What Gets Measured Gets Done
Introduction
The increasing role of IT places an emphasis on quantificational methods to perform the various management tasks. BPM (Business Performance Measurement [Blansfield (2003): 4]) and BI (Business Intelligence [Schlegel (2007)] as a set of IT-based management techniques and tools play a key role in our perception of a company and the performance of people. An entire branch of the software industry (SAP, Siebel, Oracle, SAS Institute, etc.) offers corresponding products. These products range from CRM- (Customer Relationship Management), ERP- (Enterprise Resource Planning) to KM- (Knowledge Management) - Systems. One has to keep in mind, however, that this approach of perceiving business is limited. In short, it relies heavily on quantification. This is due to the fact that
the data processed in these systems are data measured or processed by people or other machines.
Then it is categorized, evaluated, and synthesized, again by people or machines.
Finally, data processing entails interpretation and corresponding reaction. Also in this case, the actors can be people and / or machines.
Hence, the boundary of these concepts is measurability. On their background, only "what gets measured gets done". In the following, this statement is critically reviewed. E.g. are there things that can not be measured properly but need to be - and are done - as well? What is the impact from the planning of the measurement process on the measured process? How feasible is measurement?
Definition
In itself, "what gets measured gets done" is a tautology, as we perceive (e.g. what is done) only what we measure - understood as processing sensory data in its broadest sense. Here, "what gets measured gets done" is interpreted as a promise to each business: If you measure the right things right, the right things are done right.
Measurement is understood in the context of a planned approach to observe, collect and evaluate data about business processes and its
The increasing role of IT places an emphasis on quantificational methods to perform the various management tasks. BPM (Business Performance Measurement [Blansfield (2003): 4]) and BI (Business Intelligence [Schlegel (2007)] as a set of IT-based management techniques and tools play a key role in our perception of a company and the performance of people. An entire branch of the software industry (SAP, Siebel, Oracle, SAS Institute, etc.) offers corresponding products. These products range from CRM- (Customer Relationship Management), ERP- (Enterprise Resource Planning) to KM- (Knowledge Management) - Systems. One has to keep in mind, however, that this approach of perceiving business is limited. In short, it relies heavily on quantification. This is due to the fact that
the data processed in these systems are data measured or processed by people or other machines.
Then it is categorized, evaluated, and synthesized, again by people or machines.
Finally, data processing entails interpretation and corresponding reaction. Also in this case, the actors can be people and / or machines.
Hence, the boundary of these concepts is measurability. On their background, only "what gets measured gets done". In the following, this statement is critically reviewed. E.g. are there things that can not be measured properly but need to be - and are done - as well? What is the impact from the planning of the measurement process on the measured process? How feasible is measurement?
Definition
In itself, "what gets measured gets done" is a tautology, as we perceive (e.g. what is done) only what we measure - understood as processing sensory data in its broadest sense. Here, "what gets measured gets done" is interpreted as a promise to each business: If you measure the right things right, the right things are done right.
Measurement is understood in the context of a planned approach to observe, collect and evaluate data about business processes and its
References: [D. Blansfield (2003) "The First Word", in Business Performance Management, June 2003, p.4; http://www.bpmmag.net/magazine/article.html?articleID=13966 accessed 11/03/2007] [K [Prof. Dr. Walter Schiebel, DI Siegi Pöchtrager (2000) "Corporate Ethics as a Factor for Success – the Measurement Instrument of the University of Agricultural Sciences (BOKU) Vienna" http://www.boku.ac.at/mi/fp/texte/ethics.pdf, accessed: 11/01/2007] [L [Elizabeth Millard (2007) "Collecting data is crucial, but so is an efficient system for putting that data to use." http://www.universitybusiness.com/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=847&p=1 accessed 11/03/2007] [T