Performance Management Blog

Archive for the ‘Data visualization’ Category

Data analytics vs. intuition

Monday, June 20th, 2011

MIT Sloan Management Review, in partnership with the IBM Institute for Business Value, conducted in 2010 a survey of nearly 3,000 executives, managers and analysts working across more than 30 industries and 100 countries, aiming to help organizations understand the opportunity of information and advanced analytics.

The report “Analytics: The New Path to Value” presents the main findings of the research:

Top performing organizations say analytics is a differentiator, putting analytics to use in the widest possible range of decisions, large and small. They were twice as likely to use analytics to guide future strategies, and twice as likely to use insights to guide day-to-day operations;

Source: MIT Sloan Management Review & IBM Institute for Business Value (2010)

Organizations that know where they are in terms of analytics adoption are better prepared to turn challenges into opportunities; (more…)

Tags: Data analytics, IBM Institute for Business Value, MIT Sloan Management Review, performance, research
Posted in Data visualization, Performance Measurement, Report | No Comments »

Infographic – How the Internet is Revolutionizing Education

Monday, June 13th, 2011

It is no secret that eLearning is growing now faster than traditional learning. An interesting infographic from www.onlineeducation.net:

Via: OnlineEducation.net

Tags: Education, eLearning, infographic
Posted in Data visualization, Performance Measurement, smartKPIs.com | No Comments »

Metso KPIs of 2010 – Best practice in communicating performance results

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

Metso, a global provider of industrial machinery, presents its performance results of 2010 under the Financials section on its website, a truly impressive display of performance communication good practice. The section is well structured with Financial Targets, Key Drivers for Performance, Quarterly and Annual Figures and Calculation of Key Figures content available.

The long-term financial targets focus on Growth, Profitability, Cash Flow, Capital Structure and Dividend Policy. The 2010 performance results reveal that the company exceeded the targets in Growth and Profitability through an 11% of increase in net sales and improved EBITA by 23%. However, it failed to fulfill the Annual Cash Conversion target of 100%.

In terms of performance of business lines, Metso identifies several key drivers for performance:

Source: Metso (2011)

The performance results for the Group and Segments are presented by the use of interactive tables and charts. Tens of financial and non-financial indicators are chosen to provide visitors with a holistic view of the company performance. (more…)

Tags: Calculation of Key Figures, capital employerd, EBITA, EBITDA, financial targets, Gearing, Key Drivers for Performance, Metso, NWC, P/E ratio, ROCE, ROE, TSR
Posted in Business Intelligence, Case Study, Data visualization, KPI, KPIs in practice, Measure, Performance Management, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

50 years of manned spaceflight performance – A brief history

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

The evolution of human administration and knowledge from the hunter gatherers and band societies of 10,000 years ago to today’s interconnected human society is fascinating. One of the most important steps in modern human society progress was the uptake of the manned spaceflight.

This month, 11 April 2011 marked 50 years since Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin lit the race to conquer the outer earth space, being the first human being in space. While for many years the incredible journey to dominate the space flights and test the technological advancements and performance of the human society was dominated by Soviet Union (until its disablement) and United States, today manned spaceflight it is no longer a “two horse race” (The Economist, 2011 a).

Other nations such as China or even several privately owned projects have already conquered the space. The Economist online edition marks this important milestone in the human society by picturing in an article dedicated to this historical mark, a brief history of manned spaceflight. The graphic below depicts the missions who along the last 50 years wrote the history of manned spaceflight following the coordinates of two of the most relevant key performance indicators for the field:

# Missions performed
# Average length of missions, days

The Economist, 2011

For more details on the subject follow The Economist online edition.

References

The Economist (2011 a), Reaching for the stars. A brief history of manned spaceflight, available at http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/04/human_spaceflight (accessed 11 April 2011)

The Economist (2011 b), The space-age future that never happened, Science and Technology, Babbage, available at http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/04/space_travel_then_and_now (accessed 11 April 2011)

Tags: Key Performance Indicator, Key Performance Indicators, manned spaceflight, spaceflight performance, technological performance, The Economist, Yuri Gagarin
Posted in Data visualization, Events | No Comments »

How to set yellow thresholds for targets? – Insights from Balanced Scorecard Forum 2011 FAQs

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011

Balanced Scorecard Forum 2011 in Dubai generated an environment of intense interaction between participants, speakers and facilitators, giving the opportunity to address questions that for many delegates represented obstacles in implementing or utilizing Balanced Scorecard within the organization.

Starting with the first day of the Forum, a frequently asked question was raised in the Pre-Forum Workshop A – Executing Strategy with the Balanced Scorecard, facilitated by Aldo Labaki & Roberto Wyszkowski, Palladium UAE: “How to set yellow thresholds for targets?”. In practice, as expressed by the delegates, it is highly interpretable and debatable among the employees that set and have to achieve the target. The facilitators mentioned that this issue has been raised with many occasions, however, a generic answer has not yet been agreed upon at international level. An option mentioned during the workshop was the following:

Blue (or gold) – for achieving >95% of the target;
Green - for achieving 75%-95% of the target;
Yellow - for achieving 60%-75% of the target;
Red – for achieving <60% of the target.

Various answers to this question raise a continuous debate on how to set thresholds for the targets of KPIs. For example, dashboard and scorecard users may offer different color coding of thresholds (Facca, Jozlin, Spears & Ward, 2009), such as: green (>80% of target), yellow (60%-80% of target), or red (<60% of target):

Source: Facca, Jozlin, Spears & Ward (2009)

When reviewing KPIs, color signals, are used to visualize the difference between the current situation when it is compared to the desired outcomes. This is an effective tool for communication. Red signals visualize that immediate action is necessary, while yellow is used to express that close attention is needed. Green is used when the relationship between current and target measures are satisfying (smartKPIs.com, 2011).

smartKPIs Premium service offers access to a section dedicated to examples of thresholds set for each documented KPI, as our belief is that thresholds need to be customized according to the reality of each organization.

References

Facca, N., Jozlin, B., Spears, S. & Ward, J. (2009), PerformancePoint Tutorial, available at: http://homepages.wmich.edu/

smartKPIs.com (2011), On Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), available at: http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi_examples/dashboard/

Tags: Balanced Scorecard Forum Dubai, Targets, Thresholds
Posted in Balanced Scorecard, Data visualization, KPI, KPIs in practice, Targets, smartKPIs.com | No Comments »

States and nations infographic – Matching Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Population size

Monday, February 14th, 2011

One of the most commented blog articles on The Economist is an dynamic infographic that maps state economies part of the US to their equivalents from around the world in terms of $ GDP and # Population size.

While “The Economist proves itself to be imaginative and interesting in its way of illustrating how our world works” as one of the article commentators is acknowledging, what proves to be really interesting from a performance measurement perspective, is the interest expressed by the article viewers to visualize a comparison between America’s States and rest of the world in term of other performance indicators. As it results from a quick analysis of the opinions expressed in the comments section, the most popular suggestion is $ GDP per capita.

Other suggestions for comparison picked out from the article comments section are in terms of:

$ Median income
# Life expectancy
# Child mortality
# Geographical size
# Resources
% Debt from GDP

Source: The Economist, 2011

References

The Economist (2011), US equivalents – Which countries match the GDP and population of America’s states?, available at http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart, (accessed 22 January 2011)

Tags: GDP, GDP per capita, Gross Domestic Product, Key Performance Indicators, Measures, nations, Performance Measurement, states, United States, United States GDP
Posted in Data visualization | No Comments »

Emerging economies influence on commodity prices – A correlation between wine and oil price trends

Monday, February 7th, 2011

A recent article published in “The Economist” outlines an interesting correlation between the wine and oil prices trends around the world for the period 1998-2010. The research undertaken by two experts from International Monetary Fund (IMF), Servan Cevik and Tahsin Saasi, shows that supply has only a marginal impact on prices.

Usually, as it is acknowledged in the article, wine experts explain price movements analyzing supply side factors such as the effect of the weather and age. However, as the results of the study conclude, fast economic growth in the emerging markets has had a much bigger impact on wine prices, as well as it had on oil and other commodities in the last decade.

This is due to the fast growth of emerging economies such as that of China, India, Brazil or Russia, among others. Overall, emerging economies have accounted for more than 100% increase in global oil demand between 1998 -2010, while oil consumption in more developed countries has declined.

Likewise, the increased buying power in emerging markets “have spurred wine drinking”, with China overtaking Great Britain as the biggest export market for red wine, whereas consumption in Europe, especially in traditional wine drinking countries such as France and Italy has fallen.

Based on these economical trends, Cevik and Saasi, the two IFM economists, built an economical model to explain swings in the price of oil and wine by analyzing the same variables or metrics:

# Production (for oil and wine)
% Growth rate (for rich and emerging economies)
$ Global excess liquidity

Source: The Economist, 2011

As the findings of the study shows between 1998 and 2010 there was a correlation of over 90% between changes in oil and wine prices.

For more insights on the best Key Performance Indicators for measuring Financial trends visit smartKPIs.com KPI example section.

References

The Economist (2011), Fluid Logic – why two economists have found it increasingly hard to distinguish oil from wine, Commodity prices, available at http://www.economist.com/node/17969905?story_id=17969905 and http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/01/oil_and_wine&fsrc=nwl, (accessed 07 February 2011)

Tags: Indicators, International Monetary Fund, Metrics, oil prices, The Economist, wine prices
Posted in Data visualization | No Comments »

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)

Tags: EU economic performance, EU financial performance, European Union, GDP, GDP per capita, Indicators, Key Performance Indicators, Performance Indicator
Posted in Data visualization | No Comments »

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)

Tags: Australian Open 2011, business performance, Data visualization, IBM PointStream, Key Performance Indicators, Performance Indicator, Performance Measures, tennis
Posted in Data visualization | No Comments »

Facebook Metrics 2011 – Infographic

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

Source: Online Schools (2011)

Reference

Online Schools (2011), Obsessed with Facebook, available at: http://www.onlineschools.org/blog/facebook-obsession/ (accessed 13 January 2010).

Tags: Facebook, facebook metrics, Infographics, Metrics, Performance Measures
Posted in Data visualization | No Comments »

Demographic trends: Earth’s population and its impact

Tuesday, January 11th, 2011

By 2045, the world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion people and 7 billion by the end of 2011 (Kunzig, 2011).

Facts in 2011:

13% population with no clean drinking water
5% population consumes 23% world’s energy
38% population lack adequate sanitation

Data visualization regarding Earth’s population, its evolution in time and its impact is facilitated by the video below.

Source: National Geographic (2011)

The video compiled by National Geographic assesses the world through some metrics and their evolution in time:

# Population: reaching 7 billion people in 2011, from 1 billion in 1800
# Average life span: 69 years in 2010, compared to 53 in 1960
% Population living in city to rural areas: >1 in 2008
# Languages: 7000 in 2011
# Countries: 194 in 2011
# New born per second: 5 in 2011
# Mega-cities (population >10 million): 21 in 2010, compared to 3 in 1975 (National Geographic, 2011)

With the worldwide population expected to exceed seven billion in 2011, National Geographic magazine presented in the January cover story 7 Billion, a broad overview of demographic trends and their impact on the Earth’s population.

References

Kunzig, R. (2011), 7 Billion, available at: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/kunzig-text/1 (accessed 8 January 2011)

National Geographic (2011), 7 Billion, available at: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/specials/sitewide-redesign/ngm-7billion.html (accessed 8 January 2011)

Tags: 7 Billion, Demographic trends, Earth, National Geographic
Posted in Data visualization | No Comments »