Tutorial 9

1. What are the three key components of business performance management (BPM)?

2. Why does a company need a well-formulated strategy?

3. What is tactic-centric planning? What is budget-centric planning?
4. Why do few companies have time to analyze their strategic and tactical results and take
corrective action based on this analysis?
5. What is a KPI, and what are its distinguishing characteristics?
6. What are the characteristics of an effective performance measurement system?
7. Distinguish performance management and performance measurement.

8. Fundamentally, an operational plan is like a project plan that is designed to ensure that an
organization's ________ is realized.
A) business policy
B) plan
C) strategy
D) business rules

9. The effectiveness of a campaign is measured by ________.

A) net cost and productivity
B) relative profitability and net value
C) gross revenue and net income
D) cost and quality

10. Which of the following is not what an effective performance measurement system should
do?
A) Align top-level strategic objectives and bottom-level initiatives.
B) Identify opportunities in a timely fashion.
C) Determine priorities and allocate resources based on those priorities.
D) Maintain measurement when the underlying processes and strategies change.

11. A ________ delineates the process of value creation through a series of cause-and-effect
relationships among the key organizational objectives for all four BSC perspectives--financial,
customer, process, and learning and growth.
A) balanced scorecard
B) strategic theme
C) strategy map
D) KPI
12. Which of the following about Six Sigma is not true?
A) Six Sigma focuses on the elimination of waste activities, whereas lean focuses on reducing the
variation or improving the consistency of a process.
B) Most companies use Six Sigma as a process improvement methodology that enables them to
scrutinize their processes, pinpoint problems, and apply remedies.
C) Six Sigma is a performance management methodology aimed at reducing the number of
defects in a business process to as close to zero DPMO as possible.
D) Six Sigma uses DMAIC, a closed-loop business improvement model that involves the steps of
defining, measuring, analyzing, improving, and controlling a process.

13. Logically speaking, a BPM system consists of three basic parts, or layers. Which of the
following is not one of those parts or layers?
A) BPM applications
B) Dashboards and scorecards
C) Information hub
D) Source systems

Exercise:

Locate a handful of example dashboards for an industry domain selected (e.g. healthcare,
banking, airlines, and education). Describe the types of metrics found on the dashboards.

What types of displays are used to provide the information?

Using what you know about dashboard design, provide a prototype of a dashboard for this
information.