“Companies are starting to realize that traditional business intelligence is not enough to improve business performance,” said Crispin Read, Chief Marketing Officer at Cartesis, the world’s leading specialist in finance and business performance management software. “BPM solutions are filling this gap, allowing companies to achieve faster, more flexible planning cycles and to gain deeper financial insight. ”BPM: A More Integrated Approach to BI

Business Intelligence solutions unlock critical management information and attempt to put that information in front of decision makers who need it to run the business. However, one of the challenges with BI tools has been that the data that they do unlock isn’t always consistent across the enterprise. For example, BI tools can’t add up revenue numbers in different currencies because they lack the financial intelligence to translate from one currency to the other.

Another area where business intelligence solutions have fallen short is in addressing the requirement for financial transparency, one reason some traditional BI vendors have acquired BPM vendors for financial and performance management capabilities. The need for such transparency is greatest within finance departments where specific challenges demand just one set of numbers and ideally one set of applications. Whereas a business user of a BI query tool is generally satisfied with the content he gets and how this helps him look into defining next week’s stock ordering, the group controller or CFO needs the most accurate, real-time information for mission-critical functions such as budgeting, planning, compliance with financial reporting regulations, and performance improvement.

BI infrastructures have also become increasingly complex and costly, with large corporations managing dozens of silos encompassing OLAP databases, data integration tools, reporting tools and query and reporting analysis tools.

Evolving perfectly to address these BI challenges is BPM with its more integrated, holistic approach.

“Performance management is sort of changing the mindset of BI and moving it away from the spot approach where five or six reporting tools are involved,” said John Van Decker, Senior Vice President and Principal Research Fellow at the Robert Frances Group, an IT research and advisory firm based in Westport, CT. Accuracy and Control

Beyond transparency, BPM systems, such as the Cartesis 10 business performance management suite, ensure the consistency and accuracy of information that finance departments need to meet the requirements of external stakeholders and legal/regulatory bodies. Financial information can’t be used if it isn’t 100 percent accurate, and there is tremendous cost if it is inaccurate, including the potential for criminal charges against the CFO and other employees. And with so much riding on the accuracy of a company’s numbers, finance departments need greater control over the budgeting and reporting processes — and the ability to look deeper into the numbers.

“Companies have to report accurate numbers; if they don’t then they are in breach of a number of laws, and penalties will come down on the companies and the people who work for them,” Cartesis’ Read said. And accuracy is not only mission-critical for financial consolidation and statutory reporting applications but for planning, budgeting and forecasting, he said. “If you don’t know at the end of the month if you are over budget or under budget, then you are flying blind and you’ll crash the company. ”

Once a corporation is certain it has accurate information, getting that information to key decision makers quickly is vital. Cartesis 10 employs a single data model that ensures one source of accurate, consistent data between applications, as well as between the people and business processes involved. The suite also provides auditing controls to allow the finance department to easily review and verify every accounting step from source to disclosure.

Business Performance Management relies on the following steps:
collecting data – discerning patterns and meaning in the data (generating information) – responding to the resultant information

These information or intelligence are then analysed and performance parameters arrived at. Today business volumes have increased several fold. Collecting and analysing data has become tedious and cumbersome. However Data Management technologies have today resolved the issue of large volume of data. Improved Enterprise Application Integration tools have increased the speedy collecting of data.

Reporting technologies have allowed faster generation of new reports which analyze the data. Business intelligence has now become the art of filtering through large amounts of data, extracting information and turning that information into action. BPM involves consolidation of data from various sources, querying, and analysis of the data, and putting the results into practice.
BPM enhances processes by creating better feedbacks.

Continuous reviews help to identify and eliminate problems before they grow. BPM’s forecasting abilities help organisations to take corrective action in time to meet earnings projections. Forecasting is characterized by a high degree of predictability which is put into good use to answer all possible scenarios. BPM is especially useful in risk analysis and predicting outcomes of merger and acquisition cases. BPM provides key performance indicators (KPI) that help companies monitor efficiency of projects and employees against operational targets. BPM often uses Key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the present condition of business and to set up a course of corrective action.

More and more organizations have started to make data available more promptly. Business Performance Management simply means use of several key performance indicators to assess the present state of business and to prescribe course of action.
Typically the data collected by a business enterprise could reveal new customers acquired, status of existing customers and level of satisfaction of customers. Data relating to turnovers generated by different segments of customers ,the gap between projection and achievment etc could be gathered so that the yawning gap between customer expectations and products/services quality could be effectively bridged.
Importantly though, the following should be ensured:
1. Key Performance Indicatiors should be consistent and correct.

2. Timely availability of KPI-related data.

3. Easy interpretation of data

4. Patterns and trends should be easily observed.
BPM integrates the company’s processes with CRM or ERP. Companies become able to gauge customer satisfaction control customer trends and influence shareholder value. Technology tools like Online Analytical Processing or OLAP, Data Warehouses, Data Mining, Executive Information Systems, Decision Support Systems and Management Information systems are set up and effectively utilised for optimised Business Performance Management.

Developers involved in business intelligence have developed these tools that ease the work, especially when the intelligence task involves gathering and analyzing large amounts of unstructured data. The first step in Business Performance Management is determining is the performance segments identification and determining the goals of the organisation. Current data collection technologies have to be upgraded and optimised.

The cost implications of such a large scale business intelligence methodology must be viewed with scrupulous concentration. The targeted beneficiary of the BPM should be clearly identified. These information requirements must be operationalized into clearly defined parameters. The BPM programme should be monitored to ensure that objectives are being met. The programme should be tested for accuracy, reliability and validity.

The success of business performance management in the correct identification of performance optimisation areas, correct collection of important data and the correct devolution of benefits to the targeted segment. With improved data collection and analysis technologies available, there is no need for any organisation to shy away from the Business Performance Management or Business intelligence initiative. BPM is in reality a friend of the business enterprise rather than being a cumbersome procedure.

Today it is an essential exercise for any company worth its’ name and would help to trim excess fat and improve bottom lines. Training and exposure in Business Performance Management must be imparted to important key persons in the administrative hierarchy. This would become a nice long term investment for the company concerned.

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