Brand managers are the champions of balancing innovation and brand strategy that deliver profit, revenue, and cost efficiencies. Review this overview of how businesses as a whole use financial metrics to measure organizational performance. This review of key performance indicators introduces alternatives to evaluate a more holistic view of an organization's performance by considering different performance perspectives.
For RQ2, the sampled papers were reviewed to distinguish papers with performance indicators from papers without performance indicators. A further distinction was made between indicators found with operationalization (i.e., concretization by means of a question or formula) and those without operationalization. We note that for many indicators, no operationalization was available. We discovered that only 30 of the 76 sampled papers contained some type of performance indicator (namely 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 26, 27, 30, 35, 37, 40, 43, 46, 49, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 66, 71, 73). In total, approximately 380 individual indicators were found throughout all the sampled papers (including duplicates), which were combined based on similarities and modified to use more generic terms. This resulted in 87 indicators with operationalization and 48 indicators without operationalization.
The 87 indicators with operationalization were then categorized according to the four perspectives of the BSC (i.e., financial, customer, business processes, and "learning and growth") and the four established dimensions of process performance (i.e., time, cost, quality, and flexibility) (Dumas et al. 2013). In particular, based in the identified indicators, we revealed 11 sub-perspectives within the initial BSC perspectives to better emphasize the focus of the indicators and the different target groups (Table 5): (1) financial performance for shareholders and top management, (2) customer-related performance, (3) supplier-related performance, (4) society-related performance, (5) general process performance, (6) time-related process performance, (7) cost-related process performance, (8) process performance related to internal quality, (9) flexibility-related process performance, (10) (digital) innovation performance, and (11) employee-related performance.
Table 5 A description of the observed performance perspectives, linked to the Balanced scorecard
Initial BSC perspectives |
Observed perspectives based on target groups and focus |
Scope of the performance indicators |
---|---|---|
1. Financial performance |
1.1 Financial performance for shareholders and top management |
Strategic financial data |
2. Customer-related performance |
2.1 Customer performance |
Outcomes of external quality or meeting end user needs |
2.2 Supplier performance |
External collaboration and process dependencies |
|
2.3 Society performance |
Outcomes for other stakeholders and the environment during process work |
|
3. Internal business process performance |
3.1 General process performance |
Descriptive data of process work, not related to time, costs, quality or flexibility |
3.2 Time-related process performance |
Time-related data of process work |
|
3.3 Cost-related process performance |
Operational financial data |
|
3.4 Process performance related to internal quality |
Capability of meeting end user needs and internal user needs |
|
3.5 Flexibility-related process performance |
Data of changes or variants in process work |
|
4. Performance related to "learning and growth" |
4.1 (Digital) innovation performance |
Innovation of processes and innovation projects |
4.2 Employee performance |
Staff contributions to process work and personal development |
Balanced scorecard |
EFQM |
Kueng |
Cross and Lynch |
Our observed performance perspectives |
---|---|---|---|---|
Financial perspective |
Key results |
Financial view |
Financial measures Market measures |
Financial performance for shareholders and top management |
Customer perspective |
Customer results |
Customer view |
Customer satisfaction |
Customer performance Supplier performance Society performance |
Internal business processes perspective |
Enablers (processes/products/services, people, strategy, partnerships/resources, leadership) |
Overall process performance based on the other views as driving forces |
Flexibility Productivity Quality Delivery Process time Cost |
General process performance Time-related process performance Cost-related process performance Process performance related to internal quality Flexibility-related process performance |
"Learning and growth" perspective |
People results Learning, creativity and innovation |
Employee view Innovation view |
– |
(Digital) innovation performance Employee performance |
– |
Society results |
Societal view |
– |
Society performance as a sub-perspective of customer performance (see above) |
Fig. 10
The number of performance indicators with operationalization per performance perspective
A more detailed comparison of the perspectives provides interesting refinements to the state of the research. More specifically, Fig. 10 shows that five performance perspectives have more than ten indicators in the sample, indicating that academic research focuses more on financial performance for shareholders and top management and performance related to customers, process time, innovation and employees. On the other hand, fewer than five performance indicators were found in the sample for the perspectives related to suppliers, society, process costs and process flexibility, indicating that the literature focuses less on those perspectives. The latter remains largely overlooked by academic research, possibly due to the newly emerging character of these perspectives.