Marketing Metrics Essay

All businesses are confronted with the general problem of having to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. Management must understand the nature of demand and competition in order to develop realistic business plans, determine a strategic vision for the organization, and determine technology and infrastructure needs. To address these challenges, forecasting is used. According to Makridakis (1989), forecasting future events can be characterized as the search for answers to one or more of the following questions:

Competitive advantage - Nundies is an innovative product which provides an alternative to visible panty lines; no other company produces the same type of product

Whenever new metric are introduced, it is very important that everyone is communicated the updates quickly. The first line of communication should start with management. When training management on new metric, a reference guide or a point of contact should be given for additional support. The objectives of management should consist of grasping the concepts of new metrics, ability to explain the concept of new metrics, and ability to evaluate employees with new metrics.

Issues are then identified but there seems to be no real focus on what drives success in local markets, or on what competitors will do and the impact of their actions. This approach can simply lead to ‘more of the same’, making a projection based on the previous year and no real change in approach, with the whole focus being on next year’s revenue. While many companies may not use such an apparently numbers-focused approach they still act in the same way, with the forecast being the key, rather than the rationale behind it.

Nonfinancial measures can also be used to measure performance. “Nonfinancial, or qualitative, factors also play a role in managers’ decisions and, as a result, can be relevant” (Nobles et al., 2014). In fact, just like relevant financial information, relevant qualitative information provides the same traits (Nobles et al., 2014). Here are a few suggestions for nonfinancial performance measures that the company should take on. Peyton Approved should include customer and employee satisfaction, employee evaluations, provide training for all new and old workers, look at inefficiencies, indefinite assets, balanced scorecards, and even incorporate a reward plan. Incorporating any of these suggestions though will include pros and cons.

Forecasting analytics will enable SYSCO to make appropriate upfront decisions and monitor customers as well as the industry. Extraction and data mining are also useful tools that will positively affect SYSCO’s decision-making process. Lastly, consulting support and employees’ training will facilitate the implementation of the new software in the company. For all these reasons, the use of BI at SYSCO can create a competitive advantage of the company in the industry. However, this competitive advantage depends on the competition – do the competitors use a similar software or by chance the same and do they already have a strong position in the market? Outperforming for example “U.S Food Service”, SYSCO’s main competitor, might be arduous if that company relies on a similar software and already has an eminent role in the

Forecasting: It is an important step required to anticipate the future events that might occur with the mentioned changes. There may be a possible need for expansion of services to compete with the technological advances; continued mergers; increased spending on operations as well as research and development.

b) Isolating critical few metrics: A dashboard should not have overwhelming metrics as it gets complicated to segment or highlight the performance. Having too many metrics is difficult for audience to ascertain what the key take away from all such metrics are. As it can be misleading it is recommended to have 5 key metrics. If there are more than 5 its best to make it more concise and shortlist the critical few which are impactful. Within the dashboard it is vital to understand what key metrics mean and set goals for each metric to drive the bottom line of the business. Dashboard must articulate the decision making process.

Jonah recommends three metrics which are throughput, inventory and operating expenses. The throughput, inventory and operating expenses are used to measure the company’s productivity. Throughput is the rate at which the system generates revenue through sales and it is seen as money going into the system. Inventory is all the money that the system has invested in purchasing materials which is sold and it is seen as the money stuck in the system. Operating expense is all the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput and it seen as the money being paid out the system. Starbucks coffee shop could use throughput, inventory, and operating expense as a measurement to meet their goal. When an employee is serving various customers the three metrics can be helpful to target the product flow, understand adding value and non-adding value of activities, and how to utilize resources. For example, Starbuck’s coffee shop would use these three metrics to help create a technique to manage excessive demand such as having a server at each operational level. This would speed up customers order and decrease customers

Identify; short, medium, and long term financial performance indicators and targets are established to enable on-going monitoring of financial performance.

Performance metric to measure the company’s performance, growth objective, and strategic goalsi: «Strategic performance measures monitor the implementation and effectiveness of an organization 's strategies, determine the gap between actual and targeted performance and determine

When operating in an ever-changing world, a company must flow and learn to benefit from the external and internal forces. The modern business environment is unpredictable and usually corporations cannot fully forecast the demand and the outcome of various products or services (Geer-Frazier, 2014). However, in the case of HCL, its paramount strength was Mr. Nayar’s aptitude to foresee the change of the IT service environment and the external changes that were limiting HCL growth and market share.

The company understands that in a fast changing business environment it is essential to forecast the future trends and bottlenecks thus helping them prepare for any circumstances that may come up. The 2020

Management accounting researchers (Otley, 1999; Norreklit, 2000) have criticized depending exclusively on financial measures. As referred by Cumby and Conrod (2001), sustainable shareholder value and competitiveness advantages are actually driven by non-financial factors such as employee satisfaction, customer loyalty, internal processes and innovation. As a result, companies started to include non-financial measurements within their PAMs to gain better knowledge about the overall company situation (Ittner and Larcker, 2001; Speckbacher et al, 2003).

With the increasingly fierce market competition, enterprises expand external market at the same time, business operators gradually realized that to strengthen the internal management of the enterprise is also an important meaning to enhance the competition ability of the enterprise (Paloma Sánchez &Elena, 2006). Enterprise performance measurement as an important way to strengthen internal management and control has been recognized by much more enterprises (Atkinson et al, 1997). Corporate managers are trying to make performance measurement and business strategy for better integration, in order to establish a scientific performance evaluation system and promote enterprise achieve strategic objectives.