Summary
Businesses today are succeeding and growing by better understanding their customers’
needs and aligning their operational processes that effectively service the customers.
They are creating work processes and methods that are well linked and well operated.
Utilizing a system of organizational performance measures, they are also focusing on non-financial
indicators to take advantage of key internal and external opportunities and respond
to them swiftly. Beyond incremental gains, they are realizing dramatic gains in
the critical areas affecting customer satisfaction - cycle time, cost, responsiveness
and quality.
This document
provides the reader with the elements of architectural design and technical
specification of iBiz business performance management software.
iBiz business performance management software, based on the balanced
scorecard methodology, enables the implementation of organizational Performance Systems
on top of pre-existing, already running, Information and Workflow Systems that support
the daily business of the enterprise.
iBiz business performance management software is a web-based application that covers the functions needed to create an organizational performance
data mall, measurement tools and associated visual interfaces, making use of the balanced scorecard
methodology.
iBiz is a Business Decision Support System, through implementing a goal setting
process and measuring of the degree of their achievement (organizational performance),
either on company level, or on department/employee/process level. The development
of iBiz has been based on the worldwide appreciated Balanced Scorecard methodology.
It is developed using
the Microsoft .NET technology. The data mall is implemented in an
MS SQL Server, which is accessed through Active Data Objects (ADO).
iBiz business performance management software - Architecture
The objectives of a balanced performance measurement system are to promote focus
and alignment, encourage communication, and provide a ‘forward looking’ vision -
in other words, change people’s behavior.
A comprehensive view of performance
should be developed to include all aspects of the organization’s operation.
Organizational performance measurement systems succeed when they provide relevant facts and data
about current organizational performance and show what needs to be improved, either immediately
or in the future. Measures should be aligned with strategic objectives to ensure
that employees’ behavior is consistent with the corporate goal
setting process.
Most EIS (Executive or Enterprise Information Systems) fall into disuse because
they focus on such narrow areas as sales or cost breakdown. Executives need to
see ‘the big picture’, focusing on areas which need their attention. They will not
(and should not) allocate time to a detailed analysis of one aspect of their business.
When a measurement system is built for the first time, there is always a tendency to incorporate
measures where data is easily available – which are not necessarily the same with those which
help people run the business. This is a temptation that must be avoided. This is
normally done through meetings and workshops with the executive group, followed
by sessions with each of the organization functional or process managers and their
key players.
The process of defining the full scope of a measurement system consists of four
main stages:
How
to translate measurement into management
The sole purpose of implementing an organizational Performance Measurement solution is to positively
impact people’s behavior. To do this successfully, a well-structured implementation
process is needed to be followed and to take account of some simple guidelines.
The architecture of the iBiz business performance management software is shown in the following figure:
Let's give a brief description of the above architecture. First of all, we have
to distinguish two different views in the above architecture: the definition view,
and the analysis view.
- The definition view: refers to the definition of the performance scorecard module functions. The administrator of the system has to make the above definitions
at first. He has to define the basic as well as the aggregate key performance indicator set (KPIs) that will be supported
by iBiz business performance management software. Next, follows
the selection of a key performance indicator set (KPIs) that comprise a specific
scorecard and the assignment of a relative importance factor to each key performance
indicator (KPI). Finally, the administrator has to define the external data that will be used to iBiz business performance management software,
for example the
form of a questionnaire.
- The analysis view: refers to the analysis result of the organizational performance measures. Through the access rights, we have the user or the user group that
can see specific results through the analysis view. After the collection of the
external and organizational data, we have the retrieval of the performance data
and the form of KPIs, which participate in the scorecard viewed by the user.
Finally, the view of the analysis results can be done by specified time periods,
with a variety of graphical formats such as bar, line and pie charts.
From the above we come to a conclusion for the iBiz services and their functionalities.
The functions of iBiz business performance management
software are described below:
Key Performance Indicator - KPI Definition
In the general context of the goal setting process, the basic as well as an aggregate key performance indicator set
(KPIs) is defined. For the basic
KPIs, we take into account the definition of a key performance indicator per perspective, its metrics
that include worst results, best results, actual results, and normalized scores.
For the aggregate key performance
indicator set (KPIs), we aggregate all of the key performance indicator scores that comprise a perspective
into a single score for this perspective.
Definition of the Balanced Scorecard methodology
In iBiz, which is based on the balanced scorecard methodology, there is the selection of a key performance indicator
set (KPIs) that comprises a specific
scorecard. Additionally, according to the
balanced scorecard methodology, except of the contribution of a key performance
indicator (KPI) equally to the overall
score of a measure on the scorecard, there is an assignment of a relative importance
to each key performance indicator. The
performance in each key performance indicator will contribute proportionally
to the overall score of a specific department of the company.
View of the Balanced Scorecard
In this function there is the establishment of the different views that can be seen
using iBiz. These views will be available per user, per user group or per company department. There is the possibility of specifying time periods for performance
targets, so as to enable daily, weekly or monthly, etc. scorecard view.
Results
can be viewed with a variety of standard graphical formats such as bar, line and
pie charts. In addition, an employee is able to see his rank of performance compared to the performance of other employees of the department. Through this view, there's
the need to analyze performance results over time and compare current performance
with past performance. This necessitates the continuous storage of historical data
that is feasible through the viewing interface.
iBiz business performance management software is a web-based application developed using ASP technology. iBiz
data are stored in an MS SQL Server, which is accessed through ADO.
Furthermore, the user access rights have been implemented to support the access
rights of the users to iBiz business performance management software.
The functions supported are:
User Access Rights
We define all the privileges of a user or a group on the functions
of the organizational
performance scorecard module. It defines the person who has access to the
definition view of iBiz (as shown in figure 3, in the architecture of the
iBiz business performance management software),
and the users or groups who have access in the different analysis views of iBiz
business performance management software.
iBiz is created by innovis, in association with
iTEAM S.A.