Intelligent Enterprise

If your enterprise is focusing on more than, say, a dozen key performance measures, you are probably not seeing the forest for the trees. This is just one bit of advice delivered in one of nearly a score of articles we've published on the theme of adjusting your plans and approaches to combat the downturn. Next week we'll roll the best of that advice into a one-hour Webinar entitled "Resetting Information and BI Priorities for a Challenging Economy."

The case for KPI/Dashboard restraint is well illustrated by Shari Rogalski, Executive Director, Accenture Information Management Services. Rogalski shares a story about a large retailer that was reporting literally hundreds of "key metrics" to run the business. When the company decided to focus strictly on customer satisfaction and profitability, they ended up with just 15 key metrics.

"The retail salespeople used to come out of meetings thinking about internally competitive, store-by-store rankings and financial metrics, half of which they didn't understand," Rogalski explains. "Now they come out of their morning chalk talks and they are excited about getting customers to expand their basket or addressing customer needs so they get a top customer-service rating."

This seemingly simple change has completely transformed the retailer's performance, according to Rogalski.

The problem with so many metrics is that they may be interesting but not useful, chimes in Richard Cohen, Principal, Technology Integration Practice, Deloitte Consulting.

"If you're looking at more than five to ten key measurements, you may be looking at something you can't take action on," he says. "As you review your dashboards and scorecards, you really have to look at what you want to measure and what impact those measures have on the organization."

This is just one area of advice we'll discuss in next week's Webinar. I'll be joined by my former colleague-turned-analyst David Stodder, who will help me drill down on the results of our "Attitudes and Imperatives" survey. More than 300 Intelligent Enterprise and InformationWeek readers completed that survey in January, so these fresh results reflect a realistic outlook on information management and BI agendas and investment priorities over the next 12 to 24 months.

Please join David Stodder and me next Tuesday at 9 am PT/12 Noon ET for what promises to be an enlightening and helpful presentation.

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