Business Intelligence: Corporate Performance Management

In the current climate there is added pressure on business units in every organisation to show clearly how and where they are creating or adding value to the organisation. Good decision making and performance management are key to business value generation but neither are easy in today’s complex world. Furthermore, the corporate focus on IT costs is often driven by the enterprise-wide mandate to ‘do more with less’ and growing demands for compliance and governance-led transparency. Business Intelligence (BI) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solutions help organisations with all these aspects of business. They enable organisations to answer three key business questions: “How are we doing?”, “Why are we doing this?”, and “What should we be doing next?”. In terms of product offerings, these largely equate to: scorecarding, reporting and analysis, and forecasting. Most organisations do of course have systems in place to measure and monitor aspects of business performance, but all too often these systems stop at the Finance department. BI and CPM extend this practice to other areas of the business, and provide operational managers and employees with actionable business intelligence, i.e. information that is both relevant and timely.

KEY FINDINGS
- BI deployments are driven by competitive pressures, rapidly changing market conditions, regulatory requirements, and the need for better risk management.
- The notion of performance management has become increasingly connected to the BI market of late.
- CPM is first and foremost a business initiative which requires an inclusive approach that encourages broad participation and adoption across the enterprise.
- BI and CPM solutions should offer flexibility to enable a best of breed approach towards deployment.
- Ease of use and other end-user considerations are of paramount importance when considering
- Performance Management solutions.
- Data quality and integration is still a major issue for BI and CPM, as most enterprise applications still have their own, siloed view of corporate data.
- The integration of Enterprise Search technology into BI platforms extends the reach and range of existing investments across the enterprise.
- Mashups are a natural adjunct to the BI world, as are widgets and gadgets.
- Effective collaborative Business Intelligence is the key to achieving and sustaining competitive advantage.
- Software as a Service will offer hesitant organisations a relatively low-risk path to Performance Management.

This Report reveals:
- The role of Corporate Performance Management (CPM) in controlling costs and optimising the use of resources.
- How Business Intelligence (BI) provides the foundation for CPM initiatives.
- Which scorecarding methodologies can be used to underpin CPM.
- How collaborative BI is the key to achieving and sustaining competitive advantage.
- Why executive buy-in and end-user engagement are prerequisites for CPM initiatives.
- How the integration of Enterprise Search into BI platforms extends the reach of existing investments.
- Why poor data quality and lack of integration are still major barriers to effective CPM.
- How Software as a Service will offer hesitant organisations a lower-risk path to Performance Management.