Performance In the BalancePerformance In the Balance

Agility — in humans, software or machines — is about balance. Manufacturers lose money when there's too much of one supply and not enough of another. Software systems that bring efficiency by automating one operation can create impassible bottlenecks in others if no one understands the big picture. Balance comes from knowing the larger business objectives and the interdependent web of humans and applications dedicated to meeting those objectives.

Performance management, as a discipline and a technology nexus, is gathering strength because more organizations are realizing that to become agile and responsive to market changes, they need to get the big idea and communicate it effectively to all stakeholders. Put simply, managers and employees at the operational level need to know what it means to "perform" within the context of the organization's strategic objectives. In this issue's cover package, we describe how Telus and La Suisse Insurance use BI tools and dashboard interfaces to create a critical information context for performance metrics.

Both of these organizations and many others I've spoken with report that the concern with metrics is balance. Corporate financial managers are moving away from narrow cost accounting to activity-based costing to gain a better understanding of the entire process of delivering a product or service. Similarly, strategic executives and departmental business managers need performance management systems that do more than "measure you on how many widgets you have," as Kevin Lam, Telus's manager of business performance, observes in our cover story. In the course of their work, managers and employees perform a variety of activities that affect numerous processes. Performance management should offer multiple perspectives.

Another balancing act is data ownership. Data administrators, IT enterprise architects and other longtime evangelists for shared information resources know that the impediments to their dreams are more than technical. As BI and performance management devices go "enterprise" and become embedded in operational processes, organizations are going to have to rise to some tough data ownership challenges.

One way to look at performance management, however, is that it is in effect giving the power of the data back to operational employees. All these years, organizations have been sucking data into centralized transaction systems and data warehouses, mostly for the analytic benefit of corporate executives and financial managers. Now, the tide is turning; the power of information is flowing back to the front lines. If companies are to succeed with top-down performance metrics, they must also give front-line employees the information necessary to succeed. Performance management is about negotiating data control for mutual benefit.

In addition to our cover package on performance management, this issue features Intelligent Enterprise's seventh annual Editors' Choice Awards — the vendors we judge as having the most significant impact on the development of smarter, more agile public and private enterprises. As usual, selecting the IE Dozen and 48 Companies To Watch was no piece of cake. Congratulations to those who made the cut! As always, we await reader feedback.

I'd like to close by formally announcing the Intelligent Enterprise Summit, to be held October 5 and 6 at the Dolce Norwalk Center for Leadership and Innovation in Norwalk, Conn. We're putting together great sessions themed around ways to meet business objectives by integrating and leveraging disparate information resources, including data and content. I'll have more to say about the program in the next issue. But for now: Mark your calendars!

David Stodder is the Editorial Director and Editor in Chief of Intelligent Enterprise. Write to him at [email protected].