Between the 18th – 19th of November, 2019, the University of Padua, Italy, co-hosted in partnership with the Performance Management Association (PMA), the Performance Measurement and Management In Industry 4.0 Symposium. The KPI Institute was honoured to be invited and participate in the event, having been represented by Adrian Brudan, General Manager for the EMEA Region.

The symposium gathered scholars, consultants and practitioners from all over the globe, to focus their discussion, share their experiences and research findings on all of the upcoming industry challenges faced by the 21st century’s companies, as they delve deeper in what is known today as the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

For the past years, the business world has seen the rise of numerous new technological developments: Advanced Manufacturing, Additive Manufacturing, Augmented Reality, Big Data Analytics, Cloud, Cyber Security, Horizontal and Vertical integration, Industrial Internet of Things, Simulations. Organizations around the world are trying to keep up with these trends and it is becoming painstakingly clear that many are faltering in their performance measurement and management practices.

The KPI Institute, represented by Adrian Brudan, GM of the company and Ph.D. student at The West University, in Timisoara, contributed to the discussions with two research studies:

• Performance Management & Measurement Challenges at the Dawn of a New Technological (R)Evolution and
• Performance Management Maturity Model: Role for Improving Decision-Making in a Digitized World.

The first research study conducted by Adrian – Performance Management & Measurement Challenges at the Dawn of a New Technological (R)Evolution, features research carried out over a period of 5 years, with inputs received from participants that attended 199 certification programs in the field of performance management and measurement organized by The KPI Institute, in both open and in-house formats.

The programs were delivered in 48 cities, from 34 countries, on 6 continents. There were 3112 participants who took part in discussions which generated all of the data collected, representing 741 organizations, from 29 diverse industries, with an average of 16 participants per program/discussion.

The study’s central premise revolved around the main challenges that organizations highlight as being key underperformance factors when it comes to performance measurement & management. Each of these main factors represents a compilation of several sub-factors, which together end up resulting in an overarching issue for the company.

The findings reflect that organizations encounter as many challenges as per the number of categories of sub-clusters identified in the study, which led to the development of its main categories. The challenges reflect both technical issues with the concepts of KPI selection, standardization and activation, as well as more generic challenges that pertain to matters such as system deployment, maintenance and maturity due to lack of proper buy-in and nurturing of a performance-driven culture.

The second research study – Performance Management Maturity Model: Role for Improving Decision-Making in a Digitized World, focused on bringing to the fore all of the field-related research work and knowledge, gathered in the last 10 years, under the coordination of Adrian Brudan, GM of the Global Performance Audit Unit – GPA Unit, the strategy and performance audit division of The KPI Institute. Its purpose is to provide integrated strategy and performance management systems assessment solutions through rigorous research, education and analysis.

The GPA Unit developed the Performance Maturity Model Framework, in order to assess the complexity of an institution’s organizational capabilities. The framework relies on approximately 300 assessment parameters, grouped under 5 major areas of organizational performance improvement that reflect best practices in the field.

The Performance Measurement and Management In Industry 4.0 Symposium was a most insightful and inspiring experience. With each year, every new edition brings forth greater and more novel ideas, signaling that the way to deal with today’s recurrent performance challenges does have a one-size fits all solution, but multiple ways to reach the end goal. The symposium acts as a platform for establishing links between research groups with complementary activities, and an opportunity to share experiences with the business world.

We are honoured and proud to have been a part of this event and look forward to its future editions!