The Best of Business Intelligence Tips

October 20, 2006

Best of Business Intelligence Tips

Getting Business Performance Results
into the Hands of Executives

Lessons learned in
Business Performance Measurement

By Tom Hudock

CONTENTS
Introduction.………………..…………………………………….….2
Organization-wide Monthly Performance Reporting………..…..3
Trend and Comparative Analysis………………………………....4
Seamless Analysis to Answer “Why”...….…..……………….......4
The Best of Business Intelligence Tips
Executive Performance Reporting
Introduction
Business Intelligence Tips have been helping
executives and organizations improve on their
Corporate Performance Management and
Business Intelligence practices. Executives of
government and private organizations use
these Business intelligence Tips when
addressing pressing topics they face.
In this issue, we touch on practical, real-world
examples that have supported senior
management’s focus on measuring their
business performance. The key concepts and
ideas within were gained from years of lessons
learned working with various organizations and
have resulted in major improvements for
executives in their daily performance
measurement practices.
Source: Gartner, Inc.
Corporate Performance Management
Corporate Performance Management (CPM) is
used to assess whether the objectives in your
strategic plan are being met and the targets
exceeded. The goal is to drive strategy down
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and across the organization with actionable
metrics and meaningful analysis. The results
should be financially and operationally
profitable for decision makers and entire
organizations.
The 2006 BPM Pulse Survey of 500
business and IT professionals provided
interesting insights into plans for corporate
performance management.
“Those without a performance project are a
minority with just 17% reporting no plans.
Of those moving forward, 55% claim they
are in the midst of a project. Only a small
fraction, 13% deem their performance
project complete.”
Achieving this has challenges but there are
three takeaways that will innovate and improve
upon existing processes.
Takeaway # 1: Monthly Executive Reporting
The key objective to measuring business
performance is identifying the right indicators
and having the right data. You want to have
your finger on the pulse of your organization.
This means having the information easily
available, provided in a clear, concise way and
delivered in a timely manner.
From our experience, many organizations
manually produce executive summary reports
using Excel spreadsheets and Word
documents. This manual process is a costly,
error-prone process that requires many staff
members, and lost time, to deliver a
summarized report for senior executives.
The Best of Business Intelligence Tips

We’ve estimated that organizations spend 4 to
8 weeks to produce a quarterly executive
summary within large organizations of 500 or
more people. And for one organization, 15
people spent over 1 person year creating
metrics. This extensive time commitment
usually keeps organization-wide reporting to a
quarterly or annual cycle.
Takeaway # 2: Trend and Comparative
Analysis
Many have turned to Business Intelligence (BI)
systems to gain the advantages of accurate,
automated, timely information when reporting
on key performance indictors and analyzing
operational data. BI can also help drive
consistency in decision making across an
entire organization. But BI, while the right
approach, still doesn’t ensure executives have
clear, concise answers at their fingertips.
This is a big jump from a quarterly or annual
process. The advantage of the quick reporting
cycle is executives are positioned closer to the
pulse of their organization and able to respond
quicker to bumps in the road.
Executive Dashboards Give Context
An executive dashboard filters desirable and
relevant information to the forefront. We heard
several times that executives wanted
“something they could use that was clear and
concise”. Each executive should have a
custom view of corporate information and
information relevant to their business area.

Takeaway # 3: Seamless Analysis to

Answer “Why”

Typically, executives want the right information

delivered to them on a regular basis so quick
action can be taken to respond to changes in
the marketplace, upcoming seasonal trends,
and poorly performing business areas. They
also want timely access to organization-wide
information for planning and forecasting. To
meet this need, many organizations have staffs
of analysts that spend their time gathering
information but unfortunately less time Figure 1: Monthly Provincial Performance
analyzing and providing conclusions.
Figure 1 is a picture of an organization-wide report
Part 1: Monthly Performance provided through an executive dashboard. The
dashboard has several summary-level, clear and
Reporting concise management reports that give executives
Organization-wide performance reporting a glance at the right information.
should focus attention on the most important
information executives need. And the Executive dashboards can provide you with:
turnaround time should be timed in days or  Organization-wide information regularly
hours to produce monthly, organization-wide
performance reports for senior executives.  Business areas needing improvement

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The Best of Business Intelligence Tips

 Access to further details for analysis
As shown on Figure 1, red and green lights –
the stoplight technique – are used to identify
how monthly performance measures are
performing compared to monthly targets. Red
lights quickly explain that the measure is
underperforming the target for that month. But
this leads to the next question, “why is it
underperforming?”
measures and program statuses. Seamless
analysis is done organization-wide, down
through the business units and ultimately to
major business processes. The result gives an
organization the ability to connect strategy
down and across the organization with relevant
analysis at each level.

The dashboard approach groups information

according to how the business operates and
how people access the information.
Dashboards are made for people to consume
information easily.

Part 2: Trend and Comparative

Analysis
Trend and comparative analysis give
executives the ability to visually see any
seasonal and yearly trends and compare the
performance trends to an index or industry
benchmark. An executive may compare
across geographic regions, against the
organizational average, and with previous
years.
Comparisons Give Context
In this example, executives compare
performance across their districts and compare
the overall provincial performance versus
individual district performance. This provides
executives a deeper understanding of their
business trends and how districts perform
against the organizational average.
This gives executives the ability to provide
guidance for future action when assigning
resources and financially planning through the
seasonal highs and lows.
Figure 2: Provincial versus District Trends
Figure 2 is a picture of a simple comparison
report for On-Time Case Processing. It shows
the monthly district performance in green
compared with the organization-wide
performance in blue.
Part 3: Seamless Analysis to
Answer “Why”
To complement the stoplight or comparison
reports, the seamless integration of underlying
analysis allows the organization to be
proactive. The analytical detail is attached to
each measure giving users the ability to
understand why the performance measure is
underperforming. Executives and managers
can dive directly into expanding layers of detail
at an annual, quarterly, and monthly level.

Even specific business processes can be

analyzed by using various different
perspectives, including geographic, time-based

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The Best of Business Intelligence Tips

Use the “One Source of Truth”
The key to success is the “one source of truth”
concept. No matter how executives view the
information, regardless of how the business
analyzes their information, the same answer
for the same question is given.
information into one specifically designed
repository.
The bulk of data for the repository came from
business systems. Other data came from
spreadsheets and data entered manually. The
advantage gained was simplicity for reporting,
ease of maintaining performance reports, and
the entire organization working from “one
shared truth” of information.

The benefit of the “one shared truth” can

catapult the effectiveness of your performance
reporting and bring you to a rapid, monthly
executive reporting cycle.

Figure 3: Year to Date Comparison

In figure 3, the Year to Date for each measure

in yellow is compared with last year’s
performance in blue. Each measure can
further be analyzed for geographic locations
and corresponding case statuses.

We have come across examples where

different division heads would find themselves
at meetings with different reports and numbers.
Most of the time was spent “discussing” who
had the correct number. But this changed
when a “one source” of information – a
repository of performance information – was
built, which consolidated disparate sources of

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The Best of Business Intelligence Tips

Business Intelligence Tips offer concepts and

ideas focused on Corporate Performance
Management (CPM) and Business Intelligence
(BI).

Visit “Business Intelligence for Business

People”
(http://biforbusinesspeople.blogspot.com)
website for current marketplace trends on CPM
and BI.

To be sent more Business Intelligence Tips,

please send an email to Tom Hudock
(TomHudock@gmail.com) for future issues.

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