The methodology consists of two primary components; an initial structured interview using a detailed survey entitled “Performance Measures and Decisions Survey”, followed by an expert workshop entitled “Performance Orientated
Decisions in the Irish Enterprise”. The structured interview using a detailed survey will for the purposes of this document be referred to as a survey. Surveys are seen to be the traditional method of gathering quantitative information from SMEs in the pursuit of research. However, this traditional method was insufficient in the pursuit of performance measures or decision-making scenarios due to the large volume of information. Five hundred and sixty eight performance measures were identified through literature review for use within the survey. At no point in the process were the measures relating to the marketing functions highlighted above any other department within the organisation. The survey examines the
performance measures by asking the owner-managers and practitioners to indicate the performance measures, which they consider vital to their organisation at an operational level. This was carried out in fifty companies both nationally and
internationally, with owner-managers, company heads and/or company founders. The findings were subsequently compiled in order of importance. However, it was not possible to successfully apply the granularity necessary in the questioning in order to extract a definitive group of top measures.