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Posts Tagged ‘Software’

Driving shareholder return through business execution

Monday, July 18th, 2011

SuccessFactors, Inc., a global company specialized in business execution software, recently published the results of the study “How Companies Leverage Business Execution Software to Drive Excess Shareholder Return”, completed in collaboration with The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. This study shows that companies tend to achieve higher industry-adjusted stock returns when they set and align goals, rate users on the achievement of these goals, used more variance in performance feedback, and leverage business execution software to increase their ability to execute (SuccessFactors, 2011).

Source: SuccessFactors (2011)

According to the statistical analyses, four distinct business execution characteristics were revealed as influencing the employee performance evaluation process. These are:

Goal Number Dimension: The average number of goal plans per employee during the year,
Alignment: The degree to which goals are aligned throughout the organization.
System Usage Dimension: The company’s system usage style, on a continuum from companies that use the system primarily as an information system to those using the system to a greater extent for performance evaluation (with a larger percentage of users having rated goals).
Ratings Scale: The extent to which the company uses the full spectrum of the ratings scale (SuccessFactors, 2011).

The key findings of the study highlight:

a statistically significant positive relationship between each of the Business Execution dimensions studied and industry-adjusted stock returns;
10% increase in the number of goals used was associated with a 6% increase in industry-adjusted stock returns;
10% increases in the Alignment Dimension, System Usage Dimension, and Rating Scale Usage Dimension scores were also associated with increased stock returns (SuccessFactors, 2011).

As the methodology is concerned, the data for this study was gathered on 18 goal setting, alignment, and system usage characteristics in 153 of SuccessFactors publicly traded customers. The Wharton and Stanford researchers then used statistical methods to determine the number of underlying business execution dimensions captured by these variables.

Reference

SuccessFactors (2011), SuccessFactors Research Publishes New Study – Proves that Companies Investing in Business Execution Software Achieve Higher Shareholder Returns, available at: http://www.successfactors.com/press-releases/1569395/ (accessed 18 July 2011)

Tags: alignment, Business execution, goal setting, goals, shareholder return, Software, study, SuccessFactors
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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/

Tags: Green initiatives, Software, Sustainability
Posted in Business Intelligence, Library of KPI examples, Performance Management, Performance Measurement | No Comments »