Holistic Performance Management

Since Kaplan and Norton's pioneering work in the early 1990s, the balanced scorecard has become the cornerstone of enterprise performance management in many organisations. The original concept was strikingly simple. However, despite the continued widespread use of scorecards, we have seen an explosion in the use of performance targets and ever more costly management information systems simply to 'keep score.

In this White Paper, we review the context in which the performance of customer delivery operations needs to be understood. We explore whether scorecards, targets and other mechanisms for performance management are the most effective means of supporting and informing managers in high intensity operational situations and suggest some alternatives.

Scarcely any field of human activity is now immune from the use of performance targets. They are not only used widely in commercial organisations, but also affect many areas of public services such as education, health care and policing.

In this White Paper, we discuss some of the ways in which an over-use of targets to drive organisational performance can result in dysfunctional behaviour and, in some cases, how the lack of integration between targets can limit performance. Having discussed the issues, we suggest an alternative way of thinking about organisational performance and a different context for target-setting.

Since 2000, many organisations have developed a more sophisticated approach to contact centre provision and mixed infrastructures involving a combination of in-house, outsourced and offshore facilities have become increasingly prevalent.

Here, we explore the growth of mixed infrastructures and consider the implications in terms of performance management and the provision of integrated management information. Having discussed the MI challenges these developing models represent, we provide an alternative perspective showing how integrated management information can be delivered cost-effectively.