Top 5 Management Tools #2

from Linked IN 7/13 enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4biz

Benchmarking goes hand-in-hand with the Balanced Scorecard. Key Performance Indicators can only generate meaningful insights, if they are compared with targets & benchmarks. Benchmarks can come from within the company by comparing departments / business units or can come from industry research or best practice studies. This is again a reflection of the current economic struggles many companies are facing. Companies need to make sure they stay ahead or close to the competition. Introducing some competitiveness into their systems with benchmarked performance goals & targets for everyone, can boost productitivty.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is increasingly being used by companies as they try to drive up customer “loyalty” and maximise cross-selling opportunities & customer profitability. Most companies know by now, that it is about 10x cheaper to keep existing customers than it is to acquire new ones. The data & insights that come out of CRM systems, can then be used to identify cross-selling & up-selling opportunities. Many of my clients are now using CRM systems to better understand customer values and predict customer trends. This in turn is useful information, that should feed into the customer perspective of the Balanced Scorecard.

Employee Engagement Surveys. Employees are still our most valuable (and often most expensive) assets. The global war for top talent is still raging and every company wants to hold on to the talent it has acquired or developed. Similarly to customers, it usually costs a lot of money to recruit & train new employees. We also know an engaged employee is not only more loyal but also more productive. And every bit of productivity is vital in today’s competitive global economy. Similarly to Customer Info, the data from Employee Engagement Surveys feeds into the people perspective of the Balanced Scorecard.

Tools for any size of Organization. In my job I spend a lot of time helping companies improve their performance and for me, these 5 Management Tools make an eminently sensible list of tools to use for any organisation today, be it a global blue chip, a small or medium sized company or a government agency. All these organizations need solid strategic plans, a tool to execute their plan and ways to monitor & evaluate progress. At the same time, they all need to ensure they manage their customers & engage their employees.

Bain Mgt Tools survey also finds that 4 out of the top 5 tools fall into the top quadrant for “user satisfaction” levels. The only one that lags a little behind is Employee Engagement surveys, which again is something I can verify from my own experience. In so many cases, it is just a statutory process or a PR activity, rather than a true survey of staff engagement. Having said that, in practice I also see many problems with the other 4 tools, which are often implemented in a ‘we should have this’ and ‘we have to follow this process’ way. Instead, they are most effective when they are based on real buy-in & understanding and when they are customised to the specific needs of the company.

Comments: . Do you agree with this list of the top 5 Mgt Tools? Have you got any good or bad experiences with any of these? Any lessons to share?