Performance Management Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Dashboard’

The imperative of effective talent / performance management systems

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

Towers Watson’s 2010 HR Service Delivery and Technology Survey of nearly 500 large and midsize companies around the world clearly underlines that the top priority of HR executives in 2010 was talent / performance systems. The explanation for this result lays in the learning of the organization during the recession, that in order to maintain and increase performance while reducing costs, it is imperative to implement a more effective management of the talent kept and its performance. Effective talent / performance management systems drive HR strategies to align with broader business goals (Towers Watson, 2010).

The top five HR service delivery issues includes also the involvement of HR in strategic business driven issues and defining human capital metrics and dashboards.

Top HR Service delivery issues (top three frequency)

Source: Towers Watson (2010)

Key findings for HR service delivery in 2010

In 2010, 29% of surveyed companies increasing their HR technology spending. This indicates that technology has become a key enabler of growth, productivity and business results, and spending levels are beginning to reflect this;
HR service delivery initiatives undertaken by organizations in the last 18 months delivered the desired results, due to thorough planning and improved technologies used;
Talent / Performance management systems improved tactical transactions, making them more efficient by analyzing data faster and more accurately and more effective by enabling managers and employees to achieve retention and talent development goals.

Main HR trends for 2011

The tools to view human capital scorecard and business performance metrics will have tripled, this enabling direct alignment between talent management and business performance;
By the end of 2011, career planning technologies are expected to more than double in prevalence, and the modules for performance goal and result updating is expected to be among 75% of the companies participating in the future survey;
HR Executives will focus more on using integrated HR systems as a means of deepening HR’s credibility by increasing its involvement in and delivery of strategic workforce projections (Towers Watson, 2010).

The 2010 HR Service Delivery and Technology Survey Research Report aims to offer a broad picture of HR trends, priorities and initiatives. The survey has tracked over time the gradual movement in HR toward implementing systems and technologies to support the HR functions.

References:

Tower Watson (2010), 2010 HR Service Delivery and Technology Survey Research Report, available at: http://www.towerswatson.com/assets/pdf/2247/2247.pdf (accessed 3 January 2011)

Tags: Dashboard, HR Service Delivery, HR Service Delivery and Technology Survey Research Report, HR trends, Performance management system, Scorecard, Talent management
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Performance Management history file – Global Performance Management for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

The specific needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been addressed by various initiatives in diverse areas of organizational management and development, including the context of performance management and measurement.

Such an initiative represents the project entitled Global Performance Management for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (GPM-SME), financed by the 6th Framework Program (FP 6) of the European Commission, the Co-operative research (CRAFT) scheme between 2002-2006.

As shown by the Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS), the Framework Program is the largest EU instrument for the funding of research and considering the major importance of SMEs in the Union’s economy (seen as the most innovative, flexible and dynamic enterprises and accounting for a great amount of the existing jobs), it’s no wonder that one of the Program’s schemes – the CRAFT scheme mentioned above – is dedicated exclusively to SMEs (CORDIS, 2010).

The GPM-SME project was launched by a transnational consortium of R&D centres, industrial companies, software developers, consulting firms and standardization organizations (Alba et al., 2005):

Source: Alba et al., 2005

The goal was to develop a new framework called the Global Performance Management (GPM) for SMEs, combining two performance management approaches: Extended Performance Management (ExPM) and Enriched Performance Management. The first approach aims at creating collaborative performance management instruments at all levels (internal, external and network), in the context of what is called an evolution of businesses from single enterprises to Collaborative Networks (CN) and Virtual Organizations (VO). The second approach enriches the traditional Balanced Scorecard approach to measuring performance with additional dimensions, such as Innovation and Agility, Environmental Care and Corporate Social Responsibility (Alba et al., 2005).

The project consisted of a two-stages approach (Alba et al., 2005):

Analysis of the problem and identification of solutions based on user requirements collected;
Development of a set of ready-to-use instruments for the implementation of GPM in SMEs, such as:

A methodology and SME-oriented architecture to help SMEs define and operate a real model of the GPM solution;
A free of cost IT toolset that bridges the conceptual and practical environment;
A tutorial for broad dissemination of results on a cross-sectorial basis.

Out of the toolset helping managers translate their strategy into operational objectives, the GPM Dashboard represents a repository with all the KPIs, allowing visualization of the information and analysis, which correlated to the GPM Strategy Observer, shows deviations and pushes warnings to the managers. Other toolset products are the GPM Simulation of Innovation Scenario, GPM Innovation Potential Scorecard and the GPM Best Practices Monitor.

The project was based on two industries – automotive and consumer goods – which were considered to be the global best practices in terms of upstream value chain optimization, respectively downstream value chain optimization. But the purpose was to expand the lessons learned in these two sectors so as to deliver valuable results with a broad range of applicability.

While the GPM-SME project is now closed, it represents an interesting example of a collaborative approach in developing new approaches and instruments for Performance Management as a discipline.

References:

CORDIS (2010), „Specific projects for SMEs”, available at: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp6/instr_sme.htm (accessed 1 May 2010).

Alba, M., Diez, L., Olmos, E. and Rodrigues, R. (2005), “Global Performance Management for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (GPM-SME)”, available at: http://www.everis.es/Images/GPMArt_tcm31-4575.pdf (accessed 1 May 2010).

Tags: 6th Framework Project, CRAFT, Dashboard, Enriched Performance Management, European Commission, Extended Performance Management, Global Performance Management, Scorecard, SMEs
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KPIs and Dashboards in practice: TrackDC an innovative District of Columbia Performance Management initiative

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Performance measurement and reporting for control is not the sole purpose of tracking results against targets. One of its very important dimensions is that of enhancing accountability towards stakeholders; in private-owned organizations, reporting is directed mostly to shareholders and managers, whereas in governmental institutions, communication is directed towards the entire community served.

Usually, government accountability and reporting comes in the shape of annual performance reports, made public on the various agencies’ or local cities’ websites. smartKPIs.com – KPIs in practice section – includes various such annual reports, the ones below being only a part of the tens of governmental reports contained:

However, more complex initiatives are on their way, governments seeking not only to release a descriptive report covering one year’s activity, but also put in place more user-friendly reporting tools, with increased usability, based on Performance Management Dashboards.

A pioneer in this area seems to be the District of Columbia, which developed an online application called TrackDC, where citizens can visualize Key Performance Indicator results in graphs, check Budget distribution and spending, have access to permanent news and learn more about agencies and their Performance Plans and Accountability Reports.

Source: District of Columbia, 2010

The website contains individual pages for all the 53 agencies, with agency profile section, the annual Performance Plans and Reports, Performance Indicators, Customer Service data and Budget & Operational information.

For a complete picture, you can access for example the District Department of Transportation page:

Source: District of Columbia, District Department of Transportation, 2010

The Department’s 2010 Performance Plan includes performance measures in areas ranging from Finance, Contracts and Customer Service, to People, Properties and Risk. Several examples are the following:

% Sole-source contracts
% Variance between agency budget estimate and actual spending
% Employee turnover rate
# Square feet of office space occupied per employee

You can see that the Agency Responsiveness Quality Assurance Result for Q4 was of 97,09 %, against a 87,47 % Citywide Average.

You can also check the daily Website Traffic Dashboard, covering website traffic numbers for the last month’s period.

The Key Performance Indicators vary from one agency to another, being broken down from the objectives and initiatives each individual agency identifies. However, reporting is the same for each agency, covering the sections mentioned above.

References

District of Columbia (2010), “Track.DC”, available at: http://track.dc.gov/ (accessed 15 March 2010).

Tags: Dashboard, District of Columbia, Key Performance Indicators, Performance Management, Performance Measures, TrackDC
Posted in Business Intelligence, Government, KPIs in practice, Performance Management, smartKPIs.com | No Comments »