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The January issue of Planning Review contained an article by Bradley T. Gale which described the PIMS Program of SPI. Utilizing a database of strategic information on over one thousand product‐line businesses, the objectives of The PIMS Program according to Gale are “to discover the general ‘laws’ that determine what business strategy, in what kind of competitive environment, produces what profit results,” and “to produce reports for the managers of each business unit which they can use as a basis for decision making.”

To be most useful, your reengineering and benchmarking projects first need to examine the key processes that affect the way your customers perceive quality and value.

Most businessmen believe there is a very strong relationship between high market share and increased profitability. Indeed, this connection is supported by findings from the 3‐year‐old PIMS (Profit Impact of Market Strategy) project, a study of the determinants of profitability in the modern corporation. In a recent MSI Working Paper, Professors Robert D. Buzzell (Harvard Business School) and Bradley T. Gale (University of Massachusetts), and Dr. Ralph G. M. Sultan (Royal Bank of Canada) analyze the PIMS data to show that market share is a major determinant of business profitability. (In an earlier MSI Working Paper, “PIMS: A Breakthrough in Strategic Planning,” PIMS researchers Drs. Sidney Schoeffler, Robert Buzzell, and Donald Heany reported the major study findings and described the PIMS project's objectives, design, and background.)

One hundred and ninety of the world's largest and most diversified companies have added a new capability to their arsenal of planning tools. They have tapped into a new and unique collection of strategic experiences of product‐line businesses now maintained by The Strategic Planning Institute (SPI). Member companies use information derived from this data base as one additional input to:

These specialists in marketing and customer intelligence challenge Don Peppers' and Martha Rogers' reliance on past customer behavior, as suggested in their recent article “A Marketing Paradigm: Share of Customer, Not Market Share” in the March/April 1995 issue of Planning Review.

Most managers equate “quality” just with conformance to technical standards. The more powerful strategic weapon is market perceived quality. Here's how to measure it and why it's such a potent weapon.

An ancient management axiom holds that, “If it ain't measured, it ain't managed.” A more topical management axiom says, “The mission of business is to manage for increased shareholder value.” Putting ancient and topical together, we deduce that, “Unless wealth is measured, business is not performing its mission.” Many managers believe this. Therefore one might expect the measurement of wealth to be a routine exercise in business accounting. It is not.

Over the past 20 years it has become increasingly clear that sound business strategy is the key to good financial performance. Senior managers in diversified companies have long known from experience that top‐notch business resources — modern equipment, state‐of‐the‐art technology, a motivated workforce — can be wasted in the service of competitively unrealistic business goals. But it is only in recent years that the principles of effective competitive strategy have begun to be soundly studied and codified.

Cross‐Sectional vs. Time‐Series Analysis. The strategic position of a business is not immutable. It can be altered by external changes in the market it serves, the technology it uses or by a conscious strategic choice. When such changes do occur, a business's own historical experience may be a poor basis for predicting what will happen next. If a planning tool is based solely on the experience of a single business, something may change, causing the time‐series model to fall apart.

Power brands like Perdue Farm's Oven Staffer chickens and Gillette's Sensor razor achieve superior profitability by convincing customers that they offer superior quality says a noted analyst of the data linking strategy and performance. His conclusions are based on a review of 25 years of confidential data from major U.S. corporations. His insights have important implications for corporate strategy and should provoke a review of business operations in many firms.