Optimum Sales – The metric we DO NOT want
A few years ago, together with the computer science department of the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya (UPC), we developed, among other tools, two statistical models that we believed would provide companies with information that could be of immense value for optimizing their sponsorship investments and the internal competitiveness of their companies.
In the commercial launch of both products, we realized that the initial premise we started with was wrong; we believed that in large organizations, everything from all business areas was to be measured, and that’s not really the case.
These two tools precisely measure two areas that we considered could bring improvements in investments and productivity to organizations through continuous improvement.
One of them measures the actual return on investments made in sponsorships, and the other measures the intellectual capital of companies in economic terms.
Intellectually, obtaining reliable measurements in these two areas seemed very interesting to our potential clients, and they showed interest in understanding the methodology and the output of information. The difficulty arose when we proposed testing it in their organizations; the response was always the same, No, because if we obtain undesirable results, we will face problems that go beyond operational improvement.
When we evaluated the commercial launch, an absolute failure, we reached three basic conclusions.
The first, investments in sponsorships do not always have a business logic; they often have a logic of passion or social commitment from the CEO, and the marketing teams try to justify this investment.
The second, measuring the intellectual capital of organizations can create dissonances, both excess and deficiency, and in both cases, it has extraordinary economic repercussions. In the first case, if the measured value of intellectual capital exceeds the paid compensations, it can lead to a claim for alignment from the professionals, and in the second case, if a value lower than the paid compensations is delivered, it can cause a significant restructuring within the company.
The third conclusion, and the one that surprised us the most, is that in some management areas having too much information is uncomfortable, as it forces people to make difficult decisions that are better left unaddressed.
It is possible that these tools, at the time we launched them, were too sophisticated, innovative, and disruptive, but… Saying NO to efficiency always means managing while losing competitiveness.
