Redstone Foods is a candy wholesaler in the southeast region of the United States. The company has not kept track of its performance metrics in the past. They are now considering instituting a Key Performance Indicator process to improve operations. Your task is to analyze the company’s market and develop a mockup of a KPI dashboard for its operational activities.
Step #1 – Determine which market quadrant best describes Redstone Foods’ operations. (Hint, the market quadrants are provided in the reading text (mature, steady, developing, or growth). You are free to research other data sources to include in your data analysis. You will need to support your market assessment with evidence in your analysis document.
Step #2 – Use your market assessment to determine the mix of performance criteria. The indicated reading provides a diagram to help you determine these criteria based on your market assessment. The diagram is titled, “Market Quadrants Require a Different Mix of Performance.” The reading also provides metrics suggestions for you to consider in the text and in the diagram titled, “Performance Mesures in the Four Categories.” (Hint) – Redstone Foods is a “build to stock” company. Keep this in mind as you are selecting performance metrics. You are developing key performance metrics for the operational audience level.
Step #3 – Develop a dashboard mockup of your KPIs. The reading provides some examples, but your mockup can not replicate or duplicate what the text has provided. You are free to recommend the KPIs in the text, but you must explain and justify using the KPIs you choose. In other words, describe how the metrics you select will contribute to optimal performance. You are creating a “mockup” dashboard, meaning you will not have actual data to populate the dashboard, but you should create an example dashboard with made-up data.
Step #4 – Consolidate your analysis into one document to include the following sections:
• Title Page – A title page to include the following:
o {your name]
o Redstone Foods Key Performance Indicators Proposal
• Executive Summary – An executive summary is designed primarily to serve the person who initially does not intend to read the entire report. It states the main points of each section and summarizes results, conclusions, and recommendations. Executive summaries are ideally suited to the needs of readers who are seeking advice about a decision or a course of action. These summaries are called executive summaries because some decision-makers rely wholly upon their advisors to read and evaluate the rest of the report. For this project, the Executive Summary should concentrate on summarizing the problem, conclusions, and recommendations. Information on writing executive summaries is included as one of the readings in D2L for this module.
• Introduction - Introduce your assessment. Provide a purpose for the assessment (i.e., why are you doing this assessment?)
• Market Assessment – Provide your market assessment with a clear statement of which quadrant the company is operating and evidence to support your evaluation. The quadrants are provided in the module reading. You need to justify your assessment with information.
• Proposed Key Performance Indicators – Select and describe the proposed key performance indicators you are recommending. Define and discuss each metric and provide content on how the KPI will measure key performance for the company.
• Dashboard Mockup – Provide a diagram with a mockup of your proposed dashboard and explain why you propose the design. The diagram must be embedded in your Word document and not in a separate document. Some items to discuss in your narrative:
o How will this mockup assist operational managers in their operational activities?
o Will the KPI’s elicit the behavior that we want? For instance, if we want to improve productivity, then a KPI measuring incoming orders will not have any impact unless paired with a metric measuring output.
o Remember, every KPI dashboard measurement must have a target or threshold to measure against indicated in the dashboard.
Hint – Use Google to search KPI dashboards and review the images. There are great examples provided. You can copy any of these images. You do not need to create a dashboard from scratch with data. For example, one possibility is the following
You can cut and paste portions of different dashboard images to meet your purposes. Be creative and propose a useful KPI dashboard indicating the metrics you suggest.