Archive for 2010
Happy New Year! Welcome MMXI!
Friday, December 31st, 2010A review of Global Corporate Citizenship
Thursday, December 30th, 2010According to Klaus Schwab (2008), founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum,
„Global corporate citizenship means that companies must not only be engaged with stakeholders but be stakeholders themselves alongside governments and civil society. Since companies depend on global development, which in turn relies on stability and increased prosperity, it is in their direct interest to help improve the state of the world.”
The Global Corporate Citizenship extends the concepts of corporate social responsibility and corporate governance in the context of a globalized economy and global markets.
Due to more and more companies operating in global markets, as a result of liberalization of trade and financial markets and the advances in technology and communications (Locke n.d.), the issue of their global impact has been raised, not only in the shape of them benefiting from global resources, but also involving in global issues such as climate change, energy conservation etc (Schwab 2010).
An important moment in the development of the Global Corporate Citizenship was the signing of the joint statement by a task force of the World Economic Forum (in partnership with The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum) , in the year 2002 (World Economic Forum 2002). Included in this statement was a Leadership Challenge endorsement, altogether with a recommendation of a Framework for Action. The purpose was that of proposing a framework for management teams and boards of directors to guide their companies into society and the relationships with global stakeholders. Concretely, this meant (World Economic Forum 2002):
- Companies’ commitment to being global corporate citizens is about the way they run their own businesses;
- Relationships with key stakeholders are fundamental to success inside and outside companies;
- Ultimate leadership for corporate citizenship rests with chief executives, chairmen and board of directors.
Immediately after, a survey among the initial signatory CEOs has been conducted to profile practical examples of leadership in action. Although with a rather small focus, the survey covered companies with headquarters in 16 countries and offers insights from 18 industries, both in the public and private sectors (World Economic Forum 2003).
Some of the most important findings are that (World Economic Forum 2003):
- The concept of corporate citizenship is moving beyond compliance and philanthropy to become a more strategic one to CEOs and boards of directors;
- Companies are in the early stages of defining global corporate citizenship and integrating it into their corporate strategies and management processes;
- There is a need to accommodate differences in culture, history, economic circumstances, industry sector and ownership structure, while promoting common values and learning from each other’s experiences.
Source: World Economic Forum, 2003
More recently, the focus has been directed towards the public-private partnership to strengthen public governance, as a key aspect of Global Corporate Citizenship. At a 2008 meeting in Davos, 14 global CEOs signed a leadership statement calling businesses to strengthen relationships with the public sector, working with governments and other stakeholders and unify efforts in the direction of sustainable economic growth (World Economic Forum 2008).
Undoublty, more initiatives are to come in the area of Global Corporate Citizenship. For more about this initiative of the World Economic Forum, visit: http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/corporatecitizenship/index.htm.
References:
Schwab, K 2008, „Global Corporate Citizenship. Working With Governments and Civil Society”, available at: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63051/klaus-schwab/global-corporate-citizenship (accessed 29 Dec 2010).
World Economic Forum & The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum 2002, „Global Corporate Citizenship. The Leadership Challenge for CEOs and Boards” , available at: http://www.weforum.org/pdf/GCCI/GCC_CEOstatement.pdf (accessed 29 Dec 2010).
World Economic Forum & The Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum 2003, „Responding to the Leadership Challenge. Findings of a CEO Survey on Global Corporate Citizenship”, available at: http://www.blf.sk/tmp/asset_cache/link/0000012984/WEF_Corporate_Citizen.pdf (accessed 29 Dec 2010).
A periodic table of data visualization methods
Wednesday, December 29th, 2010One of the most complex and often-cited taxonomies of data vizualization is the periodic table of data visualization methods developed by Ralph Lengler and Martin J. Eppler from the Institute of Corporate Communication at the University of Lugano, Switzerland. Like the periodic table of the chemical elements, the periodic table of data visualization methods organizes and displays the visualization techniques using a taxonomy based on the nature of visualization. There are several categories (such as data visualization, metaphor visualization, strategy visualization etc.) and additional metadata is provided (whether it is a process or structure visualization or whether it is an overview, a detail or a combined overview-detail visualization).
Source: Lengler & Eppler (2007)
For example, for the metaphor visualization (i.e. an approach that not only displays information, but also provides insight through key characteristics of the metaphor employed), visualization methods such as tree, funnel, story template or iceberg are included. Moreover, if we refer to the case of the tree method for metaphor visualization, we can see that it deals with a process overview visualization of a convergent thinking nature.
Reference
Lengler, R. & Eppler, L., J. (2007), A periodic table of data visualization methods, available at: http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html (accessed 29 December 2010).
Further reading
Lengler, R. & Eppler, L., J. (2007), Towards A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management, available at: http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.pdf (accessed 29 December 2010).
Over 6000 Key Performance Indicator (KPI) examples on www.smartKPIs.com
Tuesday, December 28th, 2010
Registered members of the www.smartKPIs.com community can now select their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from over 6000 performance measures documented and published in the online repository. The smartKPIs.com research team focused over the last few days on publishing examples from the Accounting and Sales functional areas. Examples from the Arts and Culture (Library and Museums), Financial Institutions (Insurance) and Media industry were also added.
The functional areas with the highest number of KPI examples are:
- Information Technology (534)
- Supply Chain, Procurement, Distribution (379)
- Human Resources (343)
- Sales & Customer Service (239)
- Knowledge and Innovation (181)
- Marketing & Communications (178)
The industries with the highest number of documented performance measures are:
- Government – Local (614)
- Government – State / Federal (515)
- Transportation (268)
- Utilities (267)
- Healthcare (210)
- Agriculture (192)
Example of a documented performance measure: % First call resolution rate
smartKPIs Premium
The ‘gold standard‘ in KPI documentation is now available on smartkpis.com. At the core of smartKPIs Premium is a set of over 1,000 KPI examples preselected by the eab group’s research team as the most relevant for practice across functional areas and industries. These were thoroughly documented in over 30 fields, 3 times more than the standard used for most other KPIs.
Example of a performance measure that was documented for smartKPIs Premium section: # Employee satisfaction
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.
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Employment impact of European ports
Monday, December 27th, 2010The Dock labour and port-related employment report (Notteboom, 2010), released earlier this year with support from the Institute of Transport and Maritime Management Antwerp, presents a thorough analysis of the key factors to port competitiveness and reform, underlining also the importance of dock labour system implementation and the impact of port-related employment.
Being important job generators, the European ports generate massive direct employment effects within the logistics and industrial cluster in the port system. The vast labour force serving in the port industry covers large loading and unloading operations, ship operations and services (agencies, pilotage, towage and bunkering), land transport, logistics activities, cargo services (e.g. freight forwarding and customs broking) etc. These activities provide people with wages, salaries and other earnings and are a major source of tax revenues for governments at different geographical levels (Notteboom, 2010).
The competitiveness of seaport is influenced by the skills of the port-related employees, as well as by the efficiency and effectiveness of loading and discharging activities. Dock labour systems are highly important for the seaports employment level and the value-added created by the port employees, conferring the management framework of the infrastructure projects in European seaports.
The figure presented subsequently illustrates a framework for the organization of port labour, in terms of both internal and external organization. For internal organization, Notteboom (2010) underlines the importance of performance indicators in terms of labour cost and productivity, that can influence the outputs of dock labour systems. External organization regards mainly legal and social conditions, required by external parties.
Source: Notteboom (2010)
The report also presents various socio-economic indicators to evaluate the impact of employment within the European ports, such as the employment level and its added value. Employment figures can serve as criteria for budget allocation of public infrastructure funds, as well as a criteria in awarding terminals to private terminal operators or as public relations tool in dealing with stakeholders and the general public.
A summary of the employment impact of ports is presented below, based on the Dutch ports example during 2002 – 2007. The economic significance is defined in terms of added value, employment, business establishments, business dynamics and private investments.
Source: Notteboom (2010)
Offering a broader perspective upon the port competitiveness and reform, Dock labour and port-related employment report provides a deeper understanding of the dynamics behind port employment and labour. Aiming for a balanced approach, the analysis takes into account considerations and development related to the general employment impact of ports as well as those at the level of dock labour. The findings of the report serve as input for the ongoing discussion on the role of the human factor in the European port system (Notteboom, 2010).
References:
Notteboom, T. (2010), Dock labour and port–related employment in the European seaport system, available at: http://www.espo.be/ (accessed 20 December 2010)
Over 5900 Key Performance Indicator (KPI) examples on www.smartKPIs.com
Friday, December 24th, 2010
Registered members of the www.smartKPIs.com community can now select their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from over 5900 performance measures documented and published in the online repository. The team focused over the last few days on publishing examples from the Information Technology functional area. Examples from the Arts and Culture (Library and Museums), Infrastructure Operations (Ports) and Construction & Capital Works sectors were also added.
The functional areas with the highest number of KPI examples are:
- Information Technology (531)
- Supply Chain, Procurement, Distribution (379)
- Human Resources (343)
- Sales & Customer Service (237)
- Knowledge and Innovation (180)
- Marketing & Communications (178)
The industries with the highest number of documented performance measures are:
- Government – Local (614)
- Government – State / Federal (515)
- Utilities (267)
- Transportation (266)
- Agriculture (192)
- Resources (176)
Example of a documented performance measure: % Maintenance cost from equipment cost
smartKPIs Premium
The ‘gold standard‘ in KPI documentation is now available on smartkpis.com. At the core of smartKPIs Premium is a set of over 1,000 KPI examples preselected by the eab group’s research team as the most relevant for practice across functional areas and industries. These were thoroughly documented in over 30 fields, 3 times more than the standard used for most other KPIs.
Example of a performance measure that was documented for smartKPIs Premium section: # Employee satisfaction
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
The power of data visualization – lifespan and income in history
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes – The Joy of Stats – BBC Four
More about this programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wgq0l
BBC presentation: Hans Rosling’s famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport’s commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before – using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of ‘The Joy of Stats’ he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers – in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.
Interested in public service KPIs?
smartKPIs.com contains over 1000 KPI examples specific to the public sector, grouped in two categories: State/Federal Government and Local Government.
Over 5800 Key Performance Indicator (KPI) examples on www.smartKPIs.com
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010
Registered members of the www.smartKPIs.com community can now select their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from over 5800 performance measures documented and published in the online repository. The team focused over the last few days on publishing examples from the Accounting functional area. Examples from the Arts and Culture (Library and Museums) and Infrastructure Operations (Ports) sectors were also added.
The functional areas with the highest number of KPI examples are:
- Information Technology (525)
- Supply Chain, Procurement, Distribution (378)
- Human Resources (342)
- Sales & Customer Service (236)
- Knowledge and Innovation (178)
- Marketing & Communications (178)
The industries with the highest number of documented performance measures are:
- Government – Local (614)
- Government – State / Federal (507)
- Utilities (267)
- Transportation (252)
- Agriculture (192)
- Resources (176)
Example of a documented performance measure: $ Berth occupancy revenue per ton of cargo
smartKPIs Premium
The ‘gold standard‘ in KPI documentation is now available on smartkpis.com. At the core of smartKPIs Premium is a set of over 1,000 KPI examples preselected by the eab group’s research team as the most relevant for practice across functional areas and industries. These were thoroughly documented in over 30 fields, 3 times more than the standard used for most other KPIs.
Example of a performance measure that was documented for smartKPIs Premium section: # Employee satisfaction
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
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) on New Digital Marketing
Tuesday, December 21st, 2010To enrich the picture on new marketing realities that we have tackled in several previous blog posts, we discuss the insights from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) outlined in the report called The CMO’s Imperative. Tackling New Digital Realities.
As its title suggestively indicates, the report presents the main recent developments in the practice of marketing enhanced by the new digital media (such as social media or mobile advertising), based on the results of The BCG Future of Marketing and Advertising Study, 2010. The research was conducted as a combination of quantitative survey of marketing executives (56 respondents), one-to-one interviews (45 conducted) and benchmarking and the report is the second release in BCG’s publication series Marketing in the Digital Economy.
Analyzing the status-quo in the global marketing environment, several aspects have been revealed (BCG, 2010), these also being the premises that drive the CMOs’ decisions and strategies:
- The new digital media enhances a new type of communication with the customers, that shifts from the centrally created, custom-crafted broadcast messages to highly interactive dialogue;
- The same digital media also comes with an enormous volume of marketing vehicles and tactics, as shown below:
Source: BCG (2010)
In this context, it is quite obvious that companies will increase their spending on new digital media, also focusing more on internal spending (on people and technology) to support their digital media efforts and communication, rather than on external spending on media purchases. More than 90% of the respondents plan to increase their spending on social media, Internet and mobile advertising over the next 3 years. The arguments rely on the benefits associated with these new digital media techniques (BCG, 2010):
- Scale – delivering sufficient reach within the target audience;
- A better targeting (enabling context-driven or location driven targeting, using far more variables than the simple demographics);
- Measurement and better modeling of the Return on Marketing Investment.
It was also found that companies have been extremely quick in adapting new digital media tools such as social media, blogs or viral videos. Platforms like Facebook (with 500 million users) and Twitter (about 100 million) have been mentioned by almost all companies surveyed as being used (BCG, 2010). An interesting situation is with mobile advertising, which despite being largely used in Japan or South Korea, in US and Europe is considered by marketers as the medium “whose success is always around the corner, yet never quite arrives”. Thus, the research revealed that mobile advertising has accounted for less that 2% in the marketing budget and has been the first victim of budget cuts (BCG, 2010).
Although the benefits of digital marketing are quite obvious for nowadays’ marketers, several limitations still remain. It is still hard to excel at planning and budgeting, as the relative effectiveness of marketing options is difficult to assess. Moreover, it is hard to decide which digital marketing activities to outsource and which to manage internally, to achieve the best combination of the two in terms of effort and outcomes. However, to overcome these limitations, the BCG study comes with a top-ten recommendations list, among which (BCG, 2010):
- Articulate an integrated marketing strategy;
- Set minimum digital investment and incentives for experimentation among marketers;
- Use an integrated model to asses ROMI across all marketing vehicles.
Reference
BCG (2010), The CMO’s Imperative. Tackling New Digital Realities, Boston, US.
Note
The complete report can be accessed at: http://www.bcg.com/documents/file66995.pdf.
Over 5700 Key Performance Indicator (KPI) examples on www.smartKPIs.com
Monday, December 20th, 2010
Registered members of the www.smartKPIs.com community can now select their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from over 5700 performance measures documented and published in the online repository. The team focused over the last few days on publishing examples from the Finance functional area. Examples from the Arts and Culture sector were also added.
The functional areas with the highest number of KPI examples are:
- Information Technology (523)
- Supply Chain, Procurement, Distribution (377)
- Human Resources (342)
- Sales & Customer Service (235)
- Knowledge and Innovation (179)
- Marketing & Communications (178)
The industries with the highest number of documented performance measures are:
- Government – Local (610)
- Government – State / Federal (496)
- Utilities (267)
- Transportation (250)
- Agriculture (192)
- Resources (176)
Example of a documented performance measure: # Turnaround time
smartKPIs Premium
The ‘gold standard‘ in KPI documentation is now available on smartkpis.com. At the core of smartKPIs Premium is a set of over 1,000 KPI examples preselected by the eab group’s research team as the most relevant for practice across functional areas and industries. These were thoroughly documented in over 30 fields, 3 times more than the standard used for most other KPIs.
Example of a performance measure that was documented for smartKPIs Premium section: # Employee satisfaction
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
On data quality and crowdsourcing: Calvin and Hobbes
Friday, December 17th, 2010While 15 years old, the cartoon below illustrates the issues with data quality in business intelligence, performance measurement and benchmarking initiatives:
Source: Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, by Bill Watterson, 23 August 1995
Transcript:
Calvin: “I’m filling out a reader survey for Chewing magazine. See, they asked how much money I spend on gum each week, so I wrote ‘$500.’ For my age, I put ‘43′ and when they asked what my favorite flavor is, I wrote ‘garlic/curry.’”
Hobbes: “This magazine should have some amusing ads soon.”
Calvin: “I love messing with data.”
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