Author Archives: Teddy Nee

Performance Management or Employee Development? Is there a Way to Merge Both?

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Performance Management or Employee Development? Is there a Way to Merge Both?

If you ask an employee on what a performance management is, he or she will mention that it is nothing but the annual appraisal of his or her performance followed by salary revisions. Employees also tend to view performance management process with a lot of skepticism, as generally they are not happy with the subjective appraisals and get dis-satisfied with their salary revisions.

An effective performance management system should not stop with just once a year performance appraisals and salary revisions. It should be much more comprehensive, and one of the key goals of such an effective performance management system should be to develop employees.

What is employee development?

Employee development consists of activities that are initiated by an organization that would help in the overall development of an employee. An effective performance management system is one which gives high priority for employee development.

Benefits of employee development

When a performance management system focusses on employee development as well, the return of investment from such a system would be good due to the following reasons:

1) Well trained employees become more competent and execute their responsibilities productively.

2) Employees become happy as their development is taken as the prime focus.

3) When leaders are groomed within the organization, it helps in succession planning and reduces the associate costs and risks in hiring a new employee.

4) When facilities are created for employees to do their job effectively and obstacles are removed, it ensures that organization goals are met.

How do you convert your Performance Management System to Employee Development System?

Most companies do performance appraisals once a year and use performance management software for streamlining the process (self-evaluation, 360 degree feedback, manager’s feedback & rating, recommendation, etc.). Due to the volume of the work and stress associated with this process, the process stops with the salary revisions. Ideally, the HRs and managers should extend this process to identify the training needs, strengths & weaknesses of the people/organization, people development needs and put a clear roadmap for addressing them.

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The Higher Stocks Go, The More Important Risk Management Becomes

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The Higher Stocks Go, The More Important Risk Management Becomes

Summary

  • With “new high” showing up in market reports on a frequent basis, it is prudent to nail down equity risk management plans.
  • Economic and central bank signals are quite a bit different in the United States and Europe, making seat of the pants allocation decisions more difficult.
  • Rising inflation in the United States could bring correction/bear market plans into play in the coming months.

Financial Markets Are Complex Organisms

Just as the human brain is an extremely complex organ, the financial markets have an almost infinite number of factors that ultimately determine the value of our investment portfolios. Therefore, it is unlikely that “figuring it out as we go along” will produce favorable investment outcomes. In the present day, there are numerous and somewhat conflicting signals. On the bullish end of the spectrum, growth in the United States appears to be picking up and the Fed has been extremely accommodative. However, the economic bears can point to low inflation in Europe (fear of deflation) and rising prices in the United States that may force the Fed’s hand.

Investors Need A Consistent Approach

While we are not brain surgeons, our guess is that surgery involves somewhat of a “flow chart” or “if, then” approach. For example, if bleeding needs to be contained, then there are specific steps to address the unfavorable situation. An investment risk management plan works in a similar manner by having specific and executable strategies that follow an “if the market does this, then we will do this” script. A recent bullish example surfaced on June 8 as observable evidence began to surface in equities favor. The evidence allowed for a prudent “bump up” to the growth side (SPY) of our portfolios.

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How Do You Turn Supply Chain Data into Actionable Information?

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How Do You Turn Supply Chain Data into Actionable Information?

There is a continuum in terms of presentation of data that allows for continuous sophistication in understanding and interpreting data. There are lots of ways to view data, but three that are particularly useful in supply-chain analytics are –Reporting, Scorecarding, and Benchmarking.

The simplest form of looking at data is what we have all seen dozens of times, we call it “Reporting”. Back in the day, reporting was numbers printed out on green bar paper, but today’s business intelligence reports are far more detailed and dynamic than in the past. For instance, a BI report of today displays all the data about transportation providers as usable information, in a scorecard format. Factors such as on-time delivery, freight cost per unit shipped, and transit time are assigned metrics and weighted averages to help users determine how well carriers are performing overall.

Operation managers and executives who want a quick, daily overview of what is happening in their transportation or supply chain network use dashboards to provide information in near real-time to help users understand what is happening within their network, and allows them to make proactive decisions to remedy problems as they occur. Where reporting is really like looking in the rearview mirror, dashboards are used to see what’s going on now, and makes it easier for users to identify trends and exceptions, and to intervene before something goes wrong.

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Leverage cloud financial intelligence systems with AWS

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Leverage cloud financial intelligence systems with AWS

The use of cloud financial intelligence systems, typically from cloud financial management system providers, offers insights into cloud usage. Cloud financial management providers, such as Cloud Cruiser and others, can tell you how effective the cloud platforms are in delivery of services. This includes how each service tracks back to cloud resources that support the services, as well as who is consuming the services and by how much.

However, the true value of these systems is not the simple operational cost data that they are able to gather and report on — it’s the ability to leverage deeper analytics to determine usage patterns, and how those patterns will behave over time. This means you have the ability to better understand how your AWS instances (and other cloud services) were put to use in the past, and more importantly, how they will be leveraged in the future, including the ability to properly estimate cloud resource utilization in the context of complex and widely distributed architectures.

It’s all about the ability to make the most out of data from multiple components of the architecture, not just AWS. Most enterprises that deploy cloud-based systems do so using either public and private clouds within a multi-cloud architecture, which may also be mixed with traditional (or legacy) systems. This makes the financial tracking much more complex, but also much more valuable.

For example, a production management system may leverage core storage services from AWS, session management services from their OpenStack private cloud and core database services using a traditional Oracle database running in their data center. Thus, the cloud financial management system needs to gather information for many different system components, including the private and public clouds , as well as the local database. System owners can use this information to determine the amount of resources consumed, as well as patterns of consumption over time. They have a complete picture as to how a holistic system is functioning, including cloud and non-cloud components.

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10 BPM tools every manager needs to know

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10 BPM tools every manager needs to know

Managing business performance is everyone’s everyday job. You could argue that making sure the business is performing well is THE job of any manager. The challenge is that there are many different tools available to mange business performance, here I want to look at 10 popular BPM tools that every manager should know.

1. Planning and budgeting

This is probably the most widely used BPM approach in businesses by which plan ahead and set budgets for the following year. This is traditionally done annually where organisation set goals for the next 12 months and negotiate a budget to achieve the goals.

2. Key performance indicators (KPIs)

KPIs are the navigation instruments that companies use to understand whether they are on track or veering off the prosperous path.

3. Balanced scorecard (BSC)

The BSC is another popular management tool that has been designed to articulate the strategic objectives of a business and then align performance measures and action plans to these strategic objectives to ensure the strategy gets executed.

4. Benchmarking

Companies use benchmarking to compare their own performance with those of others. Benchmarking is traditionally seen as comparing your own performance with external best-practice performance (where best practice performance can come from outside the sector or industry a company operates in).

5. Business excellence model

The business excellence models come from the quality movement and have been developed by national bodies to assess quality standards in companies. There are various national standards that are often used as the basis for quality awards.

6. Enterprise risk management (ERM)

ERM represents a set of tools and approaches to identify, assess and manage corporate risks. While risk management started its life very much as an internal control back-room function, today it has moved up onto the boardroom agendas of most businesses.

7. Six sigma

The six sigma is a tool that was pioneered by Motorola in the late 1980s and later adopted very successfully by global giants such as General Electric and Honeywell as well as many other companies of various sizes.

8. Performance dashboards

Most organisations today are bursting with data, metrics, reports and analyses. Dashboards provide single-page at-a-glance overviews of areas of performance (eg corporate overview, sales, finance, HR, business units, etc).

9. Customer relationship management (CRM)

Most companies want to make sure they not only have satisfied customers but that they turn their customers into profitable and loyal customers.

10. Performance appraisals

Another popular performance management tools is the performance appraisal. It is basically a tool to assess job performance of individuals in a company.

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3 ways companies can identify climate risks in supply chains

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3 ways companies can identify climate risks in supply chains

Despite the enormous value at stake, climate risks in supply chains can be hard to see because they are so large. The key to getting it right, according to Acclimatise CEO John Firth, who spoke at the BSR Spring Forum last week, is for managers to address supply chain climate risks in terms of existing stressors — such as procurement costs, on-time delivery, water availability and secure energy and infrastructure.
At the Forum, speakers and participants identified three lenses that can help company managers connect climate change to existing supply chain concerns.

Vulnerable regions

The economic costs of climate-related disasters are rising, in large part because business is consolidating in vulnerable regions in the name of market growth and efficiency. It is projected that by 2070, seven of the 10 largest economic hubs will be in the developing world, and assets exposed to floods will rise from 5 percent to 9 percent of global GDP.

Categories at risk

Sustainability professionals also can address climate risk through global supply or procurement categories that are dependent on stable climatic conditions, such as crops, capital-intensive infrastructure and water-intensive operations.

Sustainability destabilizers

Finally, climate change undermines companies’ ability to address material sustainability issues. Many companies are working to improve economic development in the communities in which they operate, yet climate impacts, especially disasters, can depress job markets for years. Or, while it is typical for companies to commit to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the lower water runoff associated with droughts can reduce the capacity of hydropower, the most mature source of renewable power

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The Difference Between Infographics, Instructographics and Data Visualisations

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The Difference Between Infographics, Instructographics and Data Visualisations

Infographic is a well-known term in the marketing world, but what are data stories and instructographics? There is some debate about the differences between them all, especially when it comes to data stories, also known as data visualisations, and infographics. Whilst they hold some similarities, there are some key factors which make them quite distinct from each other.

What are infographics?

Infographics are created to tell a story about something. They can be about almost any topic, from how much plastic the world uses to what makes a successful mobile app; but they are always aimed at a specific audience. Essentially, if you have some interesting facts or data to share, infographics are the most accessible way to do it. They’re clear, look attractive and are therefore very shareable. Although your audience enjoys evergreens and blogs, remember that they often don’t have time to read the whole thing. An infographic provides a neat summary of the information they need to know, so they can be a welcome break from the walls of text they see all day, every day.

How do instructographics differ?

Instructographics usually cover a DIY task, but again, they can cover almost any topic. Just like an infographic, they have the potential to go viral and are made to look as attractive as possible. Although a well-written ‘how to’ guide can cover much more information than an instructographic, they often aren’t as visually appealing or easy to follow.

…and data visualisations?

Data visualisations are much like an unrefined infographic. They present quantifiable information and so are more likely to focus on numbers. In some cases, an entire data set is shown without editing and they rarely take a lot of handiwork to produce. They are much more likely to be generated by computer programs using algorithms, as their overall look isn’t too important.

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Architecting a Machine Learning System for Risk

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Architecting a Machine Learning System for Risk

Online risk mitigation

At Airbnb, we want to build the world’s most trusted community. Guests trust Airbnb to connect them with world-class hosts for unique and memorable travel experiences. Airbnb hosts trust that guests will treat their home with the same care and respect that they would their own. The Airbnb review system helps users find community members who earn this trust through positive interactions with others, and the ecosystem as a whole prospers.

We can mitigate the potential for bad actors to carry out different types of attacks in different ways.

1) Product changes

Many risks can be mitigated through user-facing changes to the product that require additional verification from the user.

2) Anomaly detection

Scripted attacks are often associated with a noticeable increase in some measurable metric over a short period of time.

3) Simple heuristics or a machine learning model based on a number of different variables

Fraudulent actors often exhibit repetitive patterns.

 

Machine Learning Architecture

Different risk vectors can require different architectures. For example, some risk vectors are not time critical, but require computationally intensive techniques to detect. An offline architecture is best suited for this kind of detection. For the purposes of this post, we are focusing on risks requiring realtime or near-realtime action. From a broad perspective, a machine-learning pipeline for these kinds of risk must balance two important goals:

1) The framework must be fast and robust.

That is, we should experience essentially zero downtime and the model scoring framework should provide instant feedback.

2) The framework must be agile.

Since fraud vectors constantly morph, new models and features must be tested and pushed into production quickly.

What do you think about this article? What have you learned from it? If you have any opinions, leave comments below or send us a message.

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Retirement planning: How not to outlive your money

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Retirement planning: How not to outlive your money

Retirement is ultimately an exercise in risk management – and dealing with risk involves an educated understanding of how unforeseen events can sabotage your golden years.

The greatest single hazard is what planners call “longevity risk” – the possibility that you may outlive your money.

Actuaries tell us that a woman who is now 65 can expect to live, on average, to 88, while a man can look forward to reaching nearly 86. Remember, though, that those are averages – about half of retirees will outlive those figures. In fact, if you are now a 50-year-old woman, there is nearly a 10 per cent chance that you will live to celebrate your 100th birthday.

How do you plan for a retirement that may be as long, or longer, than your working life? For the dwindling number of Canadians who are members of defined-benefit plans with automatic cost-of-living adjustments, there’s little to worry about. For most of us, though, there is a lot of risk in planning three decades ahead – especially given two additional hazards.

A good retirement plan should address longevity risk, inflation risk and market risk. Here are the pros and cons of three key risk-management tools:

Annuities

An annuity is essentially a contract with an insurance company, which guarantees to pay you a steady stream of income until the day you die.

Work

Taking a part-time job in the early years of your retirement can make a big difference to your financial picture. Earning even $4,000 a year replaces the income you could reasonably expect to generate from a $100,000 portfolio. It also provides a buffer against unexpected inflation.

Your portfolioare

Many people can achieve big gains from simply adjusting their portfolios to reduce the cost of investing and to ensure the right mix between income producers (like bonds) and more inflation-proof investments (like stocks).

The bottom line

It all sounds very intimidating – but doesn’t have to be. Despite their challenges, Uncle Jim and Aunt Mary never complained, but simply found ways to live on less.

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Why Most People’s Charts & Graphs Look Like Crap

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Why Most People’s Charts & Graphs Look Like Crap

Data visualization is a powerful tool to communicate complex information in an engaging way. By visualizing information, our brains can synthesize and retain content more effectively, increasing its impact. But if data isn’t properly visualized, it can do more damage than good. The wrong presentation can diminish the data’s message or, worse, misrepresent it entirely.

Here are 10 data visualization mistakes you’re probably making and the quick fixes to remedy them.

1) Misordering Pie Segments

Pie charts are some of the most simple visualizations, but they are often over-complicated.

2) Using Non-Solid Lines in a Line Chart

Dashed and dotted lines can be distracting. Instead, use a solid line and colors that are easy to distinguish from each other.

3) Arranging Data Non-Intuitively

Your content should be presented in a logical and intuitive way to guide readers through the data. Order categories alphabetically, sequentially, or by value.

4) Obscuring Your Data

Make sure no data is lost or obstructed by design. For example, use transparency in a standard area chart to make sure the viewer can see all data.

5) Making the Reader Do More Work

Make it as easy as possible to understand data by aiding the reader with graphic elements. For example, add a trendline to a scatterplot to highlight trends.

6) Misrepresenting Data

Makes sure all representations are accurate. For example, bubbles should be scaled according to area, not diameter.

7) Using Different Colors on a Heat Map

Some colors stand out more than others, giving unnecessary weight to that data. Instead, use a single color with varying shades or a spectrum between two analogous colors to show intensity.

8) Making Bars Too Wide or Too Thin

It’s tempting to get creative with your presentation, but keeping things consistent helps your viewer. The space between bars in a bar chart should be ½ bar width.

9) Making it Hard to Compare Data

Comparison is a valuable way to showcase differences, but it’s useless if your viewer can’t easily compare.

10) Using 3D Charts

Though they may look exciting, 3D shapes can distort perception and therefore skew data. Stick with 2D shapes to ensure data is presented accurately.

What was your major problem in creating charts and graphs? How do you find this article? If it is useful, share it out so more people can learn from it. Leave comments or send us a messageif you have any suggestion or opinion.

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