Measuring performance in non-profit organisations

September 2nd, 2010

A recent www.smartKPIs.com blog post, ‘Social and Financial Performance of Microfinance Institutions’, outlined that Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) are strongly associated with a social mission, therefore MFIs performance focuses both on social impact and financial outcomes (smartKPIs.com, 2010).

In turn, Non-profit organisations manage and measure performance using various KPIs in order to cover social impact performance, financial and grant performance, as well as effectiveness and other operational aspects. However, in comparison to MFIs, non-profit organisations use specific KPIs for their domain and less customer oriented indicators.

A newly published KPI in practice, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, presents a customized approach regarding performance management, by developing its own performance framework with annual KPIs for review.

Their performance framework is shaped as a pyramid, building from an assessment of the core functions of the Global Fund Secretariat at the base, through evaluation of grant performance and the effectiveness of Global Fund financing, to measuring the impact achieved on the three epidemics: AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (The Global Fund, 2010).

Framework Overview

Source: The Global Fund (2010)

The performance framework implementation presents the following benefits:

  • differentiating the organizational performance of the Global Fund and the performance of the Secretariat’s internal operations
  • facilitating the assignment of responsibilities to different teams
  • offering a stable and comprehensive measurement framework over time
  • grouping KPIs into different areas of performance
  • aligning the reporting frequencies with the data availability and reporting systems (The Global Fund, 2010).

For additional information with regards to The Global Fund KPI in practice and for further examples of non-profit performance reports explore the Non-Profit / Non-governmental KPIs in practice section of smartkpis.com (smartKPIs.com 2010).

References:

The Global Fund 2010, Key Performance Indicators, available at: http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/performance/kpi/ (accessed 1 September 2010)

smartKPIs.com 2010, Social and Financial Performance of Microfinance Institutions, available at: http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/06/02/social-and-financial-performance-of-microfinance-institutions/ (accessed 1 September 2010)

smartKPIs.com 2010, Non-Profit / Non-governmental KPIs in practice, available at: http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi_examples_in_practice/industries/non-profit-non-governmental/ (accessed 1 September 2010)

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Case Study, KPIs in practice, Performance Management, Performance Measurement, smartKPIs.com | No Comments »

2010 winners of the Euromoney Awards for Excellence in Banking

September 1st, 2010

The most prestigious awards in the global banking industry – the Euromoney Awards for Excellence – have reached their 19th edition, announcing the winners for the year 2010.

Credit Suisse was awarded the title of best global bank, considered by Euromoney the best-run bank in the world today, due to its successful execution on a new strategy and high returns on a rather low-risk business model (Euromoney 2010).

For the category best investment bank, the winner was Deutsche Bank, also appraised for its ability to  produce superior results and provide value for the clients, while fundamentally renewing its core model, reducing risk and facing high staff turnover.

The title for the first banker of the year has been awarded to Vikram Pandit, the man who restructured Citigroup, restoring the bank to profitability.

As for the 2009 winner of the best global bank award, HSBC, the bank had another successful year in 2010, winning four awards (more than any other bank), among which the prestigious emerging markets bank of the year.

About Euromoney Awards for Excellence

The Awards for Excellence are released annually since 1992 by the most prestigious financial markets magazine, Euromoney.

To establish the winners for each category, banks are invited to submit their credentials which are analyzed by a committee of senior journalists from Euromoney, chaird by the editor, Clive Horwood. 25 global awards for banking and capital markets and best banks and securities houses are now incorporated (such as best global bank, best M&A house, banker of the year, regional award winners and country award winners by region).

Source: Euromoney (2010)

The methodology combines qualitative data with informed subjective judgments to award the financial institutions that bring the highest level of service and expertise to their customers.

Reference

Euromoney, Euromoney Awards for Excelence 2010, available at: http://www.euromoney.com/Article/2621461/Category/16/ChannelPage/3312/Euromoney-Awards-for-Excellence-2010.html (accessed 30 August 2010).

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Performance Measurement | No Comments »

Managing organizational performance by integrating finance efficiency and business insight – IBM 2010 Global CFO study

August 31st, 2010

The latest IBM 2010 – Global CFO study, based on input from more than 1,900 Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and senior Finance leaders worldwide brings new and valuable insights regarding the financial effectiveness and performance of organizations.

The study main findings reveal that organization’s finance effectiveness lags. More than 45% of the CFOs indicated that their Finance organizations are not effective in the areas of strategy, information integration and risk and opportunity management. This comes in the context in which, since 2005, the importance of integrating information has more than doubled, while the priority of the enterprise risk management has risen 93%, according with the same study.

The organization assessment process is based on nine dimensions that cover core financial and enterprise focused activities. The results show that Finance faces a widening execution gap, with expectations rising faster than effectiveness.

Source: 2010 IBM Global CFOs study

Despite the increased lag of finance efficiency and performance, the study identified a group of organizations called “Value Integrators”, which stand apart from their peers. A combination of two primary capabilities that are strongly associated with outperformance sets them apart:

• Finance efficiency – “The degree of process and data commonality across Finance”

• Business insight – “The maturity level of Finance talent, technology and analytical capabilities dedicated to providing optimization, planning and forward-looking insight”

Besides the Value Integrators which are identified by the study as the most efficient organizations, three other types or organizations are nominated by the study and grouped according with the two core capabilities identified above. They are Constrained Advisors, Disciplined Operators and Scorekeepers.

Source: 2010 IBM Global CFOs study

The fact, that the Value Integrators outperform by far the other types of companies can be easily depicted by looking at the 9 core dimensions that picture the finance capability. Although Value Integrators outperform the other organizations across all 9 dimensions, three of them sets them apart.

• Supporting, managing and mitigating enterprise risk

• Measuring and monitoring business performance, and

• Driving integration of information across the enterprise

Source: 2010 IBM Global CFOs study

The study also revealed that when comparing the four different organizational profiles the most striking contrast appeared during the financial analysis. The Value Integrators outperform in all performance measures analyzed spanning across balance sheet, profit and loss and cash flow results areas.

Source: 2010 IBM Global CFOs study

Despite the fact that the biggest differences between organizations appear across their core finance competencies, major gaps appear also when looking at the enterprise focused activities. Thus the 2010 Global CFO study confirms previous research that already demonstrated that higher adoption of standards and stronger business insight help improve finance effectiveness and overall organizational performance. Integration between different dimensions and areas of expertise lead to a better strategic focus across all organizational levels, better and more informed decisions which thus lead to better overall performance.

smartKPIs.com contains popular Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) examples used in monitoring organisational financial efficiency and effectiveness. For further examples of financial KPIs  explore the Financial KPI examples section on the library of KPI examples  available on smartkpis.com (smartKPIs.com, 2010).

References

Tags: ,
Posted in Business Intelligence, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

Over 5000 Key Performance Indicator (KPI) examples on www.smartKPIs.com

August 29th, 2010

Registered members of the www.smartKPIs.com community can now select their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from over 5000 performance measures documented and published in the online repository. The team focused over the last few days on publishing examples from the Information Technology, Sales & Customer Service and Marketing & Communication functional areas. Examples  from the  Hospitality & Tourism and Healthcare sectors were also added to the KPIs repository.

The functional areas with the highest number of KPI examples are:

The industries with the highest number of documented performance measures are:

Example of a documented performance measure: # Incidents per PC

Registered member experience on http://www.smartKPIs.com

  • Learn: To learn more about performance management and Key Performance Management visit the Resources section.
  • Explore: To explore the library of KPI examples by navigating the functional area and industry directory, visit the Browse KPIs section.
  • Customize: To build your customized KPI library by saving favorite examples for later use, visit the My KPIs section.
  • Contribute: To propose a new example of KPI, visit the Submit KPIs section.
  • Collaborate: To collaborate with other users and to discuss KPI examples, add comments on each KPI description page, ask questions on smartKPIs Answers, or contribute to the smartKPIs Forum.
registered members

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Customized KPI library, KPI, KPIs in practice, Library of KPI examples, Measure, Performance Measurement, smartKPIs.com | No Comments »

Gallup Potential Net Migration Index – Singapore – New Zealand – Saudi Arabia – Canada – Switzerland – Australia – Kuwait atop

August 25th, 2010

A study recently released by Gallup, on the topic of the Potential Net Migration Index shows that nations such as Singapore, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Switzerland and Australia are atop the list of countries that could see the highest net adult population growth from international migration. In the scenario in which all the borders are opened and population can move freely from one country to another, following their wishes as expressed in the survey, some of these countries could double their population according with the study.

Source: Adapted from Gallup, 2010

At the other end of the table, the countries that potentially could lose the biggest population number, in some countries the values going as high as half of the current population size are: Sierra Leone, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ethiopia or El Salvador.

Source: Adapted from Gallup, 2010

Definition of the index

# Potential Net Migration Index (PMMI): “Measures the estimated number of adults who express their wishes to move permanently out of a country if the opportunity arose subtracted from the estimated number who would like to move into it and calculated as a proportion from the total adult population currently residing in the country.”

Calculation formula

[(A-B)/C]*100, where

  • A = # Estimated adults who express their wishes to move into it
  • B = # Estimated adults who express their wishes to move out from a country
  • C = # Adult population currently residing in the country

Methodology

The study is survey based and uses for the calculation Gallup’s Potential Net Migration Index. The methods used for the survey data collection are telephone interviews and face to face interviews.

Data collection

The survey takes in consideration 148 countries, which represent almost 95% of the global population and was conducted between 2007 and 2010 on more than 350,000 adults.

Survey questions

The survey data is subtracted from two questions:

• “Ideally if you had the opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country, or would you prefer to continue living in this country? If Yes

• To which country would you like to move?

Study limitations

• The Gallup’s findings reflect people wishes rather than their intentions.

• Index scores are not reported for countries were the sample was smaller than 500, such as Belize, Cyprus or Iceland, due to the index volatility

• In Gulf Cooperation Council countries only Arab nationals and Arab expatriates were surveyed

• Index scores are not reported for countries such as Qatar or United Arab Emirates where the expat population make up more than 50% of the adult population.

• Most importantly, the rankings are powerfully influenced by the size of the current population. Countries such as USA, which is the most preferred country for immigration doesn’t show up in the top ranking spots due to its high population size.

Conclusion

Though is based mostly on the interviewed people’s wishes and on an ideal situation or hypothesis in which the population is free to move from one country to another without any restriction, the study raise important questions for the world countries leaders. A couple of them could be:

  • What would be the real implications if these desires become reality?
  • What future actions need to be pursued to keep a state of equilibrium in the world?

References

Gallup (2010),  Migration Could Triple Populations in Some Wealthy Nations, article by Neli Esipova and Julie Ray, released on 20 August 2010, available at http://www.gallup.com/poll/142364/Migration-Triple-Populations-Wealthy-Nations.aspx#1, (accessed 25 August 2010)

* data based on www.wikipedia.com, Country Reports

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Case Study, Index, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

Over 4900 Key Performance Indicator (KPI) examples on www.smartKPIs.com

August 24th, 2010

Registered members of the www.smartKPIs.com community can now select their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from over 4900 performance measures documented and published in the online repository. The team focused over the last few days on publishing examples from State/Federal Government and Local Government sectors.

The functional areas with the highest number of KPI examples are:

The industries with the highest number of documented performance measures are:

Example of a documented performance measure: $ Ratio of reinvestment into the community

Registered member experience on http://www.smartKPIs.com

  • Learn: To learn more about performance management and Key Performance Management visit the Resources section.
  • Explore: To explore the library of KPI examples by navigating the functional area and industry directory, visit the Browse KPIs section.
  • Customize: To build your customized KPI library by saving favorite examples for later use, visit the My KPIs section.
  • Contribute: To propose a new example of KPI, visit the Submit KPIs section.
  • Collaborate: To collaborate with other users and to discuss KPI examples, add comments on each KPI description page, ask questions on smartKPIs Answers, or contribute to the smartKPIs Forum.
registered members

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Customized KPI library, KPI, KPIs in practice, Library of KPI examples, Measure, Performance Management, Performance Measurement, smartKPIs.com | No Comments »

Employee productivity measurement

August 23rd, 2010

A recent www.smartKPIs.com blog post, ‘Employee engagement and organisational performance’, outlined the approaches used by researchers to assess employee engagement and performance. The post concluded that as organisations show the relationship between engagement scores and bottom-line outcomes, everyone pays attention to the engagement index. Establishing this critical link between people and performance helps HR professionals prove that people-related interventions are a worthwhile investment (smartKPIs.com, 2010).

Acknowledgment for the need of reflection and consolidation in the field of employee performance measurement was also emphasized. Continuing this line of inquiry, a new question is explored in more detail below:

What is the cost of employees’ lack of productivity?

Siemens Communications launched an online survey in order to measure employee  productivity and its impact on the organisation. Having 30,000 computer based workers as respondents, the results confirmed what many managers have suspected for years: office workers are wasting precious time by playing “telephone tag”, this costing the British business an estimated £2 billion a month.

The results of the online survey revealed:

  • 70% of workers believe that up to a third or more of their calls do not get through to the right people first time. In fact, more than one-quarter believe that 50%t or more of their calls fail first time because people are in meetings, out of the office or simply engaged.
  • the minimum amount of time wasted every day by every office worker playing telephone tag or making unsuccessful phone calls is 30 minutes. Siemens estimate that this 30 minutes alone equates to a national daily salary cost of some £83 million, or £22 billion in a working year and that is without the cost incurred on unsuccessful calls (Johnston, R, Jones, P,  2004).

Source: Johnston, R, Jones, P (2004)

smartKPIs.com contains popular Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) examples used in organisational efficiency and effectiveness reflecting the results achieved by the workforce as per the set objectives.  For further examples of KPIs focusing on workforce productivity and achievement of individual performance plans, explore the Efficiency and effectiveness KPI examples section of the library of KPI examples available on smartkpis.com (smartKPIs.com, 2010).

References:

Johnston, R, Jones, P 2004,’Services productivity: Towards understanding the relationship between operational and customer productivity’,  International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Volume 53, Issue 3, pp. 201.

smartKPIs.com 2010, Efficiency and effectiveness KPI examples, available at:  http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/functional-areas/human-resources/efficiency-and-effectiveness/ (accessed 16 August 2010)

smartKPIs.com 2010, Employee engagement and organisational performance, available at: http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/08/06/employee-engagement-and-organisational-performance/ (accessed 16 August 2010)

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in KPI, Library of KPI examples, Measure, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

Over 4800 Key Performance Indicator (KPI) examples on www.smartKPIs.com

August 22nd, 2010

Registered members of the www.smartKPIs.com community can now select their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from over 4800 performance measures documented and published in the online repository. The team focused over the last few days on publishing examples from the Hospitality & Tourism, Non-profit,  State/Federal Government and Local Government sectors.

The functional areas with the highest number of KPI examples are:

The industries with the highest number of documented performance measures are:

Example of a documented performance measure: $ Operating expenses per guest

Registered member experience on http://www.smartKPIs.com

  • Learn: To learn more about performance management and Key Performance Management visit the Resources section.
  • Explore: To explore the library of KPI examples by navigating the functional area and industry directory, visit the Browse KPIs section.
  • Customize: To build your customized KPI library by saving favorite examples for later use, visit the My KPIs section.
  • Contribute: To propose a new example of KPI, visit the Submit KPIs section.
  • Collaborate: To collaborate with other users and to discuss KPI examples, add comments on each KPI description page, ask questions on smartKPIs Answers, or contribute to the smartKPIs Forum.
registered members

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Customized KPI library, KPI, KPIs in practice, Library of KPI examples, Measure, Performance Measurement, smartKPIs.com | No Comments »

University ranking systems – Academic Ranking of World Universities vs World University Rankings

August 20th, 2010

Source: ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, 2010.

Every year a world university ranking is released by a number of educational and commercial associations and bodies. And every year countless number of students, university officials and even politicians wait impatiently for them.

As one of the latest Nature Special Reports (2010) on educational topics reveal, these rankings have the power to put in action a whole mechanism. A position in the higher echelon of the rankings can influence policy makers higher education investments, determine which institutions attract the best researchers and students and trigger a race between universities to strengthen their position for the year to come.

Among them the most influential are the Academic Ranking of World Universities known also as Shanghai ranking and the World University Ranking released by Britain’s Times Higher Education Magazine in collaboration with QS ( a London base higher education media company).

While the Academic Ranking of World Universities was created in 2003 by the Center for World Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in an attempt to benchmark Chinese universities against the top universities in the world, the World University Ranking released by the Times Higher Education Magazine is more the result of a commercial publishing exercise started in 2004.

Both however have attracted increased attention in the last few years, being as much appreciated by officials of universities that did well in the rankings as they were highly contested, probably by many more.

The criticism, which mainly comes from academics and universities, is directed towards the methodology and data gathering process used to compile these ranking systems. The main issues outlined are the narrow range of performance measures and criteria used which leaves out more than it includes.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities, compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and generally known as the Shanghai index, focuses exclusively on research output and citation impact. The six performance measures used to calculate the index are:

• # Alumni winning Noble Prizes and Fields Medals

• # Staff winning Noble Prizes and Fields Medals

• # Highly cited researchers selected by Thomson Scientific

• # Articles published in journals of Nature and Science

• # Articles indexed in Science Citation Index – Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index

• # Per capita performance with respect to the size of the institution

On the other side of the bar, the World University rankings compiled by the Times Higher Education Magazine are generally based on composite scores that aggregate weighted indicators, being based mostly on reputational surveys. The indicators used in the assessment process are:

• # Peer review score

• # Employer review score

• # Staff / Student score

• # Citation staff score

• # International staff score

• # International students score

Unfortunately, none of these rankings can clearly picture what is the real value and performance of world’s higher education institutions. While the Shanghai Index concentrate too much on academic research, this being the field which can be most easily monitored, due to its internationalized nature, the other one compiled by the British THE Magazine is focused too much on peer review and reputational surveys.

This lack of homogeneity creates big discrepancy between the two ranking systems which can be easily observed if looking at the rankings. Only few university keep the same position in the two ranking system, the most known one being Harvard University. To better picture these issue we have picked three examples from both rankings, for the year 2009.

The need for improved and more nuanced assessment which to include a wider range of criteria and to assess more intangible qualities, like educational excellence, which will also allow a higher degree of homogenization between rankings, making them more accurate and relevant seems evident.

Fortunately, a new generation of ranking systems that addresses part of these issues started or are about to emerge. The new systems, as acknowledged in the Nature (2010) article “ The nature game” will be more multidimensional , comparing universities less on aggregate numbers and more on aspects such as research, teaching and industrial engagement.

Firstly the World University Rankings compiled by the Times Higher Education Magazine, will have, starting with 2010, a new look and will be based on a totally overhauled performance assessment system. The rankings will be drawn from the Global Institutional Profile Project, launched by the most renowned data analyst and provider “Thomson Reuters” . It will include details such as research funding, number of researchers and PhDs awarded as well as measures of educational performance. The system will continue to use reputational surveys but the number of reviewers will be increased from 4,000 to about 25, 000 for better accuracy. An audit procedure to guard against misinformation provided by universities was also set in place.

European Commission has also launched a new project in an effort to create a global database of universities, called the U-Multirank (Global Ranking of Universities), which will be run by the Consortium for Higher Education and Research Performance Assessment. This new ranking system will allow the comparison of universities with similar activities, missions and research interests.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is also trying to come into help, currently coordinating a pilot project for developing new metrics for assessing teaching and learning outcomes. The project is named the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) and is intended to try to measure complex aspects such as ability of students to think critically or number of new ideas generated by students.

Finally, the European University Association, which represents more than 800 universities is currently in the process of developing an annual review of all international rankings by assessing their methodologies and scrutinizing why institutions rise or fall in the rankings.

Hopefully all these new initiatives will create a better, more accurate and homogenized performance assessment  and benchmarking platform for universities and other educational bodies in the years to come.

For more information on world academic rankings you can fallow the smartkpis.com blog posts:

References

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Index, Performance Management, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

The 2010 Academic Ranking of World Universities for Economics – Business subjects

August 19th, 2010

After having presented in a previous blog post the overall results of the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) 2010 released by the Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University,  we focus on the subject narrow ranking for Economics / Business.

The top ten in this subject narrow ranking is dominated exclusively by US universities:

Source: Center for World-Class Universities, 2010 (click for higher resolution)

The top five Business & Economics universities from the US are: Harvard University, University of Chicago, Massachusetts  Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University and Columbia University (Center for World-Class Universities 2010), the scores achieved by the last tree in the top being very tight.

In Europe, the top five universities in this ranking are:

  • University of Cambridge (16th position)
  • London School of Economics and Political Science (18)
  • University of Oxford (21)
  • University of Warwick (34)
  • Erasmus University (51-77)

From the Asia-Pacific, the best ranked universities are:

  • The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (47)
  • National University of Singapore (78-100)
  • The Chinese University of Hong Kong (78-100)
  • University of Melbourne (78-100)

For the overall ranking with the top 100 universities in the Economics / Business subject, please follow: http://www.arwu.org/SubjectEcoBus2010.jsp.

Reference

Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Academic Ranking of World Universities in Economics / Business – 2010, available at: http://www.arwu.org/SubjectEcoBus2010.jsp (accessed 19th August 2010).

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Performance Measurement | No Comments »

« Older Entries