| As the owner or executive of a business, you have | | | | Wikipedia mentions long-term, but that misses out on |
| business goals. You have your 5-year goals or your | | | | important short-term and medium-term goals which I'll |
| long-term goals, and then there are steps along the | | | | explain shortly. The other key term here is |
| way to reach those goals: medium-term goals and | | | | "stakeholders." |
| short-term goals. | | | | Each goal, whether short-term or long-term, has |
| If you were a retailer you might have the following | | | | different stakeholders. |
| goals: | | | | If you have daily retail sales goals, then a store |
| Short term: sell a certain amount each sunny day, a | | | | manager has to have access to data that shows him |
| certain amount each rainy day, a certain amount each | | | | or her in real time what's going on in the store. |
| holiday, weekend and weekday. | | | | If you have quarterly or yearly goals vis-a-vís |
| Medium term: Identify your best suppliers. Establish | | | | your suppliers and different customer segments, then |
| relationships with the most efficient, timely, reliable and | | | | an operations person or sales director needs access |
| innovative suppliers. Attract a higher number of baby | | | | to information that shows how you're doing along |
| boomers than your competition. | | | | these paths. |
| Long term: Continue to create innovations in the | | | | If you have long-term plans to create innovative |
| marketplace that can set you apart from your | | | | solutions and become a market leader, then the CEO |
| competition, such as innovative loyalty programs or | | | | or owner needs access to key data to know how |
| bleeding edge point-of-purchase technology. | | | | you're doing against these plans. |
| In business planning and business performance | | | | Different time-frames, different stakeholders, different |
| management, key performance indicators (KPIs) are | | | | goals, different KPIs. |
| fundamental to knowing where you are in your path | | | | What tools are available to help you along the path? |
| towards a certain goal. | | | | David Abdo wrote a post entitled "Business Intelligence |
| This is what Wikipedia says about KPIs: | | | | Software: Who Is It Really For?" where he argued for |
| A performance indicator or key performance indicator | | | | the democratization of business intelligence software |
| (KPI) is a measure of performance. Such measures | | | | across the enterprise. |
| are commonly used to help an organization define and | | | | The existence of a multi-tiered goal structure as |
| evaluate how successful it is, typically in terms of | | | | illustrated above implies the requirement of a company |
| making progress towards its long-term organizational | | | | to implement a business intelligence tool that's |
| goals. KPIs can be specified by answering the | | | | accessible to all people within the company. |
| question, "What is really important to different | | | | What are your thoughts on the matter? |
| stakeholders?" | | | | |