R-pM comes from Business Organization and Management Systems Experience

R-pM was conceived over many business change projects and developed to eliminate business management problems

We get contacts and inquiries wanting to know how Result-performance Management (R-pM) evolved and wanting assurances of the authenticity of R-pM as the only way to learn, organize, and manage the actual enterprise business.

R-pM is the outgrowth of over 30 years of experience I gained as a management consultant, primarily in business organization and management to apply information technology. On every project I had to work around unsolvable problems like reorganizations, alignment of solutions, intangible assets, unknown costs and value, investment planning through guesses at benefits, project management obstacles, inability to measure return on investments, unknown capital and business worth, mixing capital solutions and results together in business performance and process management, lack of definition and knowledge of business commonalities to apply services and solutions, lack of a business framework to scope and manage improvements, and on and on. These same problems still face every manager and management consultant today.

The fundamentals of R-pM were put into practice in information system and other capital solution designs, implementation of solutions to improve result value, and followup to manage result improvement. They were also used to manage capital development projects as a business with assigned project capital utilized as solutions to develop and implement new business capital solutions as projects results to know development costs to compare to result value added to improved business results.

I could see the enormous benefits in organizing the complete business as capital utilized in performance to produce value in results to manage both operations and development. I decided to put my ideas for organizing the business and eliminating unsolvable problems into practice after retiring from active management consulting. My colleagues and I organized Result-performance Management Limited and started the formal development of Result-performance Management in 2002. Now, after years of investment and work, R-pM as is available to organize and manage and business. R-pM development and improvement will continue as long as business continues.

Results were first defined as economic outputs produced by information systems

Results were first defined, while designing computer systems in the late 1960s. At that time, information systems were custom designed working back from the required system outputs to determine the needed inputs. I felt the objective of new systems must be to improve the business, not just convert the manual process. In order to add value to the business, the analysis had to include the full man-machine system starting with the required business outputs and working back to the business inputs. These business inputs and outputs are called results in R-pM.

Good business systems improved specific results to return the investment and developed specific solutions to manage costs

Enterprises do not organize or manage based on results, so each system required the separate identification and analysis of results. A good man-machine system must design the use of business, system, assets, human, and management capital in performance to produce specific output results. One system design tool showed the full business system as a matrix of the results to be produced, and the system, process, human, and other capital solutions needed for performance to produce specific business results. This is a structure of the business to be supported by the system. From then on, I always studied the business in terms of output results to be produced and capital solutions needed to be utilized in performance to produce results.

It was difficult to measure the cost and benefits of the business system investment. The benefits were in improvements and value added to results, but only a few results were managed, as separate entities like products and sales. Costs were lumped as computer equipment, software, and other project costs. Costs were needed by the specific solutions developed and utilized to be charged to result value. Most tangible capital was administered by a function that resisted measuring and managing capital in utilization. The IT Department was only interested making their hardware and software available. Gaining benefit from applications was “up to the users”. So there was no way to get the cost of performance to relate to the value of results, and determine return on investment.

Performance solutions were never managed properly as capital by those with the capability

Another problem was that enterprises made large investments in capital, but never defined the capital as specific solutions to be managed for good utilization or to measure the return on investment. The defined capital, such as fixed assets, was under administration and not managed, and much high-worth capital was labeled as “intangible assets”. Advanced solutions and information capital required organization of special units to provide user solutions and support.

Over the years, as users took over more processing, it became imperative that system processing be integrated into the business process, and managed as business capital, while computer and networks operation should be integrated as facility capital with communications. But, IT wants to keep development and application processing separate from the business and together with IT strategy, information processing, and equipment operation to be managed as “technology” rather than as capital. This mixture of diverse capital under the heading “Information Technology” has produced many well-known problems, such as business change held up in IT backlogs and the CIO problem.

Organization studies concentrated on politics and organizing people, rather than organizing the business

The same problem arose in organization studies, where it became important to organize the business by the strategic results to be produced, and then give business units and people roles and responsibilities to operate the business to produce specific results. The business organization must be a professionally-managed business capital solution, rather than an arbitrary structure. Generally, management resisted defining strategic results, and focused on politics and organizing units and people by commonly-used functions and titles.

It became clear that persistent business problems arose from the failure to organize and manage the business

Over the years, it became clearer that the conventional 20^th century structures used to organize and manage the enterprise created many persistent and unsolvable problems. 20th century management has been a dead-end. Problems are unsolvable because they can never be solved by laying more structures over the business as continues to be the practice today. Management consultants and business change professionals contrive new structures to work around the problems with old structures.

The main problem is the failure to organize the business. Contrived organization structures laid over the business hide actual business operations, and prevent organizing and managing the business as one structure to integrate business organization, planning, direction, control, and reporting.

The actual business organization comes from simple analysis

Simple analysis shows that business consists of only two components; 1) specific results required for business success as one integral set of economic outputs covering the complete business, and 2) the capital invested in the business as one integral set of specific solutions needed to produce specific results. There is a need for a third performance component to organize the business by deploying specific capital solutions to produce specific results with any rules and exceptions.

These concepts of business organization were employed successfully in many management consulting projects both to acquire, develop, or implement specific solutions that increased the value of specific business results and to manage projects as a business by managing project capital to implement new business capital solutions as project results. The significant benefits to both the business and the project were obvious to me.

This led to the conclusion that the only right away to manage the enterprise was to organize and manage the business to utilize capital investments as solutions in performance to produce value in results. All enterprise organization and management must be based on one current business structure and one strategic business structure to plan future results and the capital solutions needed. Capital must be organized based on the human capabilities required to develop and support the capital and provide solutions. One consistent set of 21^st Century Management conventions, definitions, and standards is needed to facilitate business education and learning, business collaboration, outsourcing, packaged capital solutions, and business and management services that can be applied to any business.

Result-performance Management has been developed to organize the business for 21^st Century Management

The solution to define, organize, and manage the business is available today as Result-performance Management (R-pM). R-pM defines, organizes, and manages the business as “investments in capital as solutions of worth utilized for costs and effectiveness of performance to produce value and quality in results”. R-pM can be implemented on any general ledger system with relationship capabilities or relational database management system. R-pM is implemented by learning the actual business. A business structure is defined for part of the business and then expanded as the rest of the business is learned. Once the business is learned and organized, business units and human capital are deployed to be responsible for specific results and actual business data is collected and utilized. Existing structures, workloads, and problems are removed when the functionality is provided routinely by R-pM. The current and strategic business structures then are used for all organization, planning, direction, control, reporting, and corporate governance.

The intention is to make R-pM available at a nominal cost so that all enterprises around the world can take advantage and gain benefit.  R-pM is supported by The R-pM Toolkit, which includes free updates as R-pM and 21^st Century Management conventions evolve.  Result-performance Management.com provides the details and downloads.