About UsThe Decision Factor offers insightful comments and observations on analytics—from views on new technology approaches and market dynamics to the latest industry trends driving demand for faster, smarter information analysis. This blog contains personal views, thoughts, and opinions from SAP employees, mentors, and friends working in the area of analytics. It’s not endorsed by SAP nor does it constitute an official communication of SAP. |
Posted by: Malcolm Faulkner October 2, 2012  Key performance indicators (KPIs) would seem, on the surface, one of the most straightforward topics to grasp. However the process of defining a meaningful set of KPIs is a lot harder than it might seem and one of the reasons companies are always on the lookout for pre-existing content they can apply to their business.
Why Do We Need Performance Information?
The obvious answer is that it tells us whether or not we’re meeting our objectives. When we’re dealing with scorecards as oppose to dashboards (a topic in its own …
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Posted by: Malcolm Faulkner September 25, 2012  Measures, metrics, key performance indicators (KPIs). Unsure about which term to use? You’re not alone; and in all likelihood, you hear these terms bandied around interchangeably. Try doing a Web search, and you’ll come up with a bunch of definitions that probably won’t clear up matters much. In the same way we misuse grammar, perhaps it doesn’t matter too much if we use these terms incorrectly, so long as we get our message across. I’m sure I’ve been guilty about misusing them in the past, but this is how I correctly …
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Posted by: Siddharth Taparia July 21, 2011  A practice that attempts to standardize the business isn’t as standardized itself.
Often times, performance management experts are faced with the challenge of explaining the concept of performance management to business leaders. It’s a seemingly obvious topic that has been muddled by the many tech fads of the decade past. The conversations often go something like:
[BL]: We’re implementing analytics in several lines of businesses to improve performance management.
[PME]: So you must have identified and prioritized the metrics and associated data by the business …
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Posted by: Padmini Ranganathan May 25, 2011  “Who put a stop payment on my reality check” (author unknown) is a favorite adage that comes to mind when I think of the topic of business planning across lines of business. The reality is that most companies have limited ability to cascade down tangible strategic goals derived from strategic planning initiatives. They also face similar constraints when tying operational metrics to operational plans and effectively aligning them with strategic goals and plans. The “stop payment” is a combination of technology solutions and internal change …
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Posted by: Vish Agashe May 17, 2011 
In my previous post, “Good Data and Flawed Conclusions: The Importance of Correct KPI’s and Context in Developing Analytical Insights,” I explored the importance of measuring the right key performance indicators (KPIs), in the right context, and at the right level of granularity when doing analytics.
Organizationally, there are many safeguards that we can implement to ensure we don’t fall victim to the “good data, flawed decision” syndrome when seeking analytical insights. Here are just a few:
Make sure that …
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Posted by: Vish Agashe May 14, 2011 In her recent WSJ article, “When Combined Data Reveal the Flaw of Averages,” Cari Tuna examines how we might conclude that the recession of 1982 was worse than the U.S. recession of 2009 if we looked only at the unemployment percentage data. However, drilling down further, we can easily see that the numbers are worse in almost every category in 2009 compared to 1982.
According to Cari, “The anomaly is an example of Simpson’s Paradox – a common but misleading statistical phenomenon rooted …
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