Performance measurement is on the agenda. New reports and articles on the topic have been appearing at a rate of one every five hours of every working day since 1994. A search of the World Wide Web reveals over 170,000 sites dedicated to it. In 1996, one new book on the subject appeared every two weeks in the US alone. Since 1994 Business Intelligence, a professional conference organising company based in the UK, has organised some 90 separate events on business performance measurement (BPM). Some 2,700 delegates from over 1,400 different firms attended these conferences. In terms of delegate fees alone, Business Intelligence has accrued over $5 million. Add to this, the revenues received by other conference organisers, publishers, market research firms, software vendors and consultants and it is clear that business performance measurement is a multi-million dollar industry.

Like many multi-million dollar industries developments are rapid. Recent years have seen the introduction of new methods of measurement, such as activity-based costing, throughput accounting and shareholder value analysis. New measurement frameworks, most notably the balanced scorecard and the business excellence model, have taken the business community by storm. Data collected by the US research firm, Gartner, suggest that 70% of firms will be using balanced scorecards to measure business performance by the end of 2000. Other data, such as that collected by the US consulting firm Towers Perrin, indicate that the majority of firms have introduced their balanced scorecards during the last five years.