^The APQC Blog

2015 is shaping up to be one of the heaviest deal-making years to date. The first quarter of 2015 was the strongest opening three-month period for worldwide mergers and acquisitions since 2007. What’s behind this uptick in M&A activity? The economy isn’t in recession but it isn’t booming either. Organic growth is a tall order in this environment, so companies are looking to grow through M&A.

I have a secret:I’ve got the worst sense of direction of anyone I've ever known.

Business Performance Innovation Network (BPI) in partnership with Tech Mahindra produced a research report based on an online survey of more than 250 enterprise business leaders and innovators across North America, Europe, and Asia. APQC recently interviewed Dave Murray, director of thought leadership at BPI, and Lakshmanan Chidambaram, senior vice president of North American operations at Tech Mahindra.

Elissa Tucker, my APQC colleague, and I recently gave a presentation to a webinar audience organized by www.proformative.com. Our topic: APQC research suggests that that there is a shrinking pipeline of entry-level finance and accounting talent—and too many senior finance leaders don’t recognize this as a potential crisis. Not only is there a lack of awareness, there is a lack of knowledge about practical interventions that could be deployed now to mitigate the negative consequences that loom over the horizon.

What will supply chain functions focus on in the next three years? As part of our recent survey on supply chain management trends, APQC asked organizations to indicate whether six elements would be a priority for them in the next three years. As the following infographic shows, more than half of the respondents will be engaging in benchmarking in the near future. This indicates a shift from their current focus on building customer relationships.

Recently, I was asked to find organizations with CKOs (Chief Knowledge Officer). It occurred to me that I haven’t really heard of one in recent memory. So why is that? While I don’t have a definitive answer, I have a suspicion (a hope really): not only are CKOs not needed, we shouldn’t want them. That may seem like an outlandish statement from someone who loves knowledge management, but there is a very good reason why we shouldn’t lament the demise of the CKO. 

Transform to Better Perform is a new global thought leadership initiative developed by the Business Performance Innovation Network (BPI) in partnership with Dimension Data.

APQC is conducting research on why big companies are squeezing their small suppliers by paying invoices later and later. Nick Araco, CEO and Co-founder of The CFO Alliance, a private community of finance leaders, told APQC that small and medium-sized CFOs “are getting frustrated. They are being backed into a corner.”  

Beatrice Le Moing, Knowledge Management Program Manager at Schneider Electric, explains how to make a lessons learned KM program create real value for a company.

If you would like to view more interviews with breakout speakers from APQC’s 2015 KM Conference you can view the entire playlist at our YouTube Channel.

As we started to prepare for 2015, APQC surveyed over 300 business excellence practitioners to understand their common challenges and priorities for upcoming year, including organizational performance management. What we found was that most organizations continue to struggle with establishing a performance culture and ensuring they are using the “right” set of measures. This infographic explores the top challenges in performance management and provides some simple tips for addressing them.