Following are brief definitions of terms typically associated with performance improvement and strategic management:

• Activity Based Costing A cost planning system that combines tasks into significant activities allowing cost to be assigned efficiently.
• Benchmark An achievement that is a recognized and measurable standard of excellence.
• Benchmarking The process of obtaining the benchmarks, best practices, and enablers from the best-in-class and applying them.
• Best–in-Class Organizations recognized as top performers in a given subject area.
• Best Practices Those practices used by the best-in-class that contribute most to their performance.
• Break-Even Time The time from the start of an innovation until the product profit equals its investment and development costs.
• Time-to-market The total development time from the start of the development phase to the manufacturing release.
• Change Curve A pattern of organizational behavior which can be identified and used to manage the change process.
• Cost-Time Management A technology developed by the Westinghouse Productivity and Quality Center to measure process cost, cycle time and value-added activity.
• Customer Relationship Managemenrt Those aspects of a business strategy which relate to techniques and methods for attracting and retaining customers
• Cycle Time The total (elapsed) time required to perform an activity or process.
• Enablers Those characteristics of the best-in-class that enable them to effectively apply the best practices and less, achieve measurable benchmark performance.
• Intellectual Capital Consists of indirect assets – organizational knowledge, customer satisfaction, product innovation, employee morale, patents, and trademarks – that never appear in its financial reports.
• Invisible Inventory The investment and knowledge and information that fuels white-collar operations.
• Marketing  The art of identifying and understanding customer needs and coming up with solutions that satisfy them.
• On-Time Delivery Delivering the product or service on or before the promised date.
• Organization Profiling A technology which analyses an organizations work processes and activities across the enterprise. Work profiles quantify employee allocations across product lines, and depict their true costs; measures value-added, essential and non-essential activity; level of difficulty; and span of control to target areas for dramatic improvement.
• Paradigm The framework, model or pattern which influences our perceptions and affects our judgment and decision making.
• Pareto Principle 80 percent of results flow from just 20 percent of our efforts.
• Span of Control  The ratio of management to subordinates.
• Time Elasticity of Demand The relation between changes in a product or services delivery time and changes in customer demand and effects on what the customer is willing to pay for.
• Value-Added Activity Activities which increase the product or services from a customers point of view.