ABSTRACT
There are many ways of measuring performance. The essence of performance measurement is to understand why the measurement is taking place in the first place.
The opening perspective uses Nokia as a company that has changed our lives in the past and is destined to make dramatic changes in the future. It asks the question, ‘How do we measure performance for a company such as Nokia?’
This chapter describes hoshin kanri as a systematic planning process that looks at the organisation and defines the long-range business objectives and the balanced scorecard approach advocated by Kaplan and Norton. The balanced scorecard includes a customer perspective, a financial perspective, an internal business process perspective, and an innovation and learning perspective. A closed-loop management system improves the implementation of the balanced scorecard. It comprises the following stages: Develop the strategy, translate the strategy, plan the operations, monitor and learn, and, finally, test and adapt the strategy.
Benchmarking is a process of learning from others and proposes the premise that there is a better performance somewhere in the world. If an organisation can identify better performance, they measure against it and improve current organisational performance.
