CorVu Improves Integration of Performance Measurement
CorVu Corp. (Minneapolis, Minn.) announced that the latest release of its Balanced Scorecard software offers improved integration of quantitative and qualitative business performance measurement, more measurement flexibility, and far more collaborative measurement features.
Philip Russom, senior industry analyst at the Framingham. Mass.-based Hurwitz Group, says CorVu Balanced Scorecard is better suited to the enterprise than similar applications, because of its combination of network readiness, support for a large number of users, object-oriented design, and integration with multi-user databases such as DB2/400.
CorVu’s Balanced Scorecard serves enterprise business performance measurement very well," says Russom. "There are too many junky, small balanced scorecard software programs available that are designed for one user to collect measurements and key in a qualitative report at the end. The key difference between these automators of Balanced Scorecard measurements is that CorVu is suitable for lots of users in a networked environment with lots of databases; in other words, the enterprise."
CorVu’s Balanced Scorecard, an application layer that sits atop the company’s business intelligence software, stresses a combination of quantitative measurements [objective raw numbers] of business performance, and qualitative measurements [subjective management personnel’s input]. The software also provides a collaborative environment for managers and employees to exchange comments and feedback within the scorecard – an "electronic bulletin board" – to aid communication of strategic vision and initiatives among high and mid-level managers. The goal is to allow them to make more informed business decisions and better understand performance results and strategy.
Company officials note that CorVu's Balanced Scorecard now offers more quantitative measurement capability and flexibility. "Up to 90 percent of a scorecard might be comments interjected into quantitative numerical data. Your confidence in the scorecard is only as good as your confidence in the individual doing the measuring," says Alan Missroon, president of CorVu.
Missroon adds that CorVu’s application lets users "weight" particular portions of a scorecard. For example, an inventory management scorecard may include four quantitative measurements, such as products sold in a quarter or profit, and one qualitative measure, interjected by a levelheaded, star performer in mid-level management. The top-level manager looking at the scorecard can weight the qualitative comments as 50 percent of the final rating, and the remaining four 12.5 percent each. Thus the final measurement reflects as much qualitative as quantitative data.
CorVu’s object-oriented design lets organizations create a library of metrics from which scorecards are later assembled. Metrics, created once for use on any scorecard throughout the organization, can be reused on a number of scorecards.