The Performance Analytics Assessment

Are you getting everything you can out of your business performance? Companies even those using Business Discovery tools can get stuck in a performance rut, uncertain where to go next or what to change. In order to plan what comes next in terms of Performance Improvement, your organization needs to honestly assess where you already stand. Doing so starts with asking a few questions.

The Performance Analytics Assessment

Introduction
How well is your organization succeeding at driving actionable Performance Improvement? Are you using Business Discovery and intelligence tools including dashboards, scorecards and analytics effectively? The truth is, you may not be getting everything you can from your business performance. Even if youre using dashboards, scorecards and analytics, you may not be utilizing them to their fullest potential. And while you see the opportunity for change, maybe you dont know where to start, having no way of recognizing exactly where your problems lie. Youre stuck with a pigeonholed perspective of your own performance, or youre trapped in a restrictive cycle dependent on business processes that have been in place for a long time, never evolving even as the company tries to. The first step in any change is assessing where you already are. In the case of business performance, you want to find out what might be holding your organization back. To do so, you need to look at three components related to your companys performance goals: 1. 2. 3. Business Discovery. Is your organization able to discover business data effectually and monitor the current state of operations within the organization effectively? Analytics. Can you provide root-cause analysis of data to identify issues within your organization? Business Improvement. Can you drive actionable initiatives to improve performance based on the discovery and analysis of data?

To evaluate each successfully, start by asking yourself where your business stands. The questions in each section below will help you honestly assess your business practices; your answers will reveal where your organization lies on the Performance Improvement continuum and what your next step should be to improve your business performance.

Business Discovery: Discover Data and Monitor Operations

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Does your organization consolidate disparate sources of information for reporting and analysis? Is your company using dashboards and reporting tools to deliver business insight to the company? Does your organization use a Business Intelligence software solution? Can business users create and manage their own dashboards and reports for Business Discovery? Does your company include defined Key Performance Indicators/measures for discovery and monitoring of business performance? Is it easy and quick to create and deploy new insight and information out to users?

Early Stages If you find yourself answering no to most of these questions, chances are youre in the very early stages of your Performance Improvement journey, but understand the potential benefits to your organization. You may have started to source information into a repository
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for reporting and analysis purposes, but most likely youre still at an early stage of data consolidation and its only viewable to a small subset of users. At this stage, you most likely have not included or identified key business measures that will directly influence decision making. Furthermore you may not have a robust tool in place for business users to easily create, share, and report on business insight to drive actionable Performance Improvement. Your key focus now should be to define what data sources are critical to providing the information and insight required for understanding business performance information and analysis, and put in place a plan to consolidate this information for visualization and discovery purposes. Here it is most critical to ensure you have a good understanding of what business measures are important to driving improvement, and which tool can easily source this information and consolidate the data in a visual and easy-to-use manner. Almost There If you find yourself answering a balanced number of yeses and nos to the questions above, you are well underway with your Performance Improvement initiative. You have most likely identified the data sources and business measures that are most important in understanding and driving actionable Performance Improvement. Furthermore, you have a project or team in place and have likely consolidated information for reporting and analysis, and started communicating this information out to stakeholders. At this stage you should be looking for ways to better automate this data and provide business users with a more compelling and visual experience, so that they may better understand and discover data and patterns of performance in their respective areas. Additionally, youll want to add the ability to more easily collect larger amounts of information, as well as to enable business users to own this data without requiring IT intervention every time a new dashboard or report is required to drive data discovery and analysis. Finally, at this stage you have most likely identified a subset of key measures and performance indicators and have worked with IT in enabling these measures to be available for discovery and analysis. But these measures are most likely hard coded and require a fair amount of intervention to change or add to. Peak Performance If most or all of your answers are yes to the questions above, you have done a very good job of enabling the discovery and understanding of key business data to drive actionable Performance Improvement. You have likely defined your strategy to consolidate a large amount of business data from a number of disparate data sources, and included a number of measures for reporting purposes. At this stage you have also deployed data discovery and dashboard tools to a larger number of business users. With that complete, you should be looking at how to improve the business experience and maintenance of these solutions, as well as defining a more concrete definition and understanding of what measures are truly important to driving actionable Performance Improvement. It is critical that your organization also selects a solution that not only enables Business Discovery and visualization, but one that will incorporate a robust and flexible

The Performance Analytics Assessment

scorecarding and measurement framework, allowing business users to manage the creation of measures, targets and actuals, and initiatives; identifying them is critical to understanding what drives business decisions to improve overall performance. Additionally, if it hasnt already, your organization should be looking at alternative deployment mechanisms, including Software-as-Service (SaaS) and cloud computing, to more cost effectively and efficiently deliver the services to business users and a larger audience of global employees.

Analytics: Identify Issues and Root Cause Analysis

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Does your company primarily use spreadsheets for analysis purposes? Do you use any additional analysis tools to identify and uncover performance issues? Can business users drill down to operational data to uncover the root cause of performance issues? Can business users create what-if scenarios to evaluate the impact on potential business strategies? Can business users directly enter data online for analysis purposes? Can business users work from mobile and tablet devices?

Early Stages Find yourself answering no to all or most of these questions? You are probably in the very early stages of analyzing and evaluating data to understand the root cause of performance problems. You may have started to analyze data and are most likely using spreadsheets as the primary method of data analysis. Youre also most likely unable to drill down into transactional or operational data to understand the details behind potential issues or create what-if scenarios to evaluate against possible future problems. Your key focus at this stage should be to identify and define what data sources are critical to providing the data analysis required to understand the root cause of performance issues, and create scenarios that you can evaluate if future performance issues continue. Additionally, you should be evaluating whether the current tools you use, such as Excel, are sufficient in providing the analysis required for identifying and reacting to your business data. Almost There Are your answers evenly balanced between yes and no? If so, you are starting to understand and analyze business data to understand patterns and drill down to root-cause analysis of performance problems. You have most likely identified the appropriate data sources required for analysis and can possibly drill down to transactional and operational data for further confirmation. Furthermore, you most likely have moved away from spreadsheets for a large number of business users and have started using specific tools to perform better data analysis on more than one data source of information. At this stage you should be evaluating better ways for business users to understand and analyze data and relationships to drive Performance Improvement. You are most likely still consolidating only a subset of data required to properly understand the impacts of business

The Performance Analytics Assessment

decisions and evaluate areas for Performance Improvement. Additionally, you should be looking at providing the ability for business users to more easily analyze this data without requiring IT intervention at every step in the analysis process. Finally, at this point you should be evaluating how business users can provide additional data to perform further analysis that may not be stored in systems or data sources, such as the ability to directly enter targets and actuals against metrics, or linking to additional data sources. Peak Performance If youve answered yes to all or most of the questions above, your organization is doing a good job of enabling business users to understand and analyze the root cause of performance issues, and you may be starting to provide a measurement and initiative framework to drive actionable Performance Improvement. You have also most likely provided business users with a consolidated analytical tool to analyze summary-level data and the ability to drill down to operational and transactional data for a detailed view of performance issues. Additionally, users may be able to create scenarios to understand the future impact of decisions on business performance. At this stage of the process, you want to look at how to better incorporate actionable initiatives against the specific measures you have identified and attached to various analysis areas. Moreover, business users should be able to understand and take action against specific initiatives as a result of the analysis and root-cause identification of performance problems.

Improvement: Develop Actionable Initiatives

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Does your organization currently use a scorecarding solution? Have you developed clearly defined company and/or business unit Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and measures that align to the companys strategy? Have you identified targets for your measures? Do your measures have clearly defined ownership and accountability? Can business users easily define and create performance measures for reporting and analysis? Does the analysis gained clearly drive better business outcomes and actionable initiatives to drive Performance Improvement?

Early Stages Did you answer no to most of these questions? You are likely in the very early stages of providing business users with the ability to understand the importance and relationship of business data and what actionable initiatives should be taken to address performance issues. You may have a defined subset of measures to support specific business initiatives, but still lack the understanding of what key measures will help the organization drive towards Performance Improvement. Its likely that you have identified a small number of measures that are reported to management on a weekly or monthly basis but these measures are not driving actionable
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initiatives for Performance Improvement; rather, they are focused on historical reporting of business performance. Furthermore, the measures you have defined may not have set targets or their own owners held accountable for Performance Improvement. Your key focus at this stage should be on analyzing your business and selecting key measures based on your organizations business strategy and initiatives, as well as effectively planning your Performance Management and Improvement initiatives, ensuring alignment between the two areas. It is also most critical to identify a project champion who will lead the identification and management of measures that align and support the organizations strategy. Change should be managed carefully and communication on any new initiatives needs to be planned well. Almost There Were your answers evenly split between yes and no? If so, you are well underway to helping your organization drive actionable Performance Improvement based on the business insight provided. At this stage you have most likely created and communicated a measurement framework and strategy, have been tracking the measures that support your key business priorities, and are distributing your results to a large number of users across the organization. At this point, it is most critical to ensure that business users are self-sustainable in the creation and maintenance of performance measures, and have the ability to define and report on key measures without the requirement to heavily engage IT every time a new performance measure or dashboard is required. You should also be looking to expand your measurement framework to larger parts of the organization while at the same time ensuring consistency and accountability for results. This would also be a good time to start investigating how you can tie in an actionable initiative management framework, enabling business users to identify and track specific initiatives and the results of those initiatives against identified performance measures. Peak Performance Were all or most of your answers yes? Your organization is out-performing your peers in driving an actionable Performance Management framework that is delivering business improvement across the organization. You have most likely provided business users with a consolidated performance measurement framework and linked the results of performance measurement to actionable initiatives for business improvement. Users have a clear line of sight and direction into what performance measures are most import to their line of business or the organization as a whole. At this stage, most, if not all, performance measures have ownership and accountability, targets and actuals and business users can easily create and maintain performance measures for data discovery and analysis. You should be looking at how to better incorporate actionable initiatives against the specific measures you have identified and attached to various analysis areas. Also, evaluate any further refinement and continued monitoring that may be necessary to see which performance measures are truly having an impact on business performance.

The Performance Analytics Assessment

Recommendations for Performance Improvement

1. Consider the adoption of performance dashboards to deliver performance insight through easy-to-understand tools and visualizations, to make the discovery of performance issues a simple task for business users freeing up valuable IT resource time for more critical activities. Evaluate the use of self-service business analysis to enable improved delivery of data and insight to business users, who can access data from multiple sources across the organization to explore the issues and underlying data that help explain what the problem is. Business analysis solutions offer interactive options that enable users to collaborate, slice and dice, model what-if scenarios, and utilize familiar tools such as Excel; users have unlimited choice when it comes to analysis of performance issues. Close the loop on Performance Improvement by delivering true visibility into the performance of operations, programs and related improvement initiatives to optimize underperforming areas. Through enhanced collaborative tools, effective communication of qualitative information, and a streamlined mechanism to launch and update the status of initiatives organizations, move beyond Business Discovery to decision with ease. Look for an integrated technology solution that will not only address your Business Discovery and analysis requirements today, but offers a technology delivery platform to enable actionable Performance Improvement from Business Discovery to analysis, and actionable initiatives to drive business performance.

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Actuate Corporation 2207 Bridgepointe Parkway, Suite 500 San Mateo, CA, 94404 Tel: (888) 422-8828 www.actuate.com

Actuate Performance Management Center of Excellence 150 John St. Suite 600, Toronto, Ontario, M5V3E3, Canada Tel: (800) 449-3804