A lot of things were happening with our customers. Our business, performance management, becomes a customer loyalty issue.

We're trying to make it easy and cost-effective. If you're setting up an e-business or a supply-chain thing, all the pieces have to work.

[Microsoft has] built loyalty at the end-user level, including upper management, ... That works for a while in the early stages of a product, but after a couple of years the blush fades from the rose. It's reality versus marketing.

All of the company's business lines have put in a solid performance. But there might be some disappointment that this did not affect the bottom line more.

This alliance has significant strategic benefits for any organization pursuing competency-based performance management. The set of competencies that a company chooses to measure and reward is a strategic business tool. Competencies help align individual objectives to strategy – and employee performance management makes sure the strategy gets executed.

IT metrics need to evolve to something that matters to the business audience; at the same time that “business sentiment” needs to get put into something more tangible.