PurposeOver the past few years, developments in business analytics have provided strategic planners with promising instruments for dealing with turbulent environments. This study aims to reveal whether or not the application of business analytics in strategic planning contributes to better company performance, and to formulate recommendations on how to integrate business analytics in companies' performance management systems.Design/methodology/approachBased on a survey conducted with 89 respondents from high‐technology firms, a group comparison between firms with strong performance and those with weak performance reveals significant differences between the two groups' strategic planning processes and application of business analytics.FindingsThe empirical survey's results show that better‐performing companies are characterized by a more sophisticated analytical planning process. Lower‐performing firms acknowledge this competitive advantage. Based on these findings, the authors develop recommendations on how to integrate business analytics in performance management contexts.Research limitationsThe empirical study's results are limited to high‐technology industries in the cultural setting of Germany.Practical implicationsThe empirical results emphasize the competitive advantage gained by applying business analytics. The recommendations concerning analytical performance management should help managers to sensibly integrate the analytical toolbox in performance management contexts.Originality/valueThis paper combines insights on the best usage of business analytics from the perspective of strategic planning experts, with recommendations for the integration of business analytics into the performance management framework from an academic perspective.

In recent years, companies have been changing their innovation strategies, as they have realized that original new products can offer a major competitive advantage. Therefore, many companies are focusing on a more closely managed productinnovation process, and have consequently increased their use of performancemanagement frameworks. By doing so, such companies hope to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their new-product-development activities. Within the performance-management framework, the use of innovation metrics plays an important and beneficial role. For this reason, the present paper investigates the relationship between the design of innovation performance management frameworks and the actual utilization of information obtained from the implemented innovation metrics. We collected data from 133 technology-intensive companies and employed structural equation modeling for empirical analysis. This method allowed us to determine which design factors positively affect the extent to which managers conceptually use innovation metrics. In particular, we investigated how the balance, coherence, adaption, and user know-how of innovation metrics relate to their conceptual use. Our results suggest that balance and user know-how of the metrics improve conceptual use of the performance measures, whereas no effect can be observed regarding coherence and adaption of the metrics. Thus, it seems highly advisable for firms