Smart Business Performance Management

There’s a lot of talk about Business Performance Management (BPM) and business intelligence.  The buzzwords are flying, experts and pundits are weighing in and more and more players are throwing their hats into the business intelligence or performance management ring. 

A successful performance management implementation can have a real impact on the success of a department, division or enterprise.  Making the wrong decision can throw the organization into a quagmire of lengthy or unfinished implementations or worse, commitment to a set of tools that don’t deliver on their promise.  So what to do?

No Longer Optional
Business Performance Management tools are no longer “nice to have” options.  They have risen to “need to have to effectively compete.”  Yet most companies are falling short of the mark.  A recent Gartner report gave a stunning statistic: Sixty-four percent of recently surveyed CIOs say managers do not have the right information to run the business. (Source: Gartner EXP CIO report Creating Enterprise Leverage; the 2007 CIO Agenda, Feb 2007).  What about the other thirty-six percent?  Chance are they’re populating the top and bottom of the curve – either they’re best-in class leaders or they’re laggers.

According to Ventana Research, a firm that specializes in performance management, many executives shy away from performance management because they think it’s going to be a lengthy and expensive process.  Executives fear that it is a “flash in the pan” and will consume corporate resources, ending in an implementation that doesn’t make much difference for the business. (Source: The Right View of Performance Management, Ventana Research white paper, 2007)

Business Performance Management is a Flash in the Pan
The fears of these executives seem to have found a home with some pundits, who raise the specters of early CRM implementations and ERP.  They talk about the cost and the lengthy time-to-implementation that many performance management and business intelligence projects consume. Others worry about the issue of vendor lock – that costly implementations lock the company into dealing with only one vendor, for better or worse.

Ventana asserts that an effective performance management solution doesn’t need to involve a large-scale implementation that is costly in time, resources and money.   Rather, it can be a series of precisely focused, incremental steps that align systems, processes and people with corporate goals.  Ventana goes on to say that performance dashboards are a smart first step or component of any performance management initiative.
 
Not All Dashboards are Performance Dashboards
Bring up performance dashboards at a meeting and you’re likely to get one of two reactions: “What’s a performance dashboard?” or “Everyone’s offering a dashboard, what’s all the fuss about?”  But the reality is, not all dashboards are true performance dashboards.  According to Wayne Eckerson, a leading expert in the field, performance dashboards are really performance management systems that allow users to monitor, analyze and manage the key activities and processes needed to achieve objectives. (Source: Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring and Managing Your Business, Wayne W. Eckerson, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2006). When you apply that criterion to many dashboards, they fail.  Why? 

All dashboards provide a graphical view of a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).  These KPIs may be chosen by the end user, but often, they’re chosen automatically by the software, with no input from the end user.  Dashboards are often “snapshots in time,” that don’t present real-time or right-time data.  And often the dashboard is flat.  In other words, there is either no capability or limited ability to drill down on a particular metric to gain deeper understanding into what its causes are.  They may or may not tie into the places where a company’s performance data lies, in whatever form it takes.

To be a true performance dashboard it must have the following elements:

• It must present the data in real-time or right time.  Right time is decided by how often the data needs to be refreshed in order to present the actionable information needed by decision-makers.  If the data isn’t too time sensitive, then once or twice daily might be enough.  If it’s a critical process, then real time might be required. 
• It must be able to connect to the company’s performance data, wherever it is and in whatever format it exists in. Being “data agnostic” is a key item.  If the dashboard isn’t data agnostic, the company will be forced to convert data sources into something that the dashboard can work with or lose the ability to display data from that source. 
• It must allow for unlimited drill-down. Unlimited drill downs are necessary to allow decision-makers to gain insight into the root causes behind a certain metric.  A dashboard should be able to go from a global view all the day down to a specific data set or table. 
• It must be easy to create and customize. Users need to be able to see the data in a format that works best for the data type, as well as something that fits in with the corporate mind-set.  How many times have you looked at a pie chart or graph without having any real understanding into its meaning or implications? 
• It must be able to integrate with existing security and authentication protocols.  A dashboard system that integrates with existing security and authentication protocols allows each decision maker to see the KPIs that pertains to his or her role in the company. 
• It must be cost-effective and quick to deploy. Spending months designing and deploying a dashboard solution is not acceptable.  You should be able to get a dashboard up and running in just a few days or weeks. 

Championing Performance Management
Eckerson states that a successful performance dashboard implementation needs a champion or champions inside the organization.  The champions should have deep knowledge of their organization or business unit and have suitable experience in managing information technology projects. 

The champions need to get buy-in.  If they come from the business side, they’ll need to gain the support of the IT Department, as well as any stakeholders who will be using the dashboard.  If they come from the IT side, they’ll need to make sure that the end-users are committed to the project and to using the dashboard. 

The good news is: with the right dashboard tool, buy-in can be easy.  Often, once a decision-maker sees their data displayed in a dashboard and takes a test drive, they’re hooked.  Once they understand how many man-hours can be freed from repetitive and time-consuming number crunching, they’ll become an advocate. 

On the IT side, they’re going to be concerned with the impact to their department, in terms of man-hour and server resources.  A good dashboard solution should put those fears to rest.

Cutting Through the Clutter
One way to cut through the clutter is to become knowledgeable about dashboards and data visualization.  Top experts in the field include: Stephen Few, who has several books available from O’Reilly.  A good book to start with is: Information Dashboard Design.   As mentioned above, Wayne Eckerson’s book Performance Dashboards from Wiley & Sons is also an excellent starting place.  Both will give valuable insight into how to effectively display data and how to implement a successful performance dashboard solution.  Several research firms have deep domain expertise in the area: including Ventana Research and Gartner.  Finally, Neal Williams, Chief Technology Officer of Corda Technologies will be coming out with a book entitled Performance Dashboards for the Real World in the coming months.

Another thing to look at when choosing a performance dashboard solution is the depth of domain experience of the company and its employees.  If you choose a vendor with domain expertise, they’ll be able to help you put together a successful performance dashboard implementation, not just sell you a bundle of software or tools.  They should be able to work with you to maximize your selection of KPIs and know which format will best suit your data and your corporate culture.  Look into their training and support options as well, to ensure that you’ll be successful once the purchase has been made.

The Benefits to Business
Ventana states that performance management is far from being a complex theory dreamed up by management gurus.  Instead, it is a practical discipline that organizations can use to eliminate inefficiencies and ineffective processes.  It can align employees and executives, getting everyone across the enterprise doing what best serves the corporate strategy and drives it towards achieving goals. 

In other words, performance management and performance dashboards can directly affect the financial and overall business performance of an organization.  Properly implemented, it is a powerful tool to manage your business.

About Corda Technologies
Corda delivers anywhere, anytime visual access to your data that allows insight into the big picture, as well as the root causes, enabling timely, accurate and more informed decisions. 

Corda’s innovative performance dashboard and data visualization solutions work with virtually any data source, from spreadsheets and databases to custom applications.  Corda works on any platform and with any web-enabled device. 

Corda’s dashboards make finding the right information easy and intuitive. Data is easily navigated, can be programmatically controlled to highlight threshold exceptions and can be presented in ways that best suit specific business processes and metrics. Infinite drill-down capabilities allow decision-makers to start at the 50,000 ft. view but quickly get to the ground level so they can spot trends and still see the root causes.  Dashboard deployment is fast, flexible, and re-usable with limitless customization.  Corda’s products and solutions deliver enterprise performance and scalability. Performance dashboards can be created quickly, giving your organization the maximum return on investment. 

Decision-makers can access their dashboards from any Internet-enabled device, including Palm Treo and BlackBerry.

Expert Dashboard Technologists
Corda’s expert dashboard technologists work with clients to define, design and implement CenterView™ dashboards to deliver optimum insight into the important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that drive customer success.  From training to design to implementation, Corda’s Dashboard Technologists deliver deep expertise in the field of data visualization and performance dashboard design and implementation.