While acknowledging the vast increase in managerial and academic empowerment that has happened through access to the use of advanced metrics and measurement processes, this article attempts to describe a broader, overall, practical perspective, and advocates a balance between the science of management and the art of management. More particularly, it views this perspective with reference to the practice of marketing. In the broader context, this includes the "sales" function.

Over the last few decades many countries, including India, have made huge strides in developing capability and setting up infrastructure for data processing and data transfer. This has enabled organizations to collect and crunch numbers on a scale that was not even dreamt of 50 years ago. Unfortunately, such capability has often resulted in number crunching activity being given a disproportionate importance within the overall scheme of trying to run an organization successfully, as well as in carrying out academic research in business and organization management. Sometimes, managers and academics get mesmerized and entangled in the beauty of these means and methods, which can become an end in themselves.

When this happens, the managers or researchers may lose sight of their organization or research goals and their role in achieving those goals. Management and Academics have been placing a growing emphasis on metrics and measurement, as an important component of the continuous drive to manage uncertainty (risk), and to more accurately define and increase accountability and performance. Measuring what has happened, and using it to extrapolate to predict in an attempt to anticipate what will happen in the future, is the usual "scientific" approach to studying and modeling the environment.

Marketing Mastermind Magazine, Marketing Metrics, Quality Management, Services Marketing, Sales Management, Man Management, Decision-Making Process, Strategic Management, Marketing Management, Business Environment.