Performance management and control systems

While much is written and taught about strategy development, only few firms and academic courses are focused on strategy implementation and control. The aim of the course is to illustrate the importance of Performance Management and Control Systems (PMCSs) in order to guarantee the success of a company.
PMCSs are essential tools used by managers to achieve their desired profit goal and strategies. In fact, these systems allow managers to balance different tensions between: i) profit, growth and control; ii) short-term versus long-term performance; iii) expectations of different stakeholders; iv) opportunities and attention; v) and the different motives of human behavior.
Students will first address why managers rely on PMCSs to implement their strategy, which are the main tools and analysis in order to build a successful strategy, how managers organize businesses to create competitive advantage, how they use information for monitoring business processes and ensure the right kind of control. The focus will then move on the primary tools that managers use to describe their business strategy in economic terms (profit plans), the process of profit planning, how to use variances to understand business performance and to identify future opportunities, and how to build a balanced scorecard as a tool to translate company strategy into actionable goals and measures. Finally, the students will address the four main levers of control to implement strategy and manage strategic uncertainties, identifying and manage strategic risks, and align performance goals and incentives.

At the end of the course student will be able to:
· gain knowledge about the role and functioning of performance management and control systems for a successful strategy;
· identify the variables for the design of the PMSs in order to monitor results, to assign financial responsibilities and to communicate to stakeholders;
· understand the different phases of Performance Management cycle and the related tools and techniques in order to influence people's behaviors and support strategy execution;
· apply tools and techniques for strategic control and performance measurement such as: key performance indicators (KPIs), performance evaluation, strategic profitability analysis, balanced scorecards, results-based incentive systems, etc.
· develop capacity to calculate KPIs (both financial and not financial indicators) and analyze the performance of a company, using also historical trends and benchmarking with peers and industry.