Information-analysis & Roles

Research carried out amongst management and staff of several hundred companies has shown that successfully implementing performance management systems is largely dependent on the correct allocations of roles, tasks and responsibilities within the organisation (source: National BI Survey). This is of critical importance to the type of decision support information that is produced and the way the performance management system is implemented.

When analysing the information requirements and the design there are two scenarios that have a good track records, in some cases it is possible to combine the two:

• The pragmatic approach, bottom up: what information does the professional, manager or member of staff need first thing in the morning when they log on to their computer? 
  
  
• The three phase approach top down: 

1) for each role in the organisation we define the preferred behaviour with respect to the strategy and
2) working from there we analyse which information is needed to support that behaviour and
3) where the necessary data can be found in the underlying systems and processes.

This method of working has the major advantage that we focus on using information to manage the way we work. We don't concentrate on the data itself but on the ways that the availability of the correct and timely data can affect the way we act. Decisions are then taken based on actual data instead of perceptions.  

Using a combination of these two approaches we take account of both the individual wishes (and requirements) of staff members and provide the information necessary to support the implementation of the organisation's strategy and achievement of the goals.