Seven out of 10 organisations fail to execute on their strategy, according to business intelligence guru David Norton, inventor of the balanced scorecard approach to business monitoring. The reason? They lack adequate management tools.
Business performance management, or BPM, aims to address these shortcomings. But it is not a product as such – rather an amalgam of technologies and methodologies designed to integrate and enhance organisations’ decision-making processes. This includes planning, forecasting and budgeting, business monitoring and scorecarding, and query, analysis and reporting.
The importance of better business monitoring has been highlighted by recent changes to companies’ business reporting obligations in the wake of numerous financial scandals in the US. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, for example, requires organisations to disclose aspects of business performance in greater detail than ever before.
But there are other enticements, as analyst group Gartner pointed out in a recent report. “Enterprises that effectively deploy BPM solutions will outperform their industry peers.” For most, this will be incentive enough to justify an investment in BPM.
Performance players
Aberdeen Group estimates that total BPM-related spending will approach around $5 billion by 2005. However, since the BPM market encompasses a number of overlapping software segments, it is difficult to identify one dominant supplier. The four key areas of BPM are:
Financial analytics
Hyperion Solutions, boasts by far the broadest line up of tools in this area, including modelling and optimisation, planning budgeting and forecasting, scorecarding, consolidation and reporting. Comshare offers a similar but narrower line up, while close competitor Applix provides financial planning and consolidation, and customer- and service-oriented analytical applications.
Business intelligence
Most of the major business intelligence (BI) software vendors have embraced the BPM concept. Cognos, for example, has extended its portfolio to planning, budgeting and forecasting, consolidation and financial reporting, financial analytics, and scorecarding software. Its main rival, Business Objects, mirrors much of that coverage, with a weaker hand in financial planning and budgeting but greater strength in data integration. Other BI software companies have added BPM capabilities to their portfolio, including Information Builders, Crystal Decisions, Microsoft, Brio, Informatica, MicroStrategy, Computer Associates, Actuate and Hummingbird.
Business applications
Two of the major business applications companies have identified BPM as a key area. Oracle and SAP both differentiate themselves from the specialist BI vendors by tying their BPM offerings directly into their underlying business applications.
Data infrastructure
One of the fundamentals of managing business performance is having ease of access to relevant and clean data. The key players in building that integrated data backbone are Informatica, DataMirror, and iWay Software.
Business drivers
There are two major factors driving adoption of BPM tools, according to Pamela Eichorst, European director of business performance management for BPM software company Hyperion.
1. External: New accounting and reporting obligations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, have put pressure on organisations to improve levels of corporate governance and the visibility of financial and performance-related data. Many businesses are, therefore, now looking at systems that can provide a more holistic view of corporate performance data than individual analysis tools.
2. Internal: Many organisations suffer from a disconnect in corporate strategy and how it is implemented at an operational level. Through the use of performance dashboards or alerts, BPM software can help companies see how different departments or disciplines contribute towards their overall business goals.
Best practice
In his book, Quest for Balance, performance management expert Andre de Waal found that organisations that had some form of performance management system in place could increase total shareholder return by almost 8% compared to those without.
But as with any system, success depends on its implementation. According to a recent survey by IDC in conjunction with business intelligence software company Business Objects, the companies that see the greatest improvement in performance from using BPM tools have the following characteristics:
Adoption curve
At present, an overwhelming majority of organisations rely on Microsoft Excel for data analysis, but there are a number of trailblazers that are using the BPM concept to great effect. General Electric and Procter &Gamble, for example, use digital ‘dashboards’ that draw daily information from different business units to track overall performance. Wireless company Verizon, meanwhile, streams charts to employees, identifying relevant areas of operational status. Finally, by centralising reporting applications from 40 different locations, cosmetic company Coty has saved $2 million over a three-year period.
Buzzwords
Key performance indicators: assets, Balanced scorecard assets, Business activity management assets, Digital dashboard assets, Unified view assets, Business velocity management assets, Corporate governance assets, Real-time analytics
Horror stories
When companies make bad business decisions, inaccurate or fragmented data is frequently to blame. Below are a few examples of the potential consequences of not investing in integrated corporate performance management.
Source: Infoconomy/Forrester Research
