Business Analytics: My Valentine’s Day True Love Confession
Here's a terrific piece from Gary Cokins on his evolving relationship with business analytics and performance management frameworks:
Until about three years ago, my main interest was explaining the “how-to” of all the methodologies comprising business analytics and the enterprise performance management (PM) framework and mechanism. Examples of these methodologies are forecasting, strategy maps, scorecards, dashboards, correlation analysis, activity-based costing, driver-based budgeting, customer demand management, and so on. I have implemented these techniques. I’m a practitioner. I love explaining to people how things work and inspiring a vision on how those same things can work much better in the future.
What happened to me three years ago? I was smitten. A competing suitor of my “how-to” love appeared. It is my new “why-to” love – explaining the benefits of why to implement and integrate analytics-based performance management methodologies. They both compete for my attention. This is what occurred.
Sounds like you'll be knee-deep in data reading that intro passage, but I assure you, Gary offers a real gem in his piece that is worth reading. He arrives at a conclusion that people people have been pushing onto performance management systems for decades. In short: the barriers to adoption of smart performance management practices are no longer predominantly based on limitations of our measurement systems. They're based on our broad misunderstandings of how people want to be managed!
Thanks, Gary, for the insight!