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What Are Initiatives?
Initiatives are time-specific tasks or projects that are necessary to achieve objectives. As such, you can use initiatives that support objectives as milestones as they reflect
progress toward strategy targets. For example to implement an objective called Improve Customer Satisfaction, you might create these initiatives:
■
Create online feedback forum
■
Form response team Generally, an initiative supports multiple objectives.
When you create an initiative, you assign it KPIs that are to be used to measure its progress. For more information on KPIs, see
Chapter 11, Using KPIs and KPI Watchlists.
Initiatives that you create are displayed hierarchically in the Initiatives pane
. The root initiative represents all the initiatives that you implement to achieve objectives
and goals. The KPIs that are assigned to an initiative are displayed below the initiative in the Initiatives pane.
The Initiatives pane also shows the statuses of initiatives and KPIs using the appropriate colors and icons that you specified for assessment mappings. For more
information on assessment mappings, see Defining Assessment Mappings for
Scorecards .
For information on creating initiatives, see Creating Initiatives
.
Creating Initiatives
You can create one or more initiatives. Initiatives that you create should be measurable using KPIs and strategically relevant.
For more information about initiatives, see What Are Initiatives?
To create an initiative: 1.
Edit the scorecard for which you want to create an initiative. For information, see Opening or Editing Scorecards
.
2.
In the Initiatives pane
:
■
If the initiative that you want to create can be independently implemented, then select the root initiative.
■
If the initiative that you want to create is required to meet a higher-level initiative, then select the higher-level initiative.
3. Click the Create Initiative toolbar button or right-click and select Create
Initiative .
The Scorecard editor: Initiative Details tab
is displayed.
4.
Highlight the default initiative name in the top left corner of the tab and enter a new name for the initiative.
5. In the Description field, enter a description of the initiative.
6.
Specify the analytic information including the KPIs to be used to measure the progress of the initiative by completing the
Analytics pane . For information, see
Completing the Analytics Pane for Objectives or Initiatives .
7.
Specify the collaboration information by completing the Collaboration pane
as follows:
Scorecarding 12-15
a. optional Add comments by clicking the Add Comment button to display the
Add Comment dialog . See
About Comments .
b. Specify the business owner that users can contact by clicking the Set User
button to display the Select Business Owner dialog
. By default, the business owner is the creator of the scorecard.
c. optional Add related documents by clicking the New Row button in the
Related Documents toolbar to display the New Related Document dialog
. Also see
Related Documents area .
d. optional Add the key resources by clicking the New Row button in the Key
Resources toolbar to display the Key Resource dialog
.
8.
In the Related Items pane
, add one or more objectives that require this initiative in order to succeed.
To add an objective, drag the objective from the Strategy pane
and drop it in the
Objectives for this Initiative table.
The Initiative Linkage dialog
is displayed, where you specify how closely the initiative and the objective are related and whether changes to the values in this
initiative have a direct or inverse impact on this objective.
9. Click Save.
Understanding Initiative or Objective Performance Assessment
Oracle Business Intelligence assesses the performance of an initiative or objective by aggregating the assessments of its children. In the process, it uses:
■
Scorecard assessment mappings that you define. See About Assessment
Mappings .
■
Assessment formulas such as Weighted or Best Case assigned to all objectives and initiatives. The assessment formulas include:
– Worst case
— Specifies that the status of the worst performing child KPI or objective is to be used.
– Best case
— Specifies that the status of the best performing child KPI or objective is to be used.
– Most Frequent Worst Case
— Specifies that, if half the child KPIs and objectives have high performance and half have low performance, then use the
status of the worst performing child KPI or objective.
– Most Frequent Best Case
— Specifies that, if half the child KPIs and objectives have high performance and half have low performance, then use the
status of the best performing child KPI or objective.
– Weighted
— Specifies to use a weighted average based on the weights you have assigned to the child KPIs and objectives. See
Assigning Weights to Child Objectives, Initiatives and KPIs
. You assign assessment formulas when you create an objective or initiative. For
how to create an objective or initiative, see Creating Objectives
or Creating
Initiatives .
■
Weights that you assign to child initiatives, objectives, and KPIs but only if the parent’s assessment rule is set to Weighted to identify the extent to which each
child contributes to the overall performance of the parent. See Assigning Weights
to Child Objectives, Initiatives and KPIs .
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For examples of performance assessments, see Example of Determining the
Performance Assessment for an Objective Based on Child Objectives and
Example of Determining the Performance Assessment for an Objective Based on a Child KPI
.
About Assessment Mappings
Assessment mappings are the score thresholds and assessment ranges that Oracle Business Intelligence uses to assess the performance of objectives and initiatives.
Oracle Business Intelligence uses these score thresholds and assessment ranges to:
■
Determine the status and score of an objective or initiative based on the aggregation of the assessments of its children.
■
Map the KPI scores of KPIs that are used to measure the progress of initiatives and objectives to scorecard scores so that they can be used to measure the performance
of the objectives or initiatives.
Figure 12–1 shows score thresholds and assessment ranges that specify that a score
from 0 to 33 would fall in the Critical assessment range, a score from 34 to 66, would fall in the Warning assessment range, and a score from 67 to 100, would fall in the OK
assessment range.
Figure 12–1 Example of Assessment Mappings for a Scorecard
For more information on initiative and objective performance assessment, see Understanding Initiative or Objective Performance Assessment
. For how to define assessment mappings, see
Defining Assessment Mappings for Scorecards
.
Example of Determining the Performance Assessment for an Objective Based on Child Objectives
Suppose the following about an objective named Improve Financial Results:
■
It has an assessment rule of Worst Case.
Note: If the assessment formula of an objective or initiative is Best
Case, Worst Case, Most Frequent Worst Case, or Most Frequent Best Case, the score will be one of the defined score thresholds, for
example, 0, 33, or 66. If the assessment formula is Weighted, the score is computed based on the weights assigned to the children.
Scorecarding 12-17
■
The assessment mappings defined for the scorecard that contains it are the same as those in
Figure 12–1 .
■
It has the following two child objectives:
– Increase Sales, whose status is Critical and score is 0.
– Reduce Cost, whose status is Warning and score is 50.
In this case, the performance assessment of the Improve Financial Results objective would the status and score of the child with the worst status and score, that is, Increase
Sales, which has a scorecard status of Critical and a score of 0.
Example of Determining the Performance Assessment for an Objective Based on a Child KPI
Suppose the following about an objective named Enhance Stockholder Satisfaction:
■
It has an assessment formula of Best Case.
■
The assessment mappings defined for the scorecard that contains it are the same as those in
Figure 12–1 .
■
It has a child KPI named Revenue KPI, whose scorecard status is OK and score is 66.
Note that Revenue KPI has a KPI status of 4 Stars and score of 80 based on the following KPI thresholds and scores:
Figure 12–2 KPI States for Revenue KPI
When Revenue KPI was added to the Enhance Stockholder Satisfaction objective, Oracle Business Intelligence mapped the KPI score to a scorecard score so that it
could be used to measure the performance of the objective. Since the KPI score of
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80 fell in the scorecard assessment range of 66 to 100, it mapped to a scorecard score of 66 and status of OK.
In this case, the performance assessment of the Enhanced Stockholder Satisfaction objective would be the status and score of the child with the best status and score, that
is, Revenue KPI in this case the only child, which has a scorecard status of OK and a score of 66.
Defining Assessment Mappings for Scorecards
You use the Settings dialog: Assessment Mappings tab
to define the assessment mappings for a scorecard.
For more information on initiative and objective performance assessment, see Understanding Initiative or Objective Performance Assessment
.
To define assessment mappings: 1.
Edit the scorecard for which you want to define assessment mappings. For information, see
Opening or Editing Scorecards .
2. Click the Scorecard Settings toolbar button in the Scorecard editor.
