Smart Business Metrics

This work aims to give managers the tools to put the right measures in place. It shows how quantitative measures can be applied to behaviour as well as to financial and operational decisions and provides the tools that enable managers to decide strategic actions based on factual analysis. It also shows how smart metrics can produce joined-up management: all units working together to create value for the firm.

Get the end-to-end instruction you need to design, develop, and deploy more effective data integration, reporting, and analysis solutions using SQL Server 2008—whether you’re new to business intelligence (BI) programming or a seasoned pro. With real-world examples and insights from an expert team, you’ll master the concepts, tools, and techniques for building solutions that deliver intelligence—and business value—exactly where users want it. Discover how to: Manage the development life cycle and build a BI team Dig into SQL Server Analysis Services, Integration Services, and Reporting Services Navigate the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) Write queries that rank, sort, and drill down on sales data Develop extract, transform, and load (ETL) solutions Add a source code control system Help secure packages for deployment via encryption and credentials Use MDX and DMX Query Designers to build reports based on OLAP cubes and data mining models Create and implement custom objects using .NET code View reports in Microsoft Office Excel and Office SharePoint Serverook

How Strategy Works in an Interconnected, Automated World Leaders already know that the classic approach to strategy--analyze, plan, execute--is losing relevance. But they don't yet know what replaces it. As everyone and everything becomes more interconnected and digitized, how do you operate, compete, and win? Ming Zeng, the former Chief of Staff and strategy adviser to Alibaba Group's founder Jack Ma, explains how the latest technological developments, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, the mobile internet, and cloud computing are redefining how value is created. Written especially for those outside the technology industry or the startup arena, this book introduces a simple, overarching framework to guide strategy formulation and execution in this data-rich and highly interactive environment. Revealing the revolutionary practices that he and his team have developed at Alibaba, Zeng shows how to: Automate decisions through machine learning Create products informed by real-time data from customers Determine the right strategic positioning to maximize value from platforms and suppliers Repurpose your organization to further human insight and enable creativity Lead your company's transformation into a smart business With insights into the strategies and tools used by leaders at Alibaba and other companies such as Ruhan and Red Collar, in a variety of industries from furniture making to banking to custom tailoring, Smart Business outlines a radically new approach to strategy that can be applied everywhere.

Convert the promise of big data into real world results There is so much buzz around big data. We all need to know what it is and how it works - that much is obvious. But is a basic understanding of the theory enough to hold your own in strategy meetings? Probably. But what will set you apart from the rest is actually knowing how to USE big data to get solid, real-world business results - and putting that in place to improve performance. Big Data will give you a clear understanding, blueprint, and step-by-step approach to building your own big data strategy. This is a well-needed practical introduction to actually putting the topic into practice. Illustrated with numerous real-world examples from a cross section of companies and organisations, Big Data will take you through the five steps of the SMART model: Start with Strategy, Measure Metrics and Data, Apply Analytics, Report Results, Transform. Discusses how companies need to clearly define what it is they need to know Outlines how companies can collect relevant data and measure the metrics that will help them answer their most important business questions Addresses how the results of big data analytics can be visualised and communicated to ensure key decisions-makers understand them Includes many high-profile case studies from the author's work with some of the world's best known brands

Scientists from management and strategy, information systems, engineering and telecommunications have discussed a novel concept: Smart Business Networks. They see the future as a developing web of people and organizations, bound together in a dynamic and unpredictable way, creating smart outcomes from quickly (re-)configuring links between actors. The question is: What should be done to make the outcomes of such a network 'smart', that is, just a little better than that of your competitor? More agile, with less pain, with more return to all the members of the network, now and over time? The technical answer is to create a 'business operating system' that should run business processes on different organisational platforms. Business processes would become portable: The end-to-end management of processes running across many different organizations in many different forms would become possible. This book presents you the outcomes of an energizing and new direction in management science.

Working Backwards is an insider's breakdown of Amazon's approach to culture, leadership, and best practices from two long-time Amazon executives—with lessons and techniques you can apply to your own company, and career, right now. In Working Backwards, two long-serving Amazon executives reveal the principles and practices that have driven the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known. With twenty-seven years of Amazon experience between them—much of it during the period of unmatched innovation that created products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, and Amazon Web Services—Bryar and Carr offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was developed and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable. With keen analysis and practical steps for applying it at your own company—no matter the size—the authors illuminate how Amazon’s fourteen leadership principles inform decision-making at all levels of the company. With a focus on customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence, Amazon’s ground-level practices ensure these characteristics are translated into action and flow through all aspects of the business. Working Backwards is both a practical guidebook and the story of how the company grew to become so successful. It is filled with the authors’ in-the-room recollections of what “Being Amazonian” is like and how their time at the company affected their personal and professional lives. They demonstrate that success on Amazon’s scale is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously-executed principles and practices—shared here for the very first time. Whatever your talent, career or organization might be, find out how you can put Working Backwards to work for you.

In the current fast-paced and constantly changing business environment, it is more important than ever for organizations to be agile, monitor business performance, and meet with increasingly stringent compliance requirements. Written by pioneering consultants and bestselling authors with track records of international success, The Decision Model: A

Which performance measures should you use? The obvious answer is that it depends on what you want to achieve, which someone else should never define for you. After all, it is your organization, your department, or your process. But once you are clear about what you want to accomplish, how do you sort through a variety of possible metrics and decide which are best? Then, given the list of metrics you believe are useful or necessary, how do you define them in more detail to ensure that the right data are gathered at the appropriate frequency and that the resulting information gets to the right people so that they can make proper decisions? This book provides a clarifying perspective for those who know that metrics need to be developed but are unsure as to the steps to follow in developing and deploying them. It focuses on making sure that the metrics selected will guide people and processes in the direction the organization wants to go, and allow continual evaluation of success. Every highly effective organization is unique in some strategic way, and the metrics used should reflect these differences. Studying high performers can be useful from a learning standpoint, but simply adopting what someone else is doing is likely to take you off your track and put you on theirs. The concepts in this book will put you on the correct track and give you the tools to stay on it.