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Castrol Edge penalty analysis. Players will have to think from now on twice, before taking a penalty!

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

In a previous blog post we have presented a new Castrol football application, the World Cup Predictor. Using performance data from every international match played by the World Cup 2010 participating teams in the last ten years and simulating the tournament more than 100 000 times, to minimize the error rate as much as possible, the Castrol team of performance analysts calculated each team’s chances of progression through the competition.
As it proves, the application has its validity,  Brazil the team identified by the Castrol Predictor as the most likely winners still running in the competition, while England the team that was predicted to win the world cup competition by the JP Morgan analysts is already out being eliminated by Germany.

To find out more about what are your favorite team chances to win the next match from the knock out rounds use the Castrol Match Predictor application by clicking on the image below.

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

Additionally, for the knock out stages Castrol Football just launched a new application that proves to be of great interest among fans, but also among players and goalkeepers still involved in the knockout stages of the World Cup competition.

As Peter Schmeichel, one of the official Castrol ambassadors acknowledge, the Penalty Analysis application gives complete historic information about the way and style a field player takes a penalty, but also about the strategy each goalkeeper use when defending a penalty. To view more details you can listen the complete interview with the ex goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel in the podcast below.

Castrol EDGE Penalty Analysis Podcast by Castrol Football

For developing the new application, the Castrol team of performance analysts has studied every penalty taken in the last 4 seasons of the top five European Leagues and UEFA Champions Leagues, as well as a number of international matches and they compiled the results in an application that can be accessed by clicking the image below.

Source: Castrol Football, 2010

More than that, especially for the World Cup 2010 tournament, the Castrol team of performance analysts analyzed each penalty taken in the last 5 World Cups both during matches and penalty shootouts by all teams who qualified for the South African competition to better understand the psychological impact the penalty shootouts pressure have on field players and goalkeepers. The results are truly surprising:

  • 81% of the penalties taken during the matches are converted while only 66% during the penalty shoot outs
  • Players who go first in penalty shootouts are 7 times more likely to score than those executing the penalties last
  • The older a player is the less likely he will score – only 71% of those above 28 years scored
  • Right foot players have a 69% penalty conversion rate, while left foot players only 50%
  • Goalkeepers wearing green jerseys let through 62 % of the penalties, those wearing black 65%, blue 69%, while goalkeepers wearing red jersey couldn’t save any penalty
  • Strikers with a penalty conversion result of 74% are most likely to score, followed by defenders with a 69% success rate, while midfielder are the most unlikely to score with a 58%  success figure attached.
  • Finally, only 40% of penalties are converted by players if the team final survival depends on that penalty, while 92% of penalties are converted in the opposite situation, when the penalty is to decide the winner.

To view a full video presentation of the Castrol performance analysts research you can follow the Castrol Football official site here.

References:

Additional resources:

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Enhancing business performance with intelligent data visualization – Ideas from sport

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Data presentation and visualization solutions have increased in popularity in the recent years. Tremendous advancements in information technology and the wide adoption of the internet had a positive effect on communication, data interchange and visualization across networks, business and social communities.

Driven by the business need of analyzing large volumes of data and presenting them in a concentrated, transparent and easy to read form, data visualization instruments such as dashboard solutions register nowadays an increased level of adoption in several activity fields.

Sport is one of them, and particularly those competitions with a large following all over the world, such as football, basketball, tennis, cricket, baseball or golf. These sports are benefiting from a wide variety of data presentations and visualization applications which enable a closer and easier connections with fans.

Only in the last month, once with the start off the World Cup South Africa 2010 a variety of presentation and visualization solutions were launched, slicing and dicing all competition details and data. An excellent visualization solution is presented by Marca.com:

Source: Marca.com, 2010

What is interesting though, is that what we are witnessing today in the data visualization field  is sort of an “echolocation effect”: ideas bounce back from business to sports and business again.  Such complex data visualization applications, as the one presented in the image above, which were first inspired from business visualization and representation solutions can be used now back as sources of inspirations for a more creative business data visualization solutions.

References:

Marca.com (2010), World Cup South Africa 2010 interactive calendar, available at http://www.marca.com/deporte/futbol/mundial/sudafrica-2010/calendario-english.html, (accessed 25 June 2010)

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The interplay between Business Intelligence and Performance Management in today’s organizations

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

Many business users still rely today on spreadsheets, presentations and e-mail as their tools for information and analysis, despite major investments in technology and their willingness to manage or improve organizational performance.

A new study by Ventana Research, “Business Intelligence and Performance Management for the 21st Century“, reveals that these desktop productivity tools obstruct efficiency and effectiveness when used in enterprise processes.

The Findings

Ventana Research undertook this benchmark research to assess the current state of maturity, trends and best practices. The goal was to determine how organizations approach Business Intelligence (BI) and performance management and prioritize their key components by identifying what elements they desire in a comprehensive approach.

The research found strong interest in a growing demand for BI and performance management. Departmentally, the most growth in adoption of BI tools to support performance management has been in Operations (51%), Finance (50%) and Customer Management (49%).

Source: UBM TechWeb Reader Services, 2010

However, the research paints a picture of a market in an early stage of development. It shows that most organizations face considerable obstacles. They have only basic BI capabilities such as:

  • querying sources for specific data (74%),
  • generating reports from data (74%)
  • accessing data from a spreadsheet for further analysis (70%).

Moreover, the capabilities they currently are working to deploy are only somewhat more sophisticated:

  • communicating data in the right format (27%),
  • searching for data (26%),
  • presenting data effectively (25%)
  • creating measures and metrics (24%).

Organizations are aware that more advanced capabilities exist; the ones our participants said most often that they hope to establish are being able to access data via a mobile device (27%), to conduct what-if analysis (25%) and to collaborate on data and metrics (23%).

The research shows that lack of resources (60%) and lack of a budget (43%) are the two most common barriers to improving BI and performance management. A significant percentage of the participants said that in the next year or two they will choose hosted software managed off-site, or rented software as a service (SaaS), as the means of deploying such software.

These methods can be more economical than the traditional on-premises deployment and require fewer in-house resources such as hardware and IT staff.

What To Do Next

According with the research, organizations can follow a series of steps as presented below:

1. Assess your organization’s maturity in BI and performance management.

2. Consider the effectiveness of your current tools and applications.

3. Reduce the number of BI tools and the use of spreadsheets.

4. Compare the BI capabilities you have with those you want.

5. Determine whether products currently in use can handle performance management well.

6. Identify the types of data you need to access and analyze.

7. Consider adopting or expanding metrics for performance management.

8. Address organizational barriers to improving BI and performance management.

9. Look into alternative means of software deployment

10. Examine software that can be deployed across roles in the enterprise.

References:

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An overview of Business, Corporate and Enterprise Performance Management

Monday, June 7th, 2010

Simply stated, Business Performance Management (BPM) can be described as a series of business processes, systems and applications designed to optimize both the development and the execution of business plans.

Definition of BPM

In an effort to provide clarity to the industry, a BPM standards group was established in 2003. Their definition for BPM was “a set of integrated, closed-loop management and analytic processes, supported by technologies, that address financial and operational activities.” (Frolick et al., 2006)

Synonyms for “Business Performance Management” include “Corporate Performance Management” and “Enterprise Performance Management”.

Some consider Corporate Performance Management (CPM) is the area of business intelligence (BI) involved with monitoring and managing an organization’s performance, according to key performance indicators (KPIs) such as revenue, return on investment (ROI), overhead, and operational costs. (SearchDataManagement.com, 2010)

If we regard Business Performance Management (BPM) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) as near synonyms: BPM would serve as the more generalised and used  term.

However, because the use of the acronym “BPM” can cause confusion with “Business Process Management”, using terms such as “Corporate Performance Management” or “Enterprise Performance Management” can avoid that confusion.

The history of BPM

Similar to other past trends in information systems, BPM has evolved over several decades. An account of its history is illustrated in the table below:

Source: Frolick et al., 2006

Examples of BPM frameworks

Core BPM processes include financial and operational planning, consolidation and reporting, business modeling, analysis, and monitoring of key performance indicators linked to strategy ( BPM Magazine, 2010).

According to other sources, the BPM framework is composed of four core processes. These four key steps are the foundation for designing, implementing, and managing BPM (Frolick et al., 2006):

1. Strategize

2. Plan

3. Monitor and analyze

4. Take corrective action

The first two steps represent the formulation of business strategy, and the last two steps define how to modify and execute strategy. These four core processes form a closed loop that captures business strategy, which is then translated into strategically aligned business operations. (Image Source: Frolick et al., 2006)

Another example of a BPM or CPM  Framework is the one developed by PriceWaterHouseCoopers (2008). It is structured on 6 steps: strategy, plan, measure, insight, execute and reward. It also identifies 5 key enablers that help organizations driving strategy into sustainable performance: Culture, Governance, Data Management, Technology and Process.

Source: PricewaterwouseCoopers, 2008

Various methodologies for implementing BPM exist. They provide companies a top-down framework by which to align planning and execution, strategy and tactics with business-unit and enterprise objectives. Various management concepts are intertwined in practice: Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecard, Activity-Based Costing (ABC), Total Quality Management, Economic Value-Add, Integrated Strategic Measurement and Theory of Constraints.

The Balanced Scorecard is the most widely adopted performance management methodology, especially as a system.

Methodologies on their own cannot deliver a full solution to an enterprise’s BPM needs. Many pure-methodology implementations fail to deliver the anticipated benefits due to lack of integration with fundamental BPM processes.

References

  • Business Performance Management Magazine, available at  http://bpmmag.net/, accessed 28 May 2010

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Sustainability Performance Management software from SAP BusinessObjects

Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

We live in a time when sustainability is becoming a rising priority for companies as a vast number of stakeholder groups such as investors, management and employees try to understand the social and environmental implications of the company’s operational and financial activities and decisions. Sustainability has become “both a strategic imperative and a performance driver” that strives to maximize business impact (Gorbach, 2009)

SAP is one of the major companies in the world with an interest in identifying new solutions for tracking and measuring Sustainability Performance Management. SAP BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management Application is an example of such a solution.  It aims to help organizations measure and communicate their sustainability performance, by enabling them to “ set goals and objectives, manage risks and monitor activities” all these with the promise of shortening the time to collect data and significantly reducing the costs associated with this activity.

Starting from the premise that in today’s business world more than 80% of the Global FORTUNE 250 companies report their sustainability performance, SAP identified a large number of business challenges  that companies face when reporting their sustainability performance and built the application by targeting these challenges with key features, expected to deliver specific benefits:

  • Business Challenges, encountered while measuring sustainability performance:

• “Resources tied up in collecting sustainability data

• Multiple overlapping sustainability standards and guidelines

• Lack of auditability and transparency in performance reporting

• Lack of alignment between sustainability activities and other management activities

• Inability to implement a sustainability strategy that the rest of the organization will follow” (SAP BusinessObjects, Sustainability Performance Management, 2009)

  • Key Features of the SAP BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management application:

• “Defining reporting frameworks – Manage multiple sustainability frameworks and key performance indicators (KPIs) while optimizing opportunities for reuse

• Data collection – Automatically gather quantitative and qualitative sustainability performance data from people and systems

• Performance management – Align sustainability KPIs to corporate objectives and risks; turn sustainability data into actionable information to improve financial and sustainability performance; and set goals to motivate improvement

• Integration – Leverage existing data and management processes by integrating with other SAP applications” (SAP BusinessObjects, Sustainability Performance Management, 2009)

  • Business Benefits of the SAP BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management application:

• “Reduce the cost of measuring sustainability performance

• Turn strategy and data into actionable insights where sustainability performance improvements also improve profitability

• Improve enterprise transparency and performance by making key drivers visible

• Provide sustainability results to the right levels in the organization so information is actionable

• Manage and mitigate stakeholder risk

• Incorporate sustainability into existing management systems and processes through strategic planning, initiative creation, risk management, and process streamlining” (SAP BusinessObjects, Sustainability Performance Management, 2009)

By incorporating a streamlined tracking, measuring and reporting performance management system the SAP BusinessObjects Sustainability Performance Management application can be a good alternative for companies interested in addressing sustainability issues.

To learn more on the key features and benefits of the application follow www.sap.com/solutions/sustainability.

References:

• SAP, Sustainability Performance Management – drive social, environmental, and economic improvement, United States official website, viewed 2nd June 2010, http://www.sap.com/usa/solutions/executiveview/sustainability/sustainability-performance/index.epx

• SAP BusinessObjects, Sustainability Performance Management (2009) – Solution brief: Find opportunity in sustainability, viewed 2nd June2010, http://download.sap.com/download

• Gorbach, Greg (2009) – SAP Analyst Report: Deliver sustainability promises – New SAP Solution Helps Companies Deliver Their Sustainability Promises, viewed 2nd June 2010, http://download.sap.com/download

Additional Resources:

• smartkpis.com 2010, CSR/ Sustainability/ Environmental Care KPIs Examples, viewed 2nd June 2010, http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/functional-areas/csr-sustainability-environmental-care/

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Performance Management – a story told through key survey figures and statistics

Friday, May 21st, 2010

smartKPIs.com Performance Architect update 20/2010

Performance Management is one of the most dynamic business disciplines today. Its evolution accelerated over the last 20 years and due to the large number of concepts it employs and unstructured body of knowledge, having a comprehensive big picture view of the topic is rather challenging. One way of achieving this is by reading a lot and doing a critical review to the various ideas proposed. Another option is by monitoring the pulse of the discipline as reflected in studies and survey reports covering performance management topics.

Listed below is a random list of relevant statistics published in performance management studies over the last few years. It is interesting to put them together as pieces in a puzzle, to create a picture of the state of the discipline. This is the plus. On the other hand, each study used different research tools and varied in rigor, so the results need to be analyzed in the context of the survey as illustrated in the original report.

Overall they form an interesting read and while the degree of accuracy for their findings may vary, they can be useful in understanding the thinking and direction in Performance Management research and practice:

2010

  • ” …the most growth in BI [Business Intelligence] tools to support performance management has been in operations (51%), finance (50%) and customer management (49%) ” (Ventana Research, 2010)
  • ” …more than  half of participants (53%) said that they are only somewhat confident or not confident at all that their BI [Business intelligence] technology meets the needs of the organization”…. with only 9% being “very satisfied with their organization’s BI efforts.” (Ventana Research, 2010)
  • “…lack of resources (60%) and lack of a budget (43%) are the two most common barriers to improving BI and performance management…. The top two people issues are lack of awareness (36%) and lack of executive support (26%)” (Ventana Research, 2010)
  • “…41% of participating organizations evaluate performance data and 29% are assessing metrics or measures to do so.” (Ventana Research, 2010)
  • “…two thirds (66%) of organizations are planning to evaluate new technologies for BI and performance management.” (Ventana Research, 2010)

2009

  • Balanced Scorecard is the sixth most used management tool all over the world. (Bain & Company, 2009)
  • 53% of the surveyed companies use a Balanced Scorecard, with an overall satisfaction score of 3,83 from 5. (Bain & Company, 2009)
  • “ On average, 84% of employees at Best in Class organizations were rated “meets” or “exceeds” performance expectations…” (Aberdeen Group, 2009)
  • “… An [Enterprise Performance Management] EPM system with strong reporting capabilities is a critical enabler for the Best in Class (companies) by enabling leaders and managers to make better decisions…” (Aberdeen Group, 2009)
  • “Most of the companies agree that systemically deriving KPIs from their strategy and effectively communicating that strategy are crucial to ensuring strategic objectives are met” (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2009)
  • “….only 33% have implemented strategy maps. Nevertheless 67% of the companies use strategy development tools such as value chain analysis.” (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2009)
  • ” While many companies say they derive KPIs from strategy (61%), a smaller number indicate that they have been through the process of defining strategic value drivers (54%) to break strategy and identify relevant KPIs.” (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2009)
  • “On a scale of 1 (not integrated) to 6 (fully integrated), 73% of the companies rate their [Performance Management] process integration as a 4 or above.” (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2009)
  • “…many companies focus on classic financial control measures. 81% stated that they use KPIs concerning profit or loss, liquidity, profitability and operational business.” (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2009)
  • ” …along financial indicators, 51% of the participating companies explicitly indicated non-financial measures like customer satisfaction or quality of delivered services as KPIs in use” (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2009)
  • “On average more than 80% of companies think their [Performance Management] PM processes need improvement…the planning, budgeting and forecasting processes seem to be especially problematic” (BARC, 2009)
  • ” ..the number of people involved in performance management processes has increased over the last years with an average of 30% across all [Performance Management] PM processes.” (BARC, 2009)

2008

  • “ Corporate performance management (CPM) is the highest priority in business intelligence (BI)…” (Gartner, 2008)
  • ‘’….through 2011, at least 50% of companies implementing CPM will simply automate existing finance oriented processes and fail to improve performance management processes across the organization.” (Gartner, 2008)
  • “……organizations that allowed their finance function to lead a CPM implementation were on average 25% less mature in their use of CPM than organizations that had an equal partnership between finance, IT and Key business users in their CPM project.” (Gartner, 2008)
  • [Global Market]  “….financial measures still dominate. In every country, financial measures are the most frequently measured and over half of those surveyed report that over 50% of their measures are financial” (Neely et al. 2008)
  • [Chinese Market] “… 89% reported that they had adopted a formal structure for their enterprise  performance management system.” (Neely et al. 2008)
  • [Japanese Market] “According to data over 60% of Japanese companies have now adopted performance management frameworks such as the balanced scorecard.” (Neely et al. 2008)
  • [U.K. Market] ” … only 17.3% believe they have the right number of measures, while 38.6% have concerns about the quality of their data.” (Neely et al. 2008)
  • [U.S. Market] ” Despite the abundant literature on mapping strategies, the majority of the respondents, 62%, do not visualize their strategies.” (Neely et al. 2008)
  • [Australian Market] “…65.5% of the respondents claim to have a balanced scorecard….. no other framework for enterprise performance management design being prominent in Australia, with 39.3% of respondents preferring to use their own basis for designing their enterprise performance management system.” (Neely et al. 2008)

2007

  • Measuring performance against goals and tracking KPIs occur in 80% of companies. (SAS, 2007)
  • “8 in 10 organizations in this research are engaged in measuring performance against goals, ahead of summarizing and consolidating information. Three-quarters are tracking key performance indicators (KPIs)”:

• Performance measures against goals – 81%

• Summarized reporting of financial performance information on department level – 78%

• Key performance indicators tracked – 76%

• Decision making based on understanding of which measures drive the business – 64% (SAS, 2007)

  • Benefits achieved based on performance management activities

• Competitive advantage: up to 63%

• Agility: up to 56%

• Compliance/Governance: up to 50%

• Budget/plan aligned with strategy: up to 47%

• Revenue growth: up to 47%

• Innovation: up to 44%

• Strategic alignment: up to 44%

• Response to market threats/risks: up to 41%

• Resource alignment/optimization: up to 38%

• Financial transparency: up to 38% (SAS, 2007)

2006

  • “In an evaluation of their budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes, an astonishing 60% of companies surveyed exhibited limited adoption of [Business Performance Management] BPM best practices, 36% showed ‘some adoption’ while less than 4% showed strong adoption.” (Active Planning, 2006)
  • “Across all companies, 78% of respondents are still using spreadsheets as their primary budgeting and forecasting tool…..only 41% are using graphical dashboards or scorecards in their reporting processes…..and fully 76% have not rebuilt their planning model in over a year” (Active Planning, 2006)

2004

  • “Average companies include nearly nine times too many metrics, focus heavily on historical finance data and not enough on forward-looking indicators.” (Hackett Group (2004) as cited by PMA, 2005)
  • “Less than 20% of all typical companies have mature balanced scorecard implementations in place that are generating business value.” (Hackett Group (2004) as cited by PMA, 2005)
  • “…..world class companies are 159% more likely….. than typical companies to have mature balanced scorecards” (Hackett Group (2004) as cited by PMA, 2005)
  • “…companies report an average of 132 measures to senior management each month (83 financial and 49 operational). This is nearly nine times the number of measures suggested as appropriate when the concept of the balanced scorecard was introduced in 1992″ (Hackett Group (2004) as cited by PMA, 2005)

Same as in Performance Management, “seeing beyond figures” makes the interpretation and use of such results more balanced and relevant.

Stay smart! Enjoy smartKPIs.com!

Aurel Brudan

Performance Architect,
www.smartKPIs.com

References:

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Performance Management matters – PricewaterhouseCoopers reports on Performance Management in the global economy

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) conducted during 2008-2009 an exhaustive research regarding the importance of performance management in the context of a globalized economy. The research was lead by PwC Canada, in partnership with several academic and research institutions from Canada, Switzerland and Australia.

The methodology consisted of two stages: an online survey to more than 400 senior managers in both private and public sectors, followed by 12 in-depth interviews aiming to investigate several issues in a more complex perspective.

The purpose of the research was to provide answers to several core questions (PwC, 2009):

  • Do effective Performance Management practices contribute to driving superior performance?
  • Are these contributions the same in downturns as in good times?
  • Is performance management standardized or does it have to be customized for particular needs of organizations of different sizes and in different industries?

Source: PwC, 2009

Some of the most representative findings, were (PwC, 2009):

  • The identification of seven best practices that drive high performance and superior results, among which:
  1. having a holistic, broad approach (high performers focus on broad issues, such as brand loyalty, employee satisfaction, service quality, aspects that can create competitive advantage);
  2. creating linkages, alignment and integration of the measures to the key business drivers and cascading accountability at all organizational levels;
  3. adopting high value planning practices, such as vision, mission and value statements and environmental and social responsibility plans;
  4. developing advanced technology such as dashboards and business intelligence tools to complete the spreadsheets that are still predominant across respondents.
  • Performance management practices are equally essential in both recession and growth periods. As one argument, the interviews revealed that organizations with strong performance management programs can better manage costs strategically and, if the case, make difficult decisions in ways that minimize impact on the long-term.
  • Performance management in the public sector is not as different from the private sector as it might be believed. It was concluded that high performing public organizations are the ones that employ practices also identified in high performance private entities, such as linkage and alignment to strategy, use of advanced technology and use of value planning practices in the shape of vision, mission or values.

Canada was given a particular attention, being under the loop for comparison to the rest of the world. The finding was that Canadian organizations employ less robust performance management practices, but are better at overcoming potential barriers.

For complete overview of the research, please follow: http://www.pwc.com/ca/en/finance/performance-management/global-performance-management-research-study.jhtml

You can register for a full version of the report or directly download an executive summary.

Reference:

PricewaterhouseCoopers (2009), Performance management matters. Sustaining superior results in a global economy, CA.

The research was lead by PwC Canada, in partnership with several academic and research institutions from Canada, Switzerland and Australia. The methodology consisted of two stages: an online survey to more than 400 senior managers in both private and public sectors, followed by 12 in-depth interviews aiming to investigate several issues in a more complex perspective.

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Performance Measurement taxonomy – linking Performance Measurement and Management

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

smartKPIs.com Performance Architect update 15/2010

In my previous update, I discussed the concept of taxonomy and outlined the structure of a Performance Management taxonomy.  A subset of Performance Management is Performance Measurement and thus a separate taxonomy is required to illustrate its key elements.

The Performance Measurement taxonomy outlined below starts with a list of Performance Measurement instruments that provide the link with the Performance Management taxonomy. The other elements illustrate the various descriptors of performance measures. The taxonomy is listed in a linear format, as it is still work in progress. A more complex map of the taxonomy can be structured once it matures:

Performance Measurement

Instruments

  • Goals / Objectives
  • Measures
  • Performance indicators / metrics
  • Key Performance Indicators
  • smartKPIs
  • Scorecards
  • Dashboards

Stakeholders

  • Measure owner
  • Data custodian

Dimensions

  • Cost
  • Time
  • Quality
  • Maturity

Measure unit type

  • $ Value
  • # Number
  • % Percentage

Formula type

  • Average
  • Volume
  • Rate
  • Ratio
  • Index
  • Composition

Measurement type

  • Quantitative
  • Qualitative

Measurement focus

  • Risk
  • Satisfaction
  • Money
  • Quality
  • Duration
  • Volume

Measure relevance level

  • Strategic
  • Operational

Positive trend for measurement results

  • When increasing
  • When decreasing
  • When within an interval of values

Indicator focus

  • Leading
  • Lagging
  • Diagnostic

Measure impact stage

  • Input
  • Process
  • Output
  • Outcome

Data capture period

  • Spot
  • Day
  • Week
  • Month
  • Quarter
  • Year
  • Year to date
  • Rolling average

Listing and grouping such elements is a good first step. Exploring the relationships between them and linking them in a map structure will provide a much richer picture.

Stay smart! Enjoy smartKPIs.com!

Aurel Brudan

Performance Architect,
www.smartKPIs.com

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KPIs in practice – the free online catalog of performance reports now available on www.smartKPIs.com

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

www.smartKPIs.com announced in March 2010 the launch of “KPIs in practice“, an online catalog of reports that illustrate the use of performance measures in practice by organizations from around the world. At the time of launch, the catalog contained 300 links to performance reports publicly available. Since then, the catalog almost doubled in size, while proving to be a popular resource for a growing number of website visitors.

In brief

KPIs in practice is available as a new content section on www.smartKPIs.com. It complements the KPI examples section of the site which – with over 3000 well documented records – is one of the largest databases of Key Performance Indicator (KPI) examples available on the Internet today. Many of these examples are much easier to understand when they are put into context. Through the launch of KPIs in Practice, smartKPIs.com becomes the first online platform that links well documented performance measures and high quality performance reports.

In numbers

  • 520 KPIs in practice reports
  • Covering 14 Functional Areas
  • From 56 Industries
  • Use by organizations from 55 Countries
  • From all 3 sectors (public, private and non-profit)

In use

Registration on http://www.smartKPIs.com is free and it enables research, learning and interaction as part of a growing community of users from over 175 countries.

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Google Internet Stats – the latest industry facts and insights

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

Google launched in the autumn of 2009 a new resource page called “Internet Stats” which “brings together the latest industry facts and insights” (Google Internet Stats, 2010).

The information is collected from certain third party sources, all specified on the micro-site, and catalogued into five categories, each with more subcategories:

  • Technology: Broadband; Devices; Mobile; Speed
  • Macro Economic Trends: Rest of the World; UK
  • Media Landscape: All media; Online
  • Media Consumption: Changes in Media Usage; Demographic Usage; Media Consumption Stats; Media Multi-tasking; Personalised Media Experiences
  • Consumer Trends: Community; Entertainment; Information; eCommerce

Visitors can also submit stats, which will be verified by Google’s teams before publishing (Google Barometer Blog, 2009).

Here is an image of the Macro Economic Trends Internet stats from this tool:

Source: Google Internet Stats (2010)

Currently, this initiative is available only on the Google’s UK landing page.

References

Google Internet Stats (2010), available at http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/internetstats/ (accessed on 29 March 2010)

Google Barometer Blog (2009), “New! Internet Stats all in one place”, available at http://googlebarometer.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-internet-stats-all-in-one-place.html (accessed on 29 March 2010)

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