The performance ideas blog

  • Social Networking = Better Performance = Happiness?

    Amazon.com’s recommendation engine is pretty amazing I have to admit. The algorithms at work clearly know how to expand one’s horizon beyond the obvious choices. Needless to say, I was a bit surprised and almost annoyed when the engine suggested the fluffy sounding title ‘The Happiness Advantage’. Does amazon.com really think I need some self-help…

  • IBM Business Analytics at the Gartner BI Summit 2011

    It’s that time of the year! The annual Gartner BI Summit is just around the corner. This year’s edition will take place from January 31st through February 1st at the Park Plaza Westminster Bridge in London. IBM is one of the main sponsors for this event, and my team and I will be quite busy…

  • 3 ways to analyze and communicate Forecast Accuracy

    Analyzing Forecast Accuracy What’s the best kept secret in your company? Well, hopefully not your forecast accuracy numbers? Forecast accuracy should not be a calculation that happens behind closed doors. But the numbers should be communicated and analyzed to be really useful. Here are three ways you can communicate and analyze your numbers: The table…

  • 4 additional things to know about Forecast Accuracy

    How is your forecast accuracy measurement project going? I hope the last post convinced you to start measuring this. But there are still some open questions. Let’s take a look at some critical items that you should consider. TIME SPAN One of the things people often get confused about is the type of forecast accuracy…

  • Three things every controller should know about forecast accuracy

    Forecast Accuracy Forecast accuracy is one of those strange things: most people agree that it should be measured, yet hardly anybody does it. And the crazy thing is that it is not all that hard. If you utilize a planning tool like IBM Cognos TM1, Cognos Planning or any other package, the calculations are merely…

  • Never trust a statistic?

    Everybody hates and loves statistics. Right? If we can, we use statistics to obtain buy-in. Otherwise we might argue against them. They always say: “Never trust a statistic that you haven’t manipulated yourself.” Regardless of what we think about statistics, we are constantly being bombarded by them. News, websites, TV, etc.. They are everywhere. In…

  • And now something completely different….

    Happy Holidays! Hope you will have time for a break to recharge the batteries. A few weeks ago, I started reading a great book by Garr Reynolds: The Naked Presenter. The author turned my attention to a wonderful speech by John Cleese. Yes, the famous comedian. And this is not a speech about comedy but…

  • 5 things we can learn from professional athletes

    Here we are again. It’s that time of the year. We sit down and review our accomplishments for the year. And we are also starting to plan ahead for the next year. We craft plans and we get excited. Excited about improving our performance and the performance of our teams (apart from personal goals). Many…

  • Books, books & the Kindle

    This device is almost as polarizing as American politics. Crazy! I spend close to 200 days on the road per year and to me, this thing is the best thing since sliced bread…well…almost. I am talking about the Kindle – Amazon.com’s eBook reader. We are in the middle of the holiday season and many of us…

  • Cool software? The Connected Business – Part 3

    Yeah, those spreadsheets. Welcome to part 3 of this series of posts. An interesting special section in the Financial Times prompted me to post a quick summary with interesting quotes. But the report did not necessarily provide some specific details about why spreadsheets make our lives difficult. Part 2 then focused on the particular pain…

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