Archive for January, 2011

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An Australian KPI: # Waves of kangaroos on the racing course

Monday, January 31st, 2011

As Australia celebrated its National Day last week, many horse racing clubs around the country embraced the festive occasion by organizing race meetings. However, the racing circuit at Hanging Rock in Victoria was forced to suspend its race meeting event due to safety concerns, after several waves of kangaroos invaded the course.

Photo: Robert Parviainen, Flickr

Similar kangaroo invasions have occurred in the past, however it was the first time races were suspended due to repeated waves of kangaroos taking over the course.

While usually race organizers are focus on achieving KPIs such as # Spectator attendance and $ Prize money, it appears that a new KPI will have to be monitored at the Hanging Rock annual race meeting:

# Kangaroo waves on the racing course.

In  2011 the target was 0 and the actual 3 (trend is good when decreasing).

Related media coverage

The Age, January 27 2010, Races off as roos street the field

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Employee Engagement at Western Union Malaysia – A case study

Friday, January 28th, 2011

Starting with 2002, Malaysia has taken important steps in recognizing the importance of knowledge, by launching a Knowledge Based Economy Master Plan directed towards transforming Malaysia in a knowledge based economy. One of the most important aspects considered in the plan was the increased importance that had to be showed to productivity and innovation, supported by effective management of both tangible but also intangible resources, such as human capital and knowledge (Husin et al, 2009).

In this context, one of the topics discussed during the conference “Performance Measurement & KPI for HR” organized by Asia Business Forum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia between 29th November-1st December was employee engagement. One of the highlights of the conference was a very interesting case study about employee engagement measurement at Western Union Malaysia.

As it emerged from the presentation and later discussions, measuring employee dynamics in general and employee engagement in particular is of grate importance for informing all the business actions that need to be taken in order to improve performance at Western Union Malaysia.

According to Anand Kadakol, country manager at Western Union Malaysia, the organization conducted two engagement surveys in the last 3 years. The main rating areas considered were:

  • Attrition risk due to external factors
  • Pride of working for the company
  • Personal growth and skill development story
  • Effort vs available resources

As the results of the survey showed, high scores were recorded on all rating areas of the employee engagement surveys making the organization to conclude that : „employees love to work for the company in Malaysia and are proud of it” .

Key Drivers of engagement at Western Union Malaysia

Among the most important aspects the management of the organization focused in order to increase employee engagement as the country managing director of the company put it were:

  • Trust – „ the foundation of employee engagement”
  • Idea pot/innovation – „is not whose idea is better, it is WHICH idea is better”
  • Focus on people problems – „individual issues need to be ALWAYS handled in isolation with development as focus”
  • Doing the right things at all levels – „ a leader need to focus on not to try doing the right things all the time”
  • Vulnerable leader – „ the harbinger of trust…line between hierarchy blurs”

Engagement driven results at Western Union Malaysia

  • Largest transaction country in Asia Pacific Region among outbound transaction markets within two years
  • Largest customer base country in Asia Pacific Region among outbound transaction markets within two years (Anand Kadakol, 2010)

References

Kadokal, A (2010), Sweet Success thru Employee Engagement, proceedings of the conference Performance Measurement & KPI for HR, Asia Business Forum 2010, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, representing Western Union (Country Director – Malaysia)

Husin, N.M., Hooper, K. Olesen, K. (2009), Assessing Quantity and Quality: The Case of Intellectual Capital Reporting in Malaysia, Department of Accounting, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

Additional Resources

smartkpis.com (2010), Employee Engagement Index, smartkpis.com Blog, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/03/03/employee-engagement-index, (accessed 22 January 2011)

smartkpis.com (2010), Gallup’s Customer Engagement Index, smartkpis.com Blog, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/03/11/gallups-customer-engagement-index, (accessed 22 January, 2011)

smartkpis.com (2010), Employee engagement and organizational performance, smartkpis.com Blog, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/08/06/employee-engagement-and-organisational-performance, (accessed 22 January 2011)

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Assesing The European Union (EU) Economic and Financial Healthness – Infographic

Thursday, January 27th, 2011

A recently published infographic by The Economist outlines an interesting assessment of the current status of the European Union economic and financial health. The analysis is made in the context of the severe negative effects of the global financial crises faced by several EU countries among which: Greece, Ireland Portugal and Spain.

Source: The Economist, 2011

The list of performance indicators outlined in the analysis include:

  • $ Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
  • $ GDP per person
  • % Unemployment rate
  • % Public debt from GDP
  • % Budget deficit from GDP
  • # Average debt maturity
  • % Annual GDP change
  • % GDP change

For more information of financial indicators access the smartKPIs.com KPI examples database and browse the Finance Functional Area.

References

The Economist (2011), Spreading infection, available at http://www.economist.com/node/21013629, (accessed 22 January 2011)

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Sources of corporate governance – Italcementi Group case study

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

Ever wondered what is corporate governance all about?

From ‘Code of ethics’ to ‘Charter of Values’, Italcementi Group’s 2008 Sustainable Development Report includes an excellent synthesis of its corporate governance taxonomy:

Source: Italcementi  Group, 2008

Starting from the Group’s parent company, Italcementi SpA, the governance system extends to all subsidiaries with the aim of ensuring transparency towards shareholders and stakeholders. Some of the key enablers are:

  • The Chairman is responsible for ensuring compliance with the Group’s principles of corporate governance and for proposing amendments to the Board of Directors.
  • The Internal Control Committee, reporting directly to the Board of Directors, has the task of identifying and managing all the main corporate risks.
  • The CEO as the Executive Supervisor of the internal control system.
  • The ‘lead independent’ Director and the Manager in charge of preparing the company’s fi nancial reports, according to legislation and by-laws.

The corporate governance principles are translated into a continuously monitored and updated operational business structure, providing a clear global picture in terms of shareholding, organizational structures, authorities, powers, processes and procedures.

To find out more about measuring organizational governance, visit smartKPIs.com which contains both Governance KPI examples and Corporate Services KPIs in practice reports.

References

Italcementi Group 2008, Sustainable Development Report, available at: http://www.italcementigroup.com/NR/rdonlyres/BBA55611-8D28-40CC-BE1F-AAAEEB3445ED/0/SdReport_2008_UK.pdf, accessed on 22 January 2011

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Google KPIs – Q4 2010 financial performance results

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

Google Inc. recently announced the financial results from Q4 2010, reporting revenues of $8.44 billion, a 26% growth compared to Q4 2009.

Source: Google Inc. (2011)

The financial Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) highlighted in the press release are:

  • $ Revenues: revenues of $8.44 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, representing a 26% increase over fourth quarter 2009 revenues of $6.67 billion
  • $ Google sites revenues: Sites owned by Google generated revenues of $5.67 billion, or 67% of total revenues, representing a 28% growth over fourth quarter 2009 revenues of $4.42 billion.
  • $ Google network revenues: Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.50 billion, or 30% of total revenues, representing a 22% increase from fourth quarter 2009 network revenues of $2.04 billion.
  • $ International revenues: $4.38 billion, representing 52% of total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to 53% in the fourth quarter of 2009.
  • $ Paid clicks: Aggregate paid clicks revenue with increased  18% over the fourth quarter of 2009.
  • $ Cost per click: Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 5% over the fourth quarter of 2009.
  • $ Traffic Acquisition Costs (TAC): Revenues shared with Google’s partners, increased to $2.07 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to TAC of $1.72 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009.
  • $ Stock Based Compensation (SBC): $396 million, compared to $276 million in the fourth quarter of 2009.
  • $ Operating expenses: $2.51 billion, representing 30% of revenues.
  • $ Operating income: $2.98 billion, representing 35% of revenues.
  • $ Income taxes: Effective tax rate was 19%.
  • $ Net income: $2.54 billion, compared to $1.97 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009.
  • $ Cash flow and capital expenditures: Net cash provided by operating activities in the fourth quarter of 2010 totaled $3.53 billion, compared to $2.73 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009.
  • $ Cash: $35 billion.
  • # Headcount: 24.400 employees (Google Inc., 2011).

“Q4 marked a terrific end to a stellar year“, said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. “Our strong performance has been driven by a rapidly growing digital economy, continuous product innovation that benefits both users and advertisers, and by the extraordinary momentum of our newer businesses, such as display and mobile. These results give us the optimism and confidence to invest heavily in future growth — investments that will benefit our users, Google and the wider web.” (Google Inc., 2011)

For more information, a live audio webcast of Google’s fourth quarter and fiscal year 2010 earnings release is now available online.

Source: GoogleIR (2011)

For more examples of KPIs in practice reports reflecting financial performance , visit the Finance KPIs and Accounting KPIs sections.

References:

Google Inc. (2011), Google Announces Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2010 Results and Management Changes, available at: http://investor.google.com/earnings/2010/Q4_google_earnings.html (accessed 21st January 2011)

GoogleIR (2011), Q4 2010 Earnings Call, available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-jVzQm8kAs (accessed 21st January 2011)

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Over 6200 Key Performance Indicator (KPI) examples on www.smartKPIs.com

Monday, January 24th, 2011

Registered members of the www.smartKPIs.com community can now select their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from over 6200 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 Portfolio and Project Management, Human Resources functional areas. Examples from the Infrastructure Operations, Transportation and State and Local Government industries were also added.

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: # Passengers per aircraft movements

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 1,200 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: % New hire failure

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

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Improving performance with KPIs and smart data visualization solutions – IBM and Australian Open

Friday, January 21st, 2011

In two previous blog posts we have presented different intelligent visualization solutions from the world of sport (World Cup Africa 2010 and 2010 Balon d’Or) which provide inspiration for more creative data visualization solutions for organizational performance in other fields.

As data visualization solutions have increased in complexity in the last years, such dashboard and scorecard visualization solutions register an increased level of adoption to specific business fields. The new developments are driven especially by the increased business need of analyzing large volume of data and presenting them in a contextualized, concentrated and easy to read form.

These days a new smart data visualization solution is being tested as a Beta version at the Australian Open 2011 by IBM, the official technology partner of the competition. The solution called PointStream is according with the IBM specialists “a new way to enhance the Australian Open experience, by visualizing match data and stats in real time to give you unique insight into the way your favorite players are performing”.

Source: Australian Open, 2011

The application presents comparative statistics between opponent players on all the matches that are played covering a wide range of tennis performance indicators such as:

# Aces

# Double faults

# Winners

# Unforced errors

# Break points missed

# Break points won

# Net points

# Total Points

# Momentum

# Serve speed

# Match time

Three days after the start of the tournament, PointStream has already generated interest among tennis enthusiasts, with 191 likes and 24 tweet mentions in social media.

For more information on Key Performance Indicators for tennis or other listed sports visit the smartKPIs.com KPI examples Industry section – Sport – Tennis.

References

Australian Open (2011), IBM Point Stream, available at http://www.australianopen.com/en_AU/scores/pointstream/index.html?promo=ps_sublevel_nav, (accessed 20 January 2011)

Additional resources

smartKPIs.com (2010), A periodic table of data visualization methods, smartKPIs.com Blog, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/12/29/a-periodic-table-of-data-visualization-methods/, (accessed 20 January 2011)

smartKPIs.com (2010), Intelligent data Visualization – FIFA 2010 BAlon d’Or, smartKPIs.com Blog available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2011/01/10/intelligent-data-visualization-%E2%80%93-fifa-2010-balon-d%E2%80%99or/, (accessed 20 January 2011)

smartKPIs.com (2010), Enhancing business performance wth intelligent data visualization – Ideas from sport, smartKPIs.com Blog, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/06/28/enhancing-business-performance-with-intelligent-data-visualization-ideas-from-sport/, (accessed 20 January 2011)

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Measuring Train Service Readiness and Performance during Chinese New Year’s Rush

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

On 3rd February 2011, China will embrace its lunar new year. The train services industry is preparing for the coming peak travel season of the traditional Chinese New Year. According to recent news reports, the Chinese New Year’s rush is expected to last for 40 days from 19th January till 27th February (China Daily, 2011). The following indicators and targets will help to depict the overall readiness and performance of China’s railway service during this period:

  • # Total volume of railway passengers: 230 million
  • % Increase of passengers: 12.5% compared to 2010
  • # New trains added: 293
  • # Average number of trans in service per day: 2,265.5
  • # High-speed trains in use: 480
  • # Regular trains in use: 8,540
  • # Ticket reservation capacity via phone at the same time: 55,000

Source: People’s Daily Online, 2010

In spite of all the improvement to train services, the shortage of Spring Festival transport tickets will still exist. According to industry sources, the problem is hoped to be completely solved in five years time (People’s Daily Online, 2011)

For more details on Key Performance Indicators specific to the Transportation – Land transport (road & rail) industry, visit the Trasportation KPI examples section of smartkpis.com.

Reference:

People’s Daily Online (2011), 230 Million Expected to Go Home by Train, available at http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90776/90882/7262416.html (accessed 19th January 2011)

China Daily (2011), Holiday Ticket Rush Builds up Stream, available at http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2011-01/11/content_11822506.htm (accessed 19th January 2011)

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KPIs around the world: Performance achievements from Malaysia

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

Bernama, the Malaysian National News Agency reports that The Information Communication and Culture Ministry from Malaysia has successfully achieved its Key Performance Indicators (KPI) set in 2010.

Some highlights into the achievements are as follows (Bernama, 2011):

  • A level of understanding towards the 1Malaysia concept of 72 per cent, compared to the target of 50 per cent;
  • Broadband penetration of 55.6 per cent, compared as well to the target of 50 per cent;
  • Kraftangan Malaysia achieved a sale of RM126 million, surpassing the target of RM100 million;
  • 98 per cent of graduates of the National Academy of Arts, Culture and Heritage obtained jobs.

Minister Rais attributed the achievement to the close cooperation among the ministry’s agencies and expressed confidence that they would spend time each week to contemplate on their mission and vision as well as on the achievements.

A year before, the same minister suggested that taxi drivers and owners should also have their own KPIs to measure the performance of the public transport service they offer (Bernama, 2010).

These initiatives are part of the 1Malaysia, a concept that defines the vision on the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak towards improved ethnic harmony, national unity and efficient governance, the solgan of 1Malaysia being „Rakyat Didahulukan, Pencapaian Diutamakan” (People First, Performance Now).

For more information on 1Malaysia, visit: http://www.1malaysia.com/.

References

Bernama (2011), Rais: Ministry Achieves KPI, available at: http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsgeneral.php?id=555742 (accessed 13 January 2011).

Bernama (2010), Taxi drivers and owners should have KPIs: Rais, available at: http://www.mmail.com.my/content/24249-taxi-drivers-and-owners-should-have-kpis-rais (accessed 13 January 2011).

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IBM solutions – bringing tennis game experience and performance closer to fans during Australian Open 2011

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

Today, information technology solutions can shape and influence the world of sport in a way never seen before. Hundreds of metrics, statistics and rankings about players and teams performance during games or even entire competitions are now available at a “touch of a button”.

Tennis is one of the sports that enjoys the benefits created by the newest advancements in technology. One of the best examples in this sense is provided by the IBM technological solutions who facilitate an unique experience for both visitors and fans during the Australian Open Grand Slam Tournament.

IBM Australian Open from Ryan Uhrich on Vimeo.

Through its innovative technologies and solutions IBM is able to capture, analyze and distribute data on almost all the aspects of the Australian Open Grand Slam Tournament, enhancing and bringing the tennis player performance and dynamic game experience more closer to fans, media and officials through real time solutions.

Such complex data capturing, visualization and presentation applications and solutions, can be used now as sources of inspirations for a more creative business data gathering and presentation solutions. A short preview to the solutions used by the IBM during the Australian Open Grand Slam Tournament can be watched in the video below.

For more details on the solutions used by IBM during the Australian Open Grand Slam Tournament follow Australian Open 2011 case study.

References

IBM 2011, IBM and the Australian Open, available at http://www-07.ibm.com/innovation/au/ausopen/, (accessed 15 January 2011)

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Australian Open 2011 – Performance inspired by sport

Monday, January 17th, 2011

The first tennis grand slam of the year is just about to begin in Melbourne. The Australian Open Grand Slam Tournament promises this year, again, an unforgivable experience to millions of fans throughout the world. eab group, an innovative performance management consultancy company, based in Melbourne and smartKPIs.com one of the largest online platforms for performance management knowledge integration, welcome this year’s event, by presenting in a short preview to the competition, a clip that beautifully outlines the essence of tennis. Enjoy!

What is tennis?

How performance in tennis inspires business performance?


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