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June 27, 2007
www.oracle.com
My blog has moved! As part of the transition from Hyperion to Oracle, as of now my weblog can be found at:
http://blogs.oracle.com/frankbuytendijk/
The layout has changed, but the topics wont. I will be commenting on a variety of topics around business intelligence and enterprise performance management, on a weekly basis.
So I hope you will keep reading my weblog, and I look forward to your comments...
frank
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Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at 7:27 AM | Comments (0)
BI = Blissful Ignorance, Part II
In august 2006 I wrote about my new car, and that it was ironic that -- as a performance management professional -- the first I did was look for the button to switch off all that information on the dashboard on fuel consumption. I just dont want to know.
I just bought another car, just for fun. Its a 21 year old Citroen 2CV. Heres a picture of the car.
Would you like to see the dashboard? Here it is...
I guess today you could call it minimalistic design. But who cares about the dashboard? I get all the experience I need not by looking at the speed, but by feeling the road going underneath me, the wind coming through the open roof, and from the steering wheel in my hands.
frank
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Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at 1:53 AM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2007
Performance Networks, A Small Survey
Last week I did a webinar on the topic of Performance Networks, my favorite topic lately. For those interested, you can download it through this link: Performance Networks: Understanding Stakeholder Dynamics and Business Indicators
In the webcast we ran a little poll with some interesting results. In fact, much more enlightened than I would have thought. On one hand side it means that my research is perhaps not as weird as one would think: go figure, its actually happening (I mean, ofcourse, where else would I get it from). On the other hand, probably the webinar had some kind of self-selecting mechanism, only the ones ready for more advanced forms of performance management (PM) would invest the time to listen to a webcast on the subject, so the sample has a bias. Lastly, the survey was not really scientific, it is pretty clear what the advanced answer is. So, with these sidenotes, here is a loose summary of the results.
Question 1: What is the main purpose of PM in your organization?
Only 8% answered that with financial control, and 12% with external reporting. The most popular answers were operational control with 32% (which means PM would be expanding and leaving the realms of finance) and 48% answered driving strategic behavior of the organization and employees. Wow.
Question 2: What describes your performance measurement best?
21% still responded it was a set of performance indicators across the business without obvious structure. 9% stated it was a structured set of performance indicators, but 45% pointed out it was not only structured, but also linked to strategic objectives. 24% claimed it was a structured set of indicators linked to stakeholder needs and contributions. That 24% sounds very high to me.
Question 3: Whats the management control approach in your organization?
46% of respondents said it was a top down process, prescribing vision, mission, values and purpose. 11% stated performance indicators were used to monitor implementation of objectives, and 42% involves employees regularly in decision making activities. I do believe that participative decision making indeed is the common model in many western countries.
Question 4: Knowledge of stakeholder relationships
This was the beef of the webinar, using PM to improve stakeholder relationships. 11% stated they had an incomplete understanding of stakeholder relationships, while 85% claimed they had a partial understanding. 3% claimed to have a complete understanding of these relationships.
Well, with the content of the webinar, and the paper you can download in previous posts on this weblog, perhaps the understanding of stakeholder relationships is improved!
frank
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Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at 12:58 AM | Comments (0)
June 8, 2007
BI and EPM in Japan
For a few years now, I have had this thought in the back of my mind that I would like to research BI and EPM deployments in Japan. I have often read in the press and in analyst comments that BI and EPM are lagging in adoption in Japan, and it always did strike me as somewhat odd. How can the country that has had such a massive impact on global management practices on quality management and operational management, NOT be at the forefront of performance management. Are Japanese managers not interested in numbers? Not that I have seen the times I visited the country!
I recently read a well-known paper on control principles, by Ouchi (*), a famous management professor. He writes:
... Japanese firms rely to a great extent upon hiring inexperienced workers, socializing them to accept the companys goals as their own, and compensating them accordingly to length of service, number of dependents and other nonperformance criteria. It is not necessary for these organizations to measure performance to control or direct their employees, since the employees natural (socialized) inclination is to do what is best for the firm. It is also unnecessary to derive explicit, verifiable measures of value added, since rewards are distributed according to nonperformance-related criteria which are relatively inexpensive to determine (lenght of service and number of dependents can be ascertained at relatively low costs).
The article is from 1980, and much has changed, but this is a very interesting view. Perhaps BI and EPM principles are not universal, and can be rejected, which is not the same as not adopted. There are other ways of getting grip on an organization, in this case much more behavioral of nature.
Is it coincidence that the concept of Keiretsu is Japanese as well? Not only can we socialize our employees to adopt the overall objectives as their own (as Ouchi writes), but we can do the same with our complete business environment (what Keiretsu stands for).
Interesting... exactly the topic of my research these days. Unfortunately I am not an expert in intercultural management. Does anyone care to shed some light on Keiretsu style BI and EPM.
frank
(*) Ouchi, W.G., (1980), Markets, Bureaucracies, and Clans, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 25., No. 1, pp. 129-141.
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Posted by Frank Buytenkijk at 8:11 AM | Comments (0)
