The secret to success for any enterprise lies in the key performance indicators (KPIs) that express the state of the business. KPIs are the critical metrics that bring your people and information together, but they also inform your decision-making processes, collectively known as corporate performance management. KPIs give you feedback on the essential steps in the management cycle and validate your plans and business models.
Metrics tell you what to improve in corporate performance by integrating all of the necessary stages steps in the management cycle and posting the KPIs to one dashboard. The right software solution will give you unified business intelligence that maps the logic of your decisions; once you display KPIs optimally, they will show you what is going on in your business processes, alert you to problems and help you create a consensus for change among your team when it is necessary.
Matching Your Story To Key Performance Indicators
As an organizational leader, you exert influence over your business in part by creating and guiding the story of your vision. By controlling the narrative you guide the mission and transmit the values on which your business stands. A compelling story provides the cohesive knowledge needed to create the purpose for your team.
KPIs and metrics integrate the story of the company and the processes of the business cycle, which are the working components of the business's identity. When the whole company knows and believes in one story, one vision, and follows one set of metrics, the tough choices and decisions become more logical. Making it more likely to pull together in the face of critical choices.
Using Metrics For All Stages Of The Business Cycle
The most successful companies pull together one vision of who they are collectively and where the company is going. This makes the decision-making process smoother. Especially if you have a team that aligns in its self-concept and shares one story. It is up to the C-suite thought leaders to craft the human story, but the core of any enterprise is an abstract concept constructed from business plans and financial reporting statements.
If all of your knowledge workers see the same information, this ultimately means decisions flow from the logic displayed on their screens, making the decision process easier for everyone involved. These include analysis of performance measures and operational controls across the management cycle. The stages are planning, budgeting, measuring, monitoring, and reporting, and the indicators that are key are the least number of metrics that give you the full picture of performance in each of these areas.
End-To-End Analytics In One Dashboard
One example of a business intelligence (BI) solution that helps consolidate information, and further supports easier decision-making within your company is IBM's Cognos Analytics. This BI solution gives an accurate visual representation of your most important information. It is an excellent tool to gather and monitor KPIs across all stages of the business cycle. Once it connects to your information systems, you will have all of your metrics within easy access for everyone who needs them.
Cognos gives you the business intelligence insights for every stage of the business cycle delivered to one dashboard. Cognos shows how your organization performs throughout the management cycle, you will connect strategy and execution with the confident consensus built on shared understanding.
5x Technology works in partnership with Cognos to engineer the technology and process to drive best-in-class visual analytics for business intelligence on behalf of our clients. Implementing the best solution can still be a challenge; you need a partner like 5x Technology to develop the solution to match your strategy, as well as the training and support for your team that will make the project successful.
To learn more about how IBM Cognos delivers successful performance management to you at every stage of the business cycle, download our free white paper IBM Cognos for Business & IT Users.
Related Articles:
Using Key Performance Indicators and Metrics to Monitor Your Business
Business Intelligence and Finding the Right KPI Metrics to Analyze
Rethinking Your Business Intelligence Analysis and Process
