Take it or leave it. Information age businesses are focused on ever smaller market niches, rather than mass markets. They use a different type of labor force, with a different organizational structure, than do industrial age businesses. This type of relationship, of course, depends upon gathering as much information about each customer as possible, and turning it into knowledge. The business processes which must support it are very different in nature, and must be measured against an entirely different kind of metric.
Production is the objective of industrial age companies.
Increasing production, at ever lower costs, no matter what. A focus on production causes the resources needed for production to be depleted. The information age business is driven by its knowledge resources, which must grow, rather than be depleted. Its focus, therefore, has to be on effectiveness, a proper balance between these two objectives. Business Process Metrics Business process metrics are either operational or structural.