Performance measures

After a plan has been built, it can be used to monitor the performance of the plan. Each plan object can have one associated measure regarding performance. The performance can be monitored and reported as the plan is being executed. For example, if the measure for a tactic is 20 public speaking opportunities as part of a PR campaign, you can track whether it actually gets done. Likewise, the measure can be to keep expenses for each quarter within 5% of target.

There are two steps to defining a measure:

• Specify the measure source.
• Edit the measures definition.

In setting up a measure for an object, a target value for each associated period for each scenario is established. For example, you can define the speaking opportunity tactic to be for the upcoming year and to be measured quarterly. (Set the Start to be Q1 and the number of periods to be 4.) Then set a target value for each quarter for each of the scenarios (Expected and Best Case). As the plan is put into execution, actual values accomplished for each quarter become available. The outcome or activity value indicates how these various targets for the tactic are being met. You can review this by period, YTD, Total Year, Plan to Date, and Total Plan.

For an activity value, a parent's performance value is derived from how well its supporting children have done. For example, in order to measure how well a strategy is doing, the activity values associated with its supporting tactics are multiplied by the normalized contribution weights and then summed.

An outcome value for a plan object's performance value comes from its assigned measure. If there is no assigned measure, then no value is shown. For example, the strategy Increase new customer sales by 10%, has its own goal and corresponding measure. Then looking at the outcome for this strategy you can see how close you are to reaching that goal. In contrast, the activity value for this strategy would be derived from its children and reflect how well the activities supporting this strategy were executed.

When a plan is being monitored, the performance value (outcome or activity) is displayed in the value bar for each object in the Overview report. In the table and outline report, the outcome or activity value is displayed as a color-coded number.