Business Analytics for Sales and Marketing Managers: How to Compete in the Information Age

WAYS OF USING LAG INFORMATION

The last section discussed the relationship between lead and lag information. The most basic takeaway is that you use lag information to monitor how your current processes are doing and lead information to redesign processes. Lead information often is based on a thorough analysis of lag information. This section looks into the ways that lag information can be used and explains where you can study the subject in more detail. The four reasons we do performance tracking are to:

1. Monitor output of processes. The primary purpose of monitoring process output is to make sure that the process meets its defined objectives. This means that lag information must show how a given process performs and at the same time link this performance to the strategic objectives that the process is set to deliver. You can read more about this in the section called “Lag Information as a Link to the Strategic Objectives.”

2. Monitor processes. Here we do performance tracking so the project or campaign manager can see, on an operational level, how the market activities perform. Besides monitoring the output of the process, as mentioned in reason one, we also continuously monitor what goes into the process, which could include man-hours, consultancy costs, call center costs, salespeople, and so on. We monitoring processes to improve our target-setting process and learn about cause and effect. You can read more about this in the analytical sections at the end of this chapter. ...