From 8 competing goal systems to one North Star — creating a planning process that connects ambition, execution and performance steering

Until the end of 2024, BARMER Marketing worked with eight partly competing goal systems. This led to more than 50 tactical goals, high complexity and low acceptance. A further shortcoming was the lack of hierarchy and of a link to the corporate goals.

To create a goal system that connects business results, the customer and market perspective, corporate goals and measures — and that is easy to apply day to day — the eight systems were transferred into one North Star goal system. Strategic and tactical goals were developed, and their essence formed the North Star: one metric that shows the course.

Finally, all goals were quantified to ensure measurability and operational feasibility.

Building on the new goal system, a moderated strategic dialogue was held with all relevant departments to reflect on the experience of 2024 and to set priorities for 2025 from a market, customer and statutory health insurance perspective.

In a first iteration, this resulted in a plan of measures, budget and resources for 2025, which was revised several times and specifically optimised for its impact on the target picture.

Finally, metrics were defined and made available in a dashboard to enable ongoing performance tracking and course corrections during the year.

Alongside the development of the target picture, the capabilities of the marketing organisation were analysed in a 4-layer audit, and approaches to increase efficiency and effectiveness were derived.

To achieve a quick breakthrough, no separate programme was set up to realise the potential. Instead, an existing initiative was used — BARMER’s product offensive 2025.

The approach was based on breaking the programme down into micro journeys and on an agile model for optimising supply chains and roles in parallel, with the targeted use of AI along key processes.