Success can only come when a company defines its overall aspirations and then identifies the performance measures that most powerfully bring about the realisation of each goal.

It is important to note that the aspirations should not only be strictly financial. Goals in market growth, productivity, quality, customer service, safety and environment, and organisational empowerment should also be considered. Companies can then cascade each of these high level imperatives through the organisation finding the most appropriate translation for them at every level down to the shop floor. By making these aspirations tangible at all levels, the company can then make the most significant connection; the link between performance and fiscal results. Simply put, if the performance improvements are not showing up on the company’s income statement, then they are not really improvements.

 

The management of corporate performance involves having senior managers derive and execute strategic plans, communicate them throughout the organisation and transform them into reality. Based on a study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit which studied and analysed performance management in 170 European and US companies. It found that there were four specific requirements to deliver world class performance management. They are:

 

1. Measures/targeting/targets; Measures are the organisations key performance indicators (KPIs); Targeting is about identifying the desired performance; One needs the right measures/targets, cascaded, integrated, and aligned with strategy; measures not just collected because they are available.

2. Process; Performance Management is a continuous cycle that will become an integral business process within an organization; the cycle is:

 

• establish targets

• identify performance barriers

• plan to overcome barriers

• execute plan

• indicators progress/performance

• monitor evaluate performance

• rewards-sanctions

 

3.  People; Performance Management requires the right organisation, capabilities/skills, and human resources

 

4.  Information Management; All major business processes require infrastructure to support their operations; information technology can play an important role in supporting the Performance Management processes; the issues that need to be considered are how the performance-management information systems are integrated throughout the organisation, how the information is displayed, and the extent to which the systems are real-time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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We assist our clients using our structure approach comprising:

 

• Define Stage – here we work with the client to translate the organisations strategic imperatives into high level KPI’s and then cascade these down through the organisation by the definition of directly meaningful performance measures (and targets) for each level.

• Design Stage – in this stage we design the performance management process, the reporting formats, reporting frequencies and required infrastructure

• Implement Stage – finally we work with the client to implement the necessary mechanisms to ensure that the measures result in tangible actions to improve the performance of the business