Online Performance Management Software to Help with Integration

Online performance management software makes it much easier to manage your various metrics, key performance indicators, and balanced scorecards. These tools help managers in dealing with the tons of performance related information that they would have to process in order to make their decisions. Because they are online or web based, they can be accessed from anywhere, and can connect even far-flung branches of the company to the central management, and vice versa. Effectively, it means that each part of the organization can both update its own performance data and access the performance data of the other parts on the fly.

Performance management has become increasingly based on objective measures rather than just intuitive or qualitative measures. The use of various kinds of data and frameworks to measure performance has helped many organizations get a clearer grasp of their situation, and thus make better decisions. No matter the exact scheme or implementation that management might choose, there is usually a flow common to all of them.

Many of these approaches begin with the formulation of a strategy or the setting of goals. In many cases, these begin with a basic or fundamental goal for the entire organization, called a mission statement. This mission statement is usually cast in the form of striving to realize a vision, or what the organization would like to become in the future. The formulation of this vision or mission statement usually falls to the highest levels of leadership and management.

The setting of goals and objectives should then cascade down the hierarchy of the organization. That is, after a mission is established, the heads of the various departments should then come up with their own supporting sets of goals specific to their departments’ functions and responsibilities. Then after the head of departments should come subheads, then team leaders, and so on, until the level of individuals or employees is reached. By starting from the top down, each goal will naturally be aligned with each other to form a unified organizational strategy.

The bottom up part would then come with the monitoring of these goals. This may be done in a variety of ways and is called a variety of things: metrics, key performance indicators, scorecards, and so on. In essence, though, they all deal with the attempt to see how well goals are being met, and how performance is being upheld. They involve particular quantifiable aspects of performance, and usually keep track of this measure over time as it improves or worsens.

Online performance management software makes this task easier by integrating various parts of the organization through a central database accessible through different interfaces. Managers could then easily handle the data that comes in, whether it comes from the central headquarters or from outposts that are farther away. Real time data that becomes possible is a great asset for making decisions, especially those that require quick thinking and reaction, as in times of crisis. Finding the right online tool can prove to be quite invaluable.