Closing the Intelligence Gap - Gary Cokins on Performance Management

A press release caught my attention. It announced that ASG Renaissance's Transformation Consulting business unit has changed its name to Performance Management to better reflect the services it offers. It announced that ASG's Performance Group now has two integrated teams, the strategic transformation group and the operations transformation group. The strategic transformation group focuses on revenue generation in strategy and planning, market development and product innovations, while the operations group is focused on efficiency, continuous improvement and cost reduction in product development, manufacturing and assembly systems and supply chain management.

This is an example of how Enterprise Performance Management has two broad influences on improvement on a financial income statement. Increasing the top line is accomplished by growing sales, and decreasing the middle line is accomplished raising productivity. The bottom line is the net result.

One can debate which group will have the relatively greater impact on the bottom line. I argued this in my November, 2007 blog, Which Has a Greater Performance Impact? Process Effectiveness or Strategy? Ultimately, the answer depends on the current situation of a company. Are they bi-polar extremes? Not really, because there is much integrated between the strategy and operations.

What attracted me to this announcement was the organization name change itself – from transformation to Performance Management consulting. This further validates to me the acceptance of Performance Management as a universal term for organizational improvement.