associated with predictive analytics: predictive models, descriptive models, and decision models.

Predictive models predict future behavior and anticipate the consequences of change. Predictive models are comprised of a number of predictors (factors likely to affect future behavior or results). For example, in marketing a customer's age, sex and income can be used to predict the likelihood of buying.

Predictive analytics' central building block is the predictor, a single value measured for each customer. For example, 'most recent', which is based on the number of weeks since the customer's last purchase, has higher values for more recent customers. This predictor is usually a reliable campaign response predictor: you will receive more responses from those customers more highly ranked by 'most recent'. That means that if you contact your customers in order of 'most recent' - first, call the most-recent customer; next, call the next-most-recent customer; and so on - you will improve your response rate. For each prediction goal, there are an abundance of predictors that will help rank your customer database. For example, consider a customer's online behavior: Customers who spend less time logged on may be less likely to renew their annual subscription. In this case, retention campaigns can be cost-effectively targeted to customers with a low monthly usage predictor value.

Descriptive models quantify the relationships between data in order to classify customers into groups. While predictive models focus on predicting one customer's behavior, descriptive models identify relationships between several customers or products. Descriptive models do not predict a target value, but focus more on the intrinsic structure, relations, interconnectedness, etc. Descriptive models are used in our earlier example of the financial industry and credit scores.

Cluster analysis is a descriptive modeling technique that identifies clusters embedded in the data. A cluster is a collection of data objects that are similar in some sense to one another.

Another descriptive modeling technique is the k-means algorithm. K-means algorithm is a distance-based clustering algorithm that partitions the data into a predetermined number of clusters (provided there are enough distinct cases). The k-means algorithm works only with numerical attributes. Distance-based algorithms rely on a distance metric (function) to measure the similarity between data points.

Decision models describe the relationship between all decision elements and predict the results of decisions, allowing you to try different scenarios, and optimize results. Clinical Decision Support Systems use predictive analysis in the health care industry to determine at risk patients and sometimes to determine which course of action would be best given a multiple array of variables.

Rational decision models are based around a cognitive judgment of the pros and cons of various options. It is organized around selecting the most logical and sensible alternative that will have the desired effect. The decisions are normally organized through a detailed analysis of alternatives and a comparative assessment of the advantages of each. Weighted criteria scoring is an example of rational decision models.

Hopefully this has given you a better understanding of the basic predictive analysis models that drive predictive analytics. Check out my article on predictive modeling techniques to learn about 12 common techniques used to predict future behavior.

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About Victor Holman

Victor Holman is a performance management expert who provides fast, simple and inexpensive ways to transform organizational performance.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

The Challenges of Introducing Predictive Analytics to Your Organization

2009-11-02T21:07:00.000-08:00

Predictive analytics is a solution used by many businesses today to gain more value out of the large amounts of raw data by applying techniques that are used to predict future behaviors within an organization, it's customer base, it's products and services. Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of techniques from data mining, stastics and game theory that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future events.

The benefits of implementing predictive analytics is undeniable. There are countless documented case studies and success stories where predictive analysis yielded a substantial return on investment, helped companies optimize existing processes, provided a better understanding of customer behavior, identified unexpected opportunities, and anticipated problems before they occurred. But with all of the benefits associated with predictive analytics, there are many challenges that accompany becoming an analytics-driven organization.

The perceived complexity is the largest challenge facing executives today. The cost of implementation is a close second. While these are legitimate fears, many tools are being developed to simplify the process and establish transparency from the complex formulas and statical modeling. It is, however, up to organizations to educate themselves on the basics and concepts of predictive analysis in order to fully utilize these tools.

Another challenge, which is more technical, is the traditional approach of having analyst explore data sets by saving data and manually applying relationships in order to make predictive assumptions. While this can work at a basic level of predictive analytics, predictive analytics at it's most effective application requires extremely large amounts of data and thus is best suited for analytics platforms wih parallel processing, which support custom analytical applications that query data using SQL.

This brings us to another challenge with implementing predictive analytics in your organization, and that is managing the enormous data volumes associated with it. Some organizations known to apply leading edge analytical techniques, are gathering perabytes (that's approximately 1000 terabytes, or 1 million gigabytes) of data. While these amounts of data require costly data warehouse upgrades, it enables organizations to form very comprehensive analytics and it enhances visitor/customer experience by providing targeted, customized marketing and services.

But with these large amounts of data and data storage comes the challenges of producing the platform for processing this data with complex formulas at fast rates. Because of this, analytic platforms often run off massively parallel processing (MPP) databases. MPP databases coordinate processing of a single program by more than one processor by dividing up parts of a program into several processors with their separate memory and operating systems. But many organizations that cannot afford MPP databases, instead implement analytical platforms as data marts to off-load complex processing.

While these challenges to indeed appear to be complex, the important thing to know is that if you have the architecture to support it, there are several tools out there that take out the complexities and applying predictive modeling.

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About Victor Holman

Victor Holman is a performance management expert who provides fast, simple and inexpensive ways to transform organizational performance.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

What is Predictive Analytics and Why Are We So Afraid of It?

2009-11-02T20:49:00.000-08:00

The other day I got into a discussion with a panel of executives and the topic of predictive analytics became a main area of discussion. Most of the executives were aware of predictive analytics, and many of them had implemented predictive analytics in some form or another, whether it be through CRM, decision support systems, marketing, etc. One thing they all had in common was they all were interested in increasing the value of their data investment. But the feeling that permeated from the group most was intimidation.

Most executives, while extremely interested in implementing predictive analysis techniques and strategies, felt overwhelmed about the perceived technical nuances that accompany them. So why are we so afraid of entering the informative world of predictive analytics? The truth is, predictive analytics can be very complex, combining advanced data mining and data warehouse solutions to transform large data volumes into meaningful decision making information. This article will address some of the predictive analytics fears facing executives today, and hopefully will ease some of those fears you may have about implementing an predictive analysis solution.

The main reason most execs fear predictive analytics is because it is driven mainly by statistical analysis. Predictive analytics applies statistics, advanced mathematics, artificial intelligence and data management that many business and IT professionals view as extremely complex. What they probably don't realize is that there are several tools that are out today that are dedicated to taking out the complexities that drive people away from predictive analysis. It used to be that you had to hold a PhD in statistics to create and run analytical computations, which was extremely costly to retain. When combined with the costs of specialized analysis programs and hardware, it was very difficult to justify costs. Today however, with a strong understanding of the business processes and the data your business generates, combined with some SQL skills, anybody can perform sophisticated analysis.

Another fear businesses have when it comes to implementing a predictive analysis solution is the high costs that are associated with it. They are skeptical about the numerous case studies and success stories where predictive analysis yielded a substantial return on investment, helped companies optimize existing processes, provided a better understanding of customer behavior, identified unexpected opportunities, and anticipated problems before they occurred.

Some of the fears executives have when it comes to implementing a predictive analysis solution simply come from the fact that most only have a vague concept of the many areas that predictions can be applied to deliver additional value throughout the entire organization.

Lastly, most people fear stepping into the world of predictive analytics because it requires a lot of skill and creativity. When utilizing a platform that can manipulate such vast amounts of data, the sky is the limit as to what kinds of insights your company can gain when combined with creative professionals that truly understand the data, the business, and the organizational goals. But until a framework is created that walks these businesses through the stages of planning, manipulating and evaluating data in order to make predictions and drive decision making, there will be a large number of executives that remain reluctant to enter predictive analytics.

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About Victor Holman

Victor Holman is a performance management expert who provides fast, simple and inexpensive ways to transform organizational performance.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

Why Your Organization Needs a Performance Improvement Strategy...

2009-11-02T15:25:00.000-08:00

It is believed that having the right metrics can only get you 80% of the way to an effective performance metrics program. The last 20% comes from deploying the metrics, seeing how they affect performance, and then adjusting them accordingly. The same can be said about the areas which these metrics guide. One of the main reasons we measure performance is so that we can identify weaknesses and areas of improvements. What we do once we identify these weaknesses and areas of improvement is what determines how effective our performance initiative, and in turn, organization will be.

Learn How to Identify Your Areas of Improvement

The purpose of performance improvement is not to point fingers and place blame on a group or individuals that are not performing well, nor is it intended to solve problems. Performance improvement is simply a way of looking at how an organization can perform better. The difficulty with performance improvement, especially in an enterprise organization, is understanding which processes are working well and which aren’t and knowing what to tackle first when key processes are interconnected.

Learn How to Approach Performance and Leverage Your Organizational Strengths

Learn How to Apply a Custom Performance Roadmap to Transform Organizational Performance

· Unclear team/job responsibilities

· Unclear or lack of performance feedback

· Inadequate physical environment, including improper tools, supplies, or workspace

· Lack of motivation and incentives to perform as expected

· Skills and knowledge required for the job

· Ineffective processes

Take control of your organization’s performance and join the elite group of high performing organizations.

About Victor Holman

Victor Holman is a performance management expert who provides fast, simple and inexpensive ways to transform organizational performance.

Check out his FREE performance management kit, which includes several templates, plans, and guides to help you get started with your next initiative.

Learn all about performance management at The Performance Portal

How to Break Down Functional Thinking Within Your Organization

2009-10-16T13:03:00.000-07:00

We've all been in situations where a division or functional group within an organization points fingers at other divisions when a process failure occurs. Or part of a team that had little idea of how their function fits into other functions within the organization. This article discusses an issue that affects almost every organization, and that's breaking down functional or departmentalized thinking and creating streams of information that flow across multiple functional or departmental boundaries.

Most organizations use departments and business units in order to differentiate the various functions and services which drive their business. For example, personnel related matters are managed in HR departments, payroll is handled in accounting departments and computer and systems related incidents are resolved in IT departments, and so on. In addition most business intelligence systems are built to support decision making in those specific functional areas rather than being built around core processes that span the enterprise and govern how a business operates. For instance, marketing collects only the information it needs to put products and services before the public eye. Sales departments pay attention to leads, and conversions, and customer buying patterns. And customer service tracks only those customers who call in with questions and complaints, and how the issue was resolved.

In reality, business processes are streams of activity that flow across functional boundaries, and not contained within a single department. As a result business processes are often fragmented across "functional silos". A silo in this case is a division or management system that is not integrated with the operations of other, related divisions or management systems.

The problem with organizations that are trapped in this siloed mentality is employees rarely study how their function contributes to the larger business process in which their function supports. As a result, these organizations have limited knowledge on their processes and often do not properly identify their core processes. This is a major pain point in many performance management initiatives, because most major processes require support from multiple functional support groups. In order to break down these silos, each functional group and individual must understand how their primary process fits into the core function of their business.

In order to successfully measure the performance and efficiency of these major processes, we must first understand which groups are responsible for handling these processes and what their responsibilities are. Second, we must understand the handoffs of responsibility, that is, when and how the process gets transferred from one group to the next. Thirdly, we must develop requirements for each responsibility within the process. And if we're really serious about eliminating functional thinking within our organizations, we must cross-train employees so that they fully understand the entire processes, which they support.

For example, when a purchase request comes in, an approval committee or governance team must approve or reject that request within 24 hours. Then the purchasing department must place the order within 24 hours. Then, the warehouse must send the order within 24 hours. Once we understand this, we can say that the purchasing order process, if approved, will be completed within 72 hours. If the purchase is not sent within 72 hours, we now understand where the bottleneck occurred. Ultimately, if this happens on multiple occasions, the responsible group will have to revisit their sub-processes.

Success breaking down functional thinking depends largely on how well the performance management team involves functional support group management and key team members, and how well these sub-processes are identified. Breaking down functional thinking is critical for organizational growth. The important aspect is developing the proper communication channels throughout the entire organization so that when dependencies and cross functional processes are identified, points of contacts will be established and each group will be responsible for ensuring that their staff understand their contribution to larger, multi-functional processes and organization goals.

If you are looking for a performance management solution that focuses on applying the best practices and key processes that drive organizational success, check out my Free Performance Management Kit.

To learn about the 35 performance management best practices, the 48 key processes, 82 decision support techniques and more, go to The Peformance Portal.

How to Turbo Charge Organizational Success by Implementing Performance Management Best Practices

2009-10-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

In this global fiscal crisis, many business owners and executives are looking for ways to maximize organizational performance and cut costs at the same time. While this is a very difficult task for most CEOs, the truth is these goals can be accomplished with relative ease once we stop relying on technology and start focusing on our internal processes and leveraging existing assets. According to business intelligence software vendor SAS, the number two reason why performance programs fail is failure to adopt best practices. But what are performance management best practices and why are they so valuable? By definition, they are techniques or methodologies that, through experience and research, have been proven to reliably lead to desired performance results. This article discusses the value of applying performance management best practices and leveraging your existing assets for maximum performance.
Most companies have some form of performance management processes in place. It's common to baseline performance, apply a set of performance metrics, identify goals and create a plan to reach them. But where most companies fail are in the intangible processes, such as gaining employee acceptance and buy-in, aligning performance to organizational objectives, choosing the right business intelligence tools, and so forth. It's these intangibles that can bring performance initiatives to a halt. If you simply address these intangible processes while implementing your existing performance initiatives, you can significantly increase your performance success through these tough financial times.

It has become our business culture to invest large sums of money on business intelligence tools and high priced consulting for managing data and key processes that drive organizational success. We have become so reliant on these products and services as solutions that we have failed to understand the true cause of organizational breakdown, and that is our internal processes, most specifically, how we approach managing performance within our organization.

You've probably heard the saying 'what gets measured, gets done'. Well, that's true. But equally true is HOW it's measured determines HOW WELL it gets done. You can use all the industry standard metrics you can find, but if internal processes aren't in place to educate and motivate those being measured, or if different departments are executing the same functions differently, the systems you have in place will not drive peak performance. Metrics quantify high performance, but it's the best practices and processes that get you to that level.

So how are organizations supposed to adopt performance management best practices when there is not a comprehensive set documented and integrated into a logical, effective framework? I've identified 35 best practices that greatly impact the success of any performance initiative, and has an excellent, low cost tool that evaluates an organization's approach to performance management and measures how well they utilize performance management best practices throughout the entire organization. It is called the Organizational Performance and Best Practices Analysis and it maps these best practices to people, processes and systems and provides a custom step-by-step roadmap detailing your critical path to success. By fully understanding where your organization utilizes best practice processes well, you can leverage those strengths and resources to departments that need them the most.

If you are looking for a performance management solution that focuses on applying the best practices and key processes that drive organizational success, check out my Free Performance Management Kit.

To learn about the 35 performance management best practices, the 48 key processes, 82 decision support techniques and more, go to The Peformance Portal.

How to Evaluate Organizational Performance in Economic Hard Times

2009-10-16T12:54:00.000-07:00

We've all made the decision to improve our appearance at some point in our lives. Maybe we've decided we were going to lose weight by dieting and exercise. Or maybe we've decided to gain strength by lifting weights. The first thing we did was stepped on that scale and said "Wow, I need to lose a few pounds". Or we ran to the gym and measured our strength and endurance at various exercises.

What we were actually doing was creating a baseline. We were creating a snapshot of our current selves. Let's just pretend that we didn't baseline our current self, we didn't have our measurements, and based personal goals based on Miss America, or Mr. Universe's appearance. We wouldn't capitalize on the available data (our current selves) and set realistic goals. Shortly, we'd become frustrated, lose motivation, and eventually fail.

Likewise, businesses often don't capitalize on available data to get them through difficult times. With a new year beginning and growing concerns of our economic future, now is a good time to evaluate our current environments and identify our organizational strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvements and cost savings. This article discusses the value of baselining organizational performance, different baselining approaches your organization can, and overcoming variables that add complexity to your performance baselines.

Baselining involves using historical performance data to calculate averages and standard deviations. The average establishes the baseline and the standard deviation is a percentage change in the baseline deemed acceptable. When performance exceeds the standard deviation, some specified action is usually required.

If your organization has clear, specific goals and objectives, the data to be used in the baseline is easier to determine. And of course, if goals and objectives are vague or unclear, it can be difficult to identify important baseline data. But given these tough financial times, it is probably most beneficial to focus on financial performance and key processes.

A performance baseline is performance information gathered to evaluate your current state and measure variations to gauge successes and failures within the organization. Baselines may also be used to establish goals and standards, to set SLA metrics and performance thresholds, and to make important decisions. But perhaps the most important, but overlooked reason we do performance baselines is to refocus our organizations on what's important. You may have done a baseline a couple of years ago, but chances are you are still measuring the same things you measured back then. Performance a new baseline forces us to re-evaluate what's important to organization as it endures the constant changes brought on by this dynamic economy.

Types of Performance Baselines

There are three types of baselines:

rolling baselines
recurring time-based baselines
and specific date baselines.

Rolling baselines compare current performance metrics with a period of time preceeding the current period. An example would be comparing last month's performance to the average performance of the previous 12 months.

Recurring time-based baselines compare current performance metrics with performance baselines calculated for the same length of periods. Daily or weekly baselines are good examples of recurring time-based baselines.

Specific date baselines compare current performance metrics with the metrics from a specific date. For example, gathering baseline sales metrics for the day after Christmas.

Complexitites of Baselining Performance

Historical baselines often answer the question "how many?" such as "how many tickets were created over a given period of time?" The historical baseline data are the averages of such counts over that specified period. Baselines can be relative to any arbitrary point in time.

While this seems simple, it gets more complex when you take into effect some of the following variables: processes that take several days to complete, business hours calculations (e.g. M-F, 9-5, excluding holidays or specific dates), calculations involving multiple time zones, and calculation involving phased implementations.

When processes extend for multiple days, counting and time calculations become considerably more difficult, especially when a reporting tool is not utilized. Processes executed on business days and during business hours are also more difficult. In this case the proper divisor at the Day level is the number of business days in the last 365 calendar days, taking into account weekends and holidays. The divisor at the Hours level is the number of business hours in the last 24 hour period. Calculations with Multiple Time Zones can span across multiple cities around the world, reflecting different holidays and work norms. The baseline divisor thus becomes a function not only of Time but also of Location, thus further complicating the process. Projects utilizing phased implementations where new locations or divisions go "live" as the enterprise expands (such as in a phased Enterprise Resource Planning implementation). In this case, the baseline calculation must take into account how long a particular location has been live in order to obtain an accurate baseline.

Understanding Variables and Standard Deviations

Variance and Standard Deviation are measures of how spread out a distribution is. In other words, they are measures of variability. The spread is the degree to which scores on the variable differ from each other. If every score on the variable were about equal, the variable would have very little spread. Standard Deviation is the square root of the variance. It is the most commonly used measure of spread. An important attribute of the standard deviation as a measure of spread is that if the mean and standard deviation of a normal distribution are known, it is possible to compute the percentile rank associated with any given score. In a normal distribution, about 68% of the scores are within one standard deviation of the mean and about 95% of the scores are within two standard deviations of the mean.

Identifying the Right Data to Baseline

There's a basic rule to identifying the right data to baseline:

1) measure what your customers say is important,
2) measure areas where there are problems you'd like to solve, and
3) measure the business objectives you are aiming to achieve.

If your organization has clear, specific goals and objectives, the data to be used in the baseline is easier to determine. However, if goals and objectives are vague or unclear, it is difficult to identify important baseline data. Measurements should be aligned to your organization's objectives and should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely).

If you are looking for a performance management solution that focuses on applying the best practices and key processes that drive organizational success, check out my Free Performance Management Kit.

To learn about the 35 performance management best practices, the 48 key processes, 82 decision support techniques and more, go to The Peformance Portal.

How to Develop a Performance Metrics Repository That Drives Organizational Success

2009-10-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

So, you've documented your organizational objectives and you've identified performance metrics. Now, where do you store these metrics? You store them in a performance metrics repository. A performance metrics repository is more than a list of metrics, it is a documented resource that explains to stakeholders everything they need to know about the metrics, such as what they are, how they support organizational objectives, how data is collected, who collects it, and so forth.

In small organizations there are normally fewer metrics, and they tend to be maintained centrally. In larger organizations with multiple business units, metrics are often maintained at the business unit level. Business units may have a number of metrics that they monitor, from systems performance to processes to employee performance. The key purpose of the performance metrics repository is to serve as the central point for viewing key performance measures across the organization. The magic word is key performance measures. While an organization may monitor hundreds of metrics enterprise-wide, the goal of the performance management team is to capture, collect and analyze the key measures that drive business and align to organizational objectives.

In your performance metrics repository, it is probably best that you include the following fields:

The business unit performing the service
The name of the performance measurement
Description of the measurement
Explanation of measurement formula
Resource and location of the data
Organization Objectives which the metric supports
Type of report
Frequency of Report
Who is responsible for providing data
Baseline performance (optional)
Rolling average (optional)
Variance
Target Audience (Stakeholders most interested in this metric)

By including these fields you are achieving several key factors that contribute to performance success such as:

Identifying key stakeholders / addressing stakeholder needs
Creating organizational awareness of the metrics
Gaining buy in on how performance is being measured
Centralizing performance measurement
Aligning performance to objectives
Creating an environment of accountability
Providing high level trend analysis

There are a rules of thumb to remember when setting up your metrics repository:

Ensure database can be accessed by key stakeholders
Develop a process for approving, populating and updating the database (similar to a change management process)
Train performance management team and key stakeholders how to use database
Enforce standards for providing complete and accurate entries
Limit the number of performance measures by business unit (remember, your focus is to measure key performance measures that drive organizational success)

7 Steps to Developing a Successful Strategic Plan

2009-10-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a client of mine asked me what I thought was the best way to execute a strategic plan and apply performance metrics to ensure success of the plan. This is a two part question which will be answered in two entries. Today, I'm going to discuss the best way to execute your business strategy, and tomorrow I'll get into how to integrate the performance plan into your strategy to ensure performance success.

A performance initiative cannot succeed unless executives have defined the organizational goals. Organizational goals must be defined and a strategic plan must address how these goals are going to be achieved in order for a performance initiative to be successful. There is no compromising here. Performance management depends on organizational goals being distributed and measured throughout the entire organization, originating from the executive board and communicated all the way down the line. Today's tip is going to discuss how to develop a plan that lays the foundation for your performance plan. Because without a solid plan, your performance initiative is setup for failure.

It's not uncommon for a smaller organization to have partially developed business objectives or a rough strategic plan, but still have a critical need to implement a performance management process. These seven steps will help guide you through the strategic planning process.

1. Organize a Leadership Team
2. Articulate Mission and Vision
3. Assess the Current Environment
4. Agree on priorities
5. Write the Strategic plan
6. Implement the strategic plan
7. Monitor and Evaluate

1. Organize a Leadership Team

The strategic planning phase requires a team of leaders, normally the executive board or a team of key management with CEO oversight. The strategic plan should identify this team and the wider community of present and potential stakeholders. If a decision is made to involve other stakeholders in the process, at which point will they be involved? Will an outside consultant or facilitator be necessary to assist with some or all of the process? Who will keep the planning on track, and what are the best ways to make the strategic plan most useful? How will questions be addressed and decisions made? These questions should be answered at the start of the planning phase.

2. Articulate Mission and Vision

Your mission statement will define the what, how and why of your organization's services. It should explain why your organization exists and what its objectives are. It should explain how your organization works to fulfill its objectives and its values. When wording the mission statement, consider your organization's products, services, markets, values, and concern for public image. The vision statement includes a vivid description of the organization as it effectively carries out its operations.

3. Assess the Current Environment

Now that you've answered why your organization exists, what it does and what it hopes to achieve, you are ready to assess your past and current state and begin identifying your future state. This activity is most effective when key personnel throughout the entire organization are involved. Outreach to employees can be achieved through town hall meetings, focal groups, surveys, emails, etc. Review services and performance against the mission and vision. At this point your organization may not have the proper data or tools to quantifiably measure this. That's ok, as qualitative analysis can provide you with a high level baseline assessment. Perform a SWOT Analysis; which is a look at the internal Strengths and Weaknesses, and the external Opportunities and Threats of your organization, for your current and future state.

4. Agree on priorities

Now that the mission is affirmed and critical issues are identified, the next step is to figure out goals, objectives and the strategy for attaining them. Goals are simply a clearer statement of the visions, specifying the accomplishments to be achieved when the vision becomes real. Objectives are clearer statements of the specific activities required to achieve the goals, starting from the current status. This is where the strategic planning process develops ideas and action steps, which are most effectively generated when delegated throughout management.

5. Write the Strategic plan

Once the mission has been communicated, strengths and weaknesses identified, and the strategies and goals agreed upon, the strategic plan is ready to be developed. This is where it all comes together. This is where the planning committee drafts the plan, and all key decision makers review it to ensure that the plan answers the key questions about objectives and can serve as a guide for the entire organization. A strategic plan will enable your organization to achieve optimal performance and embark upon a meaningful process of ongoing improvement.

6. Implement the strategic plan

The implementation phase begins with the development of the operating plan. The operating plan defines the short-term objectives that determine success and is tied to the operating budget and reporting cycles. Following the fiscal calendar, your organization can measure progress toward annual goals, and finance can offer feedback to guide other business areas. This is where the budget is established.

7. Monitor and Evaluate

In addition to implementing goals, objectives and strategies, an operating plan should be created to address how goals will be monitored and evaluated. The plan should be resourced at each board meeting. This will help keep the board and staff focused on the operational goals, and will maintain a culture of valued planning. The plan should be a living document enabling the flexibility to adapt to change.

If you apply these seven steps, your organization will no doubt be able to plan and execute organizational objectives and goals.

If you are looking for a performance management solution that focuses on applying the best practices and key processes that drive organizational success, check out my Free Performance Management Kit.

To learn about the 35 performance management best practices, the 48 key processes, 82 decision support techniques and more, go to The Peformance Portal.

8 Steps For Developing the Scope For a Winning Performance Initiative

2009-10-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

Imagine trying to get 10 people that speak 10 different languages to work together and achieve a complex task. It would be extremely difficult no matter how intelligent the people were. This is how we have to think of our organizations...of intelligent people who aren't accustomed to speaking the language of business, or more specifically, the language of performance management.

If you've ever had to managed a project you know the importance of eliminating assumptions and making sure that all key stakeholders are looking through the same lens as to how the project will be carried out. In order to achieve this the first thing you did was document the project scope. Well, a performance initiative shouldn't be any different. Before you even think about implementing a performance program, you must first define the scope of your performance initiative.

The performance scope sets the boundaries for the performance management team. The performance scope defines the high level processes for how the performance management team will approach divisions, support teams and individuals to begin aligning performance to business objectives. Many times there is confusion about what falls inside the boundary of the performance initiative and what does not. Who all will be involved? What groups will be affected? Which groups will be excluded? The project scope ensures that everyone is viewing the initiative the same. Defining a solid scope and socializing it with the performance team, various project managers and key stakeholders is critical. Research has shown that defining scope and objectives are among the most important start-up activities to a successful performance initiative.

A common mistake made by organizations is not defining and communicating the scope of the performance initiative or only defining the initiative in general terms. This lack of definition causes managers and key stakeholders throughout the organization to make assumptions related to their own involvement to the initiative. As performance experts, our goal is to alleviate assumptions by clarifying roles, processes, and expectations. On large scale performance initiatives there is often push back from teams and individuals within the organization. Some even feel threatened (this is discussed in more detail in the 'Gaining Employee Acceptance' blog tip). A well communicated performance scope will help alleviate the politics that could slow down progress.

Performance management scopes are not a common process yet; therefore it may be a good idea for a consultant or a performance manager in charge of the performance implementation to put together a scope on their own to increase the odds of cooperation from the parties being evaluated.

Here are 8 high level steps for establishing your performance scope in a way that will minimize problems:

1. Define the outcome
2. Document assumptions
3. Define the scope of your performance initiative
4. Define deliverables
5. Define functionality
6. Define data
7. Define technical structure definition
8. Define enterprise/organizational structure

If you are looking for a performance management solution that focuses on applying the best practices and key processes that drive organizational success, check out my Free Performance Management Kit.

To learn about the 35 performance management best practices, the 48 key processes, 82 decision support techniques and more, go to The Peformance Portal.

Secrets of Developing Simple, Powerful Performance Measures That Drive Organizational Success

2009-10-16T11:44:00.000-07:00

In this economic, fiscal crisis it is critical that organizations understand what drives their success and how to measure it. Performance metrics tell us how good we are at doing what we do and help us reach goals on time and on budget. But in order for them to be truly effective; they must be fully understood and properly applied.

For example, server availability is a very common measurement for IT departments. But what does 99.999% server uptime mean? If you have multiple servers running in a redundant cluster or server farm, chances are your servers will be available 100% of the time.

But what good is an email server that is up 100% of the time if the email application itself is sporadic or if a customer is not receiving all of their mail or if transactions are taking too long to process? In this example, the metric is not set up from a customer point of view, but instead from a technical point of view. And thus that metric is not fully understood and adds little value. This article discusses the different types of measurements and how to develop simple, unique metrics that drive organizational success.

A performance metric is a type of measurement used to quantify the performance of some component of an organization. There are three types of performance measures: key result indicators, performance indicators, and key performance indicators. Key result indicators (KRIs) are typically long term measures (monthly, quarterly, yearly) which represent how your organization is doing, and are the results of your organization's actions. They are often used by executive management. Performance indicators (PIs) are the most common measurements, which are measured more frequently (weekly, daily or hourly), and often tell you what needs to be done. They are often used by middle management and staff, because they give valuable information of operations and give business unit management and staff an understanding of what actions need to be taken. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the measures that focus on the most critical performance areas within your organization. KPIs reflect strategic value drivers and dictate the success of your organization, while metrics represent anything that is measurable. A KPI is a metric, but a metric is not always a KPI. An organization will typically have many result indicators and performance indicators, but few KPIs.

A question many people have when developing metrics is simply "How do I know what to measure?" A good place to begin is by researching industry standard metrics. Industry standard metrics are valuable measurements that are common within an industry. They allow organizations to compare their performance to other organizations with similar service offerings. While industry standard metrics are a good place to begin, every organization is different. Sometimes organizations get too focused on industry standard metrics and fail to focus on the things that make their service unique to their industry.

Other ways to know what to measure are to:

1) measure what your customers say is important
2) measure areas where there are problems you'd like to solve, and
3) measure the business objectives you are aiming to achieve.

Another effective method for creating effective metrics is the SMART test (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely). Your metrics should be specific and assign ownership, accountability and parameters for the performance of the metric. They should be easy to measure and calculate. They should guide actionable steps to be taken if they are not met.
Metrics should guide performance into the direction of the organizational mission and goals. And they should be up to date and measured on time.

A way to test if your metrics are SMART is to create a SMART table. Your first column will document the function or skill area. Next, you want to a column listing which objectives each metric supports. If the metric does not support an organizational objective it will be much less valuable and may be costly in terms of labor and focusing on the wrong things. The next column should document standards and parameters for the metrics. Other columns should document whether the metrics are agreed upon by all stakeholders, how the metric will be calculated, whether the metric is validated, realistic and easy to gather, and how often the metric will be reported? If all of these questions can be answered and documented, the metric passes the SMART test.

One major challenge organizations face is identifying valuable financial metrics that are meaningful to those responsible for carrying out the work. For example, net cash flow is a critical performance measure for executives; but it probably means very little to the accounts receivable clerk who has no idea of how their contribution improves net cash flow performance.

Instead the CEO might focus on net cash flow while the CFO looks at the debt-to-equity ratio. The controller might focus on the liquidity ratio, while the accounts receivable manager looks at days sales outstanding, and the accounts receivable clerk worries about percent of collections over 30/60/90 days. By ensuring that the proper metrics are assigned to the key people measuring and driving financial performance your organization will greatly increase its chances of achieving constant growth and success.

If you are looking for a performance management solution that focuses on applying the best practices and key processes that drive organizational success, check out my Free Performance Management Kit.

To learn about the 35 performance management best practices, the 48 key processes, 82 decision support techniques and more, go to The Peformance Portal.

How to Align Performance to Corporate Strategy and Goals

2009-10-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

It used to be that performance management was managed in one department. Today, performance management has spread throughout the entire organization, where almost every division must focus on performance management to some degree in order to be successful. Despite this wider range of performance management, enterprise-wide performance initiatives are not widely practiced. And without an enterprise approach, it is extremely difficult to align your performance to organizational goals and objectives.

According to software vendor SAS, a recent survey of 1100 businesses revealed that performance alignment was the PRIMARY benefit companies hoped to receive from their performance management efforts. Aligning performance to your organization's goals and objectives is critical to your organization's success. On the other side, lack of alignment increases inefficiencies and risks and prevents optimal execution of the organizational strategy.

Think of this scenario as a model for linking corporate strategy to business objectives:

The executive board collaborates high-level strategic planning and identifies goals for the CEO and organization. The CEO then meets with his/her senior executives who in turn develop objectives derived from the CEOs goals and integrates those goals into the strategic plan. In turn, those executives meet with their managers who develop objectives derived from the strategic plan, and so on. Then, each subordinate goal is tied to one or more goals of their manager. Ideally, the final result is that every tracked goal in the entire company can map back to a corporate objective developed by the board.

Chances of organizational success are greatly increased by translating each high-level objective into a cascading series of focused performance measures. Using our previous example, the CEO may focus on net cash flow while the CFO looks at debt-to-equity ratio. The controller may focus on liquidity ratio, while the accounts receivable manager looks at days sales outstanding, and the accounts receivable clerk worries about percent of collections over 30/60/90 days.

This article discusses aligning corporate strategy to four key areas: departments/ divisions, workforce, finance, and systems.

Departmental Performance Alignment

Departmental performance alignment can be difficult when business processes within an organization span across multiple business units and functional support groups. To avoid bottlenecks, finger-pointing, and redundancy of work, shared performance measures that align people across organizational boundaries must be identified and responsibilities accounted for. For instance, a performance measure that includes percent of collections over 30/60/90 days might be applied both to accounts receivables clerks and sales representatives, thus sharing and integrating performance measures, encouraging collaboration and boosting overall performance.

Workforce Performance Alignment

When workforce performance is aligned with corporate objectives individuals in an organization develop a stake in that organization's performance. Employees at every level are measured by something they understand and control, and that same measure is clearly linked to the goals of their direct supervisor and the organization as a whole.

Financial Performance Alignment

In an economy where results need to be achieved fast and investor confidence is low, CFOs and finance organizations are implementing integrated performance management to improve information quality and visibility. One challenge organizations face aligning performance is finding financial measures that are meaningful to those responsible for carrying out the work. Using the previous example net cash flow is a critical performance measure for executives, but it probably means very little to the accounts receivable clerk who has no idea of how their contribution improves net cash flow performance. Stick with simple financial metrics that employees can understand and control.

System Performance Alignment

The IT/IS department's role is to provide technical support for the entire organization. While we know that this alone is a complex task, today's business model requires systems to not only support users, but to align technology to meet the business needs of the organization. Understanding business unit objectives and translating them quickly and accurately into IT priorities is essential today. So how does an organization measure how well their systems are aligned to organizational objectives? By implementing vehicles for aligning and measuring IT performance, such as service level agreements, performance-based contracts, and products and services catalogs to generate reports that illustrate how well they are measuring up to business objectives.

If you can move closer to aligning performance in these areas your organization will be well on it's way to surpassing all of it's goals and objectives. While the goal of a performance initiative is to align performance to organizational strategy, it is most important to maintain flexibility and adapt to organizational changes quickly.

If you are looking for a performance management solution that focuses on applying the best practices and key processes that drive organizational success, check out my Free Performance Management Kit.

To learn about the 35 performance management best practices, the 48 key processes, 82 decision support techniques and more, go to The Peformance Portal.

How to Gain Employee Acceptance and Get Them Into a High Performance Mindset

2009-10-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

The other day a colleague asked me what the most important factor to a successful performance program. While many of my tips will entail improving processes and systems, there is no question that people are the driving force behind successful organizations. Implementing a successful performance program involves numerous requirements, perhaps none more important than gaining employee acceptance. While most will agree that managing performance is crucial to the success of a business, strong resistance is often met when it comes to an initiative which entails scrutinizing the productivity of business units and employees. Often times, in the employees’ eyes, a performance improvement initiative is a negative reflection of their current performance. In their minds it comes across as if their performance is bad and that others know how to do their job better than they do. As a result, morale is diminished and the performance initiative is halted before it gets off the ground.

We all know that this isn't the reality. In reality, we engage in performance initiatives to expand on our organization's current capabilities by introducing techniques that are proven to produce greater results. In return, employee morale skyrockets and internal processes are more efficient.

So, what can we do to get employees to accept new performance initiatives and perform at a high level? Here are six tips that will guarantee that your performance initiative starts with a bang:

1. Involve employees at all levels
2. Make sure employees understand objectives
3. Strive for improvement instead of judging past performance
4. Get visible support from executives and senior management
5. Challenge employees to act immediately
6. Enable them to monitor results

To get better acceptance of the performance initiative, as with any change initiative, it is best to involve employees at all levels. Any new performance management or evaluation system is not likely to gain acceptance if it's used to rate, rank or single out people or their services. An initiative is much more accepted if it's shown to lead to individual growth and development. And employees are much more likely to have buy-in if they are offered the opportunity to participate and share their opinions and be part of the process.

Another way to improve employee acceptance and performance is to make sure they understand corporate, team and personal objectives. Once this understanding is established employees won't ask why they have to change the way they do things, because they will know what the objectives are and how they will contribute to reaching them.

The most important aspect of implementing a performance initiative and gaining employee acceptance is to encourage improvement. One of the main reasons employees resist performance management initiatives is because they are afraid they may look bad once they are measured on specific objectives. The goal of the performance initiative is to baseline your current service delivery and measure performance, and base success on improvement.

One of the most overlooked, but most effective methods of gaining employee acceptance is to demonstrate support from executives and senior management. Many performance initiatives fail simply for the fact that it doesn't appear to be a priority from executives. When employees see these objectives being communicated from the executive office, whether it be emails, newsletters, town hall meetings, or morality speeches they know that their performance is being monitored outside of their business unit or the consultants who come in and manage the project. Some organizations do not perform well simply for the fact that the employees do not believe it is very important, or is being monitored by executives.

Another effective method for getting employees to buy into the performance initiative and get into the mindset of peak performance is to challenge them. This can be done by identifying an area of improvement, providing a process that can help them do it better than the status quo, and getting them to commit to improving in those areas, starting one area at a time.

When it comes to monitoring results, the most effective way to get employees to perform at a high level is to make sure they know exactly what they will be measured against and to give them the ability to monitor the performance in which an independent reporting team reports on. When employees have access to these results and understand why and how they are being measured, they shift their focus to achieving those metrics. If the metrics are truly aligned with the organizational objectives, then individuals within your organization will be fine tuned for peak performance.

If you are looking for a performance management solution that focuses on applying the best practices and key processes that drive organizational success, check out my Free Performance Management Kit.

To learn about the 35 performance management best practices, the 48 key processes, 82 decision support techniques and more, go to The Peformance Portal .