NEUBRAINER, the official blog of Neubrain

During the course of working with various organizations that have deployed performance dashboards we have discovered 4 major success factors to implementing them successfully: (1) proper sponsorship and adequate resources for the project; (2) creating the right metrics and standardizing their meaning; (3) designing a compelling user interface and the proper technical infrastructure to manage the metrics collection and analysis processes; and (4) planning ahead to ensure end-user adoption and managing organizational change.

In this blog we would like to briefly address the second factor: creating the right metrics and standardizing their meaning. Organizations should invest the time towards developing a well-rationalized, well-balanced set of leading indicators and operational metrics aligned with their strategic objectives and priorities. This step is crucial when implementing a sound performance management capability. Here are a few tips on how to start:

Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) is an umbrella term used to describe the methodologies, metrics, processes, and systems that help enterprise companies monitor and manage their business’s performance.

Executives seeking deeper insights into business trends and potentially ambiguous opportunities utilize Performance Management. Sub-components of EPM include: Enterprise Planning, Performance Monitoring & Measurement, and Enterprise-Wide Reporting. 

Benefits definitely outweigh the challenges in deploying an EPM capability. These benefits include:

• Enterprise-wide visibility
• Strategic “red-zone” monitoring
• Improved resource planning and allocation
• Agile decision-making
• Predictions for future performance
• Delivery of a broad spectrum of critical business data (Note: this data is generated through monitoring, analyzing, and controlling organizational performance.)

Failing to properly manage or dedicate your company to continuous improvement of your performance management capability can lead to undesirable outcomes. Organizations must be aware of common ways that performance management initiatives can be undermined, causing business performance to stall or decline, instead of thrive.

Here are 10 ways you could be undermining performance management and suggestions on ways to avoid these pitfalls: