Business Development Metrics

Process speed. An ideal innovation process quickly moves ideas from conception to critical decision points. That decision point might not always be market launch, it might be a decision to kill or enter a trial market.

Breadth of idea-generation process. Senior management does not have an exclusive license to develop good ideas. In fact, the best ideas can originate from people who are close to markets, such as sales representatives. A good idea-generation process seeks ideas far and wide—from customers, channel partners, even competitors. Measuring the percent of ideas that come from outside the company is a good proxy for the breadth of the idea-generation process.

Innovation portfolio balance. A good innovation portfolio is a balanced innovation portfolio. Balance can exist along multiple dimensions, such as the stage of development, the target domain and the amount of risk. Clorox ensures that investments are balanced in diverse areas ranging from introducing line extensions to creating new categories by classifying its projects into three categories (sustaining, breakout and disruptive) and investing accordingly.

Growth gap. To develop a balanced portfolio, companies should have a good understanding of the gap between their strategic objectives and their current innovation activities. The results must be reasonably risk-adjusted; if success requires that every innovation project meets its current projections, a company should think about developing more (or different) projects.

Distinct processes, tools and metrics for different types of opportunities. Ideas can look different through different lenses. Tools that help screen and shape core initiatives can unintentionally weed out great— but different—ideas. A company’s core stage-gate process can ruthlessly reshape even the most novel idea to resemble what a company has done before. This metric ensures that a company has different screens, tools and metrics for different types of innovation. For example, IBM classifies opportunities by time-to-market and risk-level and applies the appropriate innovation processes to best cultivate the project.

Financial resources dedicated to innovation. Although in isolation this variable can be dangerous, innovation requires real resource commitment. However, apportioning a huge budget to innovation can lead to the “big bet” trap. In fact, limiting funding can be the right thing to do. Scarce resources force teams to zero in quickly on critical assumptions, find cheap ways to test those assumptions and develop lean, flexible structures. So start with “just enough” and add more. Read the rest of this entry »

Organizations like the Boston Consulting Group suggest using a balanced mix of metrics to assess a company’s innovation-related activities. We agree. The metrics described below come in three categories: input focused metrics, process-focused metrics and output-focused metrics.

Metrics are rarely one-size-fits-all. The best set of measures varies considerably depending on the company, its values, its industry and its aspirations. For example, as part of a project with the American Press Institute, we developed very specific metrics for newspaper companies seeking to transform themselves. The metrics included industry-specific factors, such as the percentage of revenues deriving from new online advertising models, and factors that tied directly to the inhibitors to innovation we found at many newspaper companies.

Finally, the 15 metrics below are intended to encourage both sustaining innovations that extend the core business and disruptive innovations that build new growth businesses.

Putting metrics on innovation is difficult because innovation is a complicated, diffuse activity. Even a metric that seems to make all the sense in the world can actually lead to behavior antithetical to the long-term pursuit of profitable growth. Read the rest of this entry »

More than two decades ago, management guru Tom Peters penned an editorial titled “What Gets Measured Gets Done.” Indeed, one of the findings from the research that Peters summarized in the 1982 business classic In Search of Excellence is that excellent firms use measurements and metrics to make sure people spend time on the things that really matter. Read the rest of this entry »

Any company, to achieve its business objective, must take under control any part of its organization like materials, capitals, investments and also workforce. And especially for this last point, find a good monitoring method isn’t so simple.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is the abstract of the work: “The challenge for achieving a more efficient software engineering practice comprises a vast number of obstacles related to the intrinsic complexity of software systems and their surrounding contexts. Consequently, software systems tend to fail in meeting the real needs they were developed to address, consuming more resources,thus having a higher cost, and taking longer to complete than anticipated.

Read the rest of this entry »

Metrics are used by the organizations that track them to decide what initiatives to pursue, to understand the impact of behavioral trends on decisions, and to interpret the impact of past decisions. Though different teams measure different metrics, most metrics that impact design fall under one of three categories:

Read the rest of this entry »

What key indicators might you use to stay on top of your business success?

Please tell us about your experience with the use of key indicators

Read the rest of this entry »

Changing process includes many aspects - from purchase of new tools before modification of actions, and organization new policy on training. Sphere of working out of a product should be free for updating if it helps to hold objects in view and will not interfere with work to other departments of the company.

Read the rest of this entry »

Prepare Results and Present them by means of the Method Most suitable for you.

There are a number of methods, for conceding of results (after all data following from the program of metrics should be presented in the end of the project or on the research termination).

Read the rest of this entry »

The valuable information on how the program of metrics should be used and develop is more low presented.
After all the best result can reach in that case if all given to apply with the greatest carefulness. As the company should be acquainted with value of the program of metrics.

Read the rest of this entry »