Case Studies & Best Practices

Linking Organizational Metrics to Mission: Delivering U.S. Naval Warships “Ready for Tasking”

Frank Burke, Commander, Naval Surface Forces N43

The U.S. Navy surface ship maintenance community consists of government oversight, technical and maintenance organizations working with private sector Master Ship Repair contractor partners in all corners of the world. Our mission is to ensure that the Navy’s surface fleet is materially ready to meet global operational demands within defined maintenance budget constraints. Until last year, metrics focus was on a narrow portion of the maintenance process and did not address the community’s overarching charter/mission to deliver “Warships Ready for Tasking”. The resulting lack of visibility and focus on the mission drove behaviors designed to optimize the process at the potential expense of the community’s ultimate product and fostered a sense of cynicism when it came to the organizational metrics. Burke will address the challenges and triumphs of embarking on a new journey developing a more complete scorecard incorporating many of the missing measures as well as the cross-organizational relationships and external factors that influence the desired performance outcomes.

Key Issues

• Using an analytic/index approach in the development of the scorecard structure & content
• Overcoming organizational challenges & dynamics with implementing a new metrics scorecard
• What happens when there is no linkage between organizational measurement and the
  desired charter/mission?

The Standardization Agenda at Shell: Developing, Deploying, and Leveraging a Large-Scale Global Measurement Model

Doug Drolett, Global Process Management Architect, Shell Downstream One Program

Over the past six years, the Shell Downstream organization, consisting of 60,000 employees and operating across 100 countries, has been operating a massive global business transformation program aimed at standardizing operational processes and moving to a single ERP. Included in the long-term, multi-year initiative was the development of a standard set of global management information and measurement. To date, this program has generated significant changes to the legacy measurement model and created organizational roles that analyze new measures in customer facing, supply chain and finance activities. This session will address how the Shell Downstream organization will maintain the long-term enterprise focus on process management and measurement, our successes to date and the challenges and lessons learned along the way.

Key Issues

• Selecting the right measures across a large-scale global initiative
• Building a measurement model that aligns with global business goals
• Overcoming change management challenges in deploying new measures & dashboards

Executing Strategy and Increasing Productivity with Lean,

Six Sigma, & the BSC

Dr. Ian Wedgwood, Vice President, SBTI & Author, Lean Sigma: A Practitioner’s Guide

The BSC, Lean, and Six Sigma were designated as strategic initiatives, yet they are now considered to be tactical approaches in more than 90% of their usage. In companies not using them, many executives believe that deploying these methodologies is too complex and burdensome to their organization and dismissed as too slow to fulfill strategic initiatives. However, in the vast majority of successful deployments (as measured by high return on investment, sometimes in the range of 20-30x), the methodologies are positioned as powerful mechanisms to execute on strategic plans and not simply as tactical performance improvement tools. Why the disconnect in thinking? Dr. Wedgwood will explain how organizations are successfully connecting their Lean and Six Sigma activities to the Balanced Scorecard and their strategic goals, but moreover are using these programs to drive strategy as well.

Key Issues

• Linking Lean and Six Sigma programs to the BSC
• Executing strategic initiatives using Lean and Six Sigma
• Leveraging BSC, Lean & Six Sigma to drive significant productivity change

Fostering a Performance Culture at BlackBerry®

Cory Skinner, Performance Measurements Specialist, Research in Motion (RIM)

Research In Motion (RIM) is a leading designer, manufacturer, and marketer of innovative wireless solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market, most notably the BlackBerry®. One of RIM’s goals is ensuring customer and employee satisfaction while holistically measuring and balancing the business. Operations improvements were needed but finding what to measure, how to measure it, which key players to include, and align to the organizational strategy was a challenge. Through the use of the balanced scorecard and monthly business review meetings, metrics were discussed, refined, discarded and new ones created. Various operational levels were included in the process to cascade awareness of the scorecard, take ownership and drive change. Cory will share the impressive results to date including: increased service levels to partners, greater knowledge of business metrics, higher customer net promoter scores and satisfaction, lower employee attrition, and a growing sense of overall happiness.

Key Issues 

• Measuring all facets of operations leading to process & business improvement
• Using Six Sigma to make business decisions based on best practices
• Creating an overall performance culture that takes ownership and drives change

Business Intelligence and Performance Monitoring in Hollywood: Competing with the Back of a Napkin

David Buckholtz, Vice President, Enterprise Technology and Quality, Sony Pictures Entertainment

As content changes from analog to digital and emerging, cheaper forms of entertainment challenge traditional channels for consumers’ attention, folks across the media industry are seeking better insights into their business. But for executives used to making gut creative decisions over long lunches, delivering the needed business intelligence and process metrics at the right time and in an acceptable format is a challenge. This case study will explore how the tools of business performance, including dashboards, KPIs, master data management, business intelligence, data quality, data warehousing, mobile access, and organizational change are being integrated into Sony Pictures’ Motion Pictures, Television, Home Entertainment, and Corporate business units, helping each deal with unique and disruptive business forces.

Key Issues 

• Structuring an effective approach to best practices across multiple lines of business
• Challenges in driving performance monitoring in a process adverse environment
• The importance of usability in business intelligence delivery

Data in the Information Factory

David Roberts, Enterprise Data Architect, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

An organization that produces information as a product really has two kinds of data—the product, that arrives as raw material and is worked on the factory floor into the finished product that is sent to customers—and the information that’s used to run the product. These two kinds of data are fundamentally different from one another. This talk will cover the approach used to maximize the value of both kinds of information to the enterprise, and do it at reasonable cost. Often, issues with data are extremely labor-intensive—hence expensive—and that problem can prevent the solution of real problems. This presentation will outline an approach built around achieving maximum improvement in the value of data at the lowest possible cost.

Key Issues

• Understanding how data problems increase cost and reduce performance
• Maximizing the value of data in making better decisions
• Cost effective data strategies to enhance performance
  

The Ownership Quotient – Achieving Greater Performance through Employee Commitment

Joe Wheeler, Executive Director, The Service Profit Chain Institute & Co-author, The Ownership Quotient

How do world class companies such as Wegmans Food Markets, Rackspace Hosting, Harrah’s Entertainment and Build-A-Bear Workshop achieve high levels of engagement  and ownership from both customers and employees? Don’t think about ownership in the  literal sense. Ownership correlates to the degree in which customers and employees are truly and actively engaged in improving products, services, processes, and relationships in an organization. Organizations that have adopted this philosophy are establishing competitive advantage. Why is this important? An “owner” is worth more than 100 customers with whom your organization has a more casual relationship. This session will review the 5 steps companies can take to foster higher levels of ownership: start with your strategy, put your best customers to work, boost your employee OQ, engineer the customer experience, and create an ownership culture.

Key Issues

• Understanding the 5 steps to foster the “Ownership Quotient” of employees and customers
• Ensuring your corporate values are measurable and actionable
• Creating a culture promoting accountability and performance
  

Using Prediction Markets at Google to Mitigate Potential Risk

Bo Cowgill, Statistician, Quantitative Marketing Manager, and Creator of Internal Prediction Markets, Google

How can managers better tap the insights of their rank and file employees? Google has managed the largest implementation of corporate prediction markets in history opening a virtual betting exchange (in play currency backed with rewards) on an extensive set of important outcomes to the business. The results capture biases of employees and managers, the way employees share information and the potential for new corporate governance mechanisms based on crowd wisdom. Results have found that these predictions tend to be accurate and timely, creating opportunities to better quantify risk and prepare for unexpected turns in the market or the company. This session will review how the marketplace worked, outcomes to date and what the betting revealed about Google and the modern, high-tech workforce.

Key Issues

• Implementing prediction markets & policies surrounding them
• Utilizing prediction markets to overcome forecasting bias within an organization
• Understanding and maximizing the benefits of crowd behavior and information cascades