Performance Measurement and KPI Design

Every organisation needs performance indicators to monitor and improve its business. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are the vital navigation instruments that help them understand whether they are on a successful journey or not.  The right set of KPIs will pin-point current performance levels and shine light on areas that need attention. Without the right set of KPIs organisations are flying blind.


The problem is that most managers are struggling to identify the vital few relevant and insightful KPIs that will inform decision making and instead collect and report a vast amount of everything that is easy to measure or that everyone else is measuring. As a consequence they end up drowning in data while thirsting for information.


As the leading global provider of performance measurement and KPI solutions, we help clients with designing, analysing and visualising performance information so they get the insights they need to dive their business forward. Typical assignments include:

• Developing a full corporate set of insightful and relevant KPIs that measure your unique business strategy and reflect your information needs
  
• Creating insightful scorecards and dashboards to monitor corporate performance or specific business areas (e.g. finance, customer, operations, quality, staff, IT, supply chain, etc.)
  
• Reviewing and optimising existing KPI and performance measurement systems
  
• Designing strategic and operational result indicators, performance indicators,  and risk indicators
  
• Making anything measurable and designing smart KPIs for specific or hard-to-measure business objectives (e.g. shareholder value, customer life-time value, customer engagement and loyalty, brand awareness and reputation, supplier relationships, staff engagement and human capital, intellectual capital, social media footprint, organisational culture, environmental impact, etc.)
  
• Setting rigorous targets and benchmark performance for KPIs
  
• Setting up best-practice qualitative and quantitative data collection systems (including automated data collection, surveys, focus-groups, contextualised observations, 360-degree assessments, peer reviews, mystery shopping, etc.)
  
• Creating analysis routines for performance data (including impact analysis, time lag analysis or cause-and-effect analysis, etc.)
  
• Developing best-practice visualisations and charts to communicate KPIs and performance data
  
• Designing and conducting best-in-class surveys (incl. staff surveys, partner surveys, customer surveys, etc.)
  
• Providing independent advice on using and selecting performance measurement and dashboard software solutions
  
• Supporting the integration of data sources and the design of data-warehouse architectures
  
• Providing in-house training and coaching on performance measurement, KPIs and data analysis

 
Our vast experience and best-practice approaches will allow you to measure and monitor anything in a cost effective and robust manner so that it informs decision making and leads to insights and improvements.




Learn more and see how we have successfully delivered performance measurement assignments by reading our client case studies and best-practice examples in our case study and publication library or browse our KPI example library for inspiration.

Mapping our mission and strategy into a value creation map has given us a powerful tool to communicate our strategic objectives and align our performance reporting and performance reviews.

Clare McCullough, National Lottery Commission

Bernard Marr’s work on value driver mapping at Novo Nordisk has been remarkably valuable. It allowed us to make transparent the impact of our intangible heritage (Triple Bottom Line business principle and Novo Nordisk Way of Management) on our overall business performance. It also enabled us to include indicators for our intangible performance drivers in our strategic planning and performance monitoring.

Hanne Schou-Rode, Vice President, Novo Nordisk A/S

As a major charity we have to ensure that we make best use of our resources to provide the highest quality care and research to support people affected by motor neurone disease. For that purpose we needed to clearly understand our strategy, including outcomes, core competencies and enablers. We then needed to put in place performance indicators and processes to better manage what really matters. The facilitation of this process by Bernard Marr of the Advanced Performance Institute has been invaluable. Bernard has the gift to simplify complex issues and engage with staff to ensure the process stays on track and delivers a management system that helps us to manage what matters. The performance management system we now have in place doesn’t only provide us with a clear focus but also allows us to better communicate our purpose internally and externally. In fact, it allows us to demonstrate that we are fulfilling our aims and making progress towards our goals, which in turn motivates and encourages our supporters and stakeholders. One of the many benefits of this has been a demonstrable improvement in our ability to influence potential corporate and individual donors.

Dr Kirstine Knox, Chief Executive, Motor Neurone Disease Association