What's the point of business performance management initiatives?
By Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 10/1/2005 12:00:00 AM
A recent survey and corresponding report from Boston-based Aberdeen Group indicates best-in-class enterprises, in launching business-performance management initiatives, focus on critical areas that are frequently given little attention by competitors with lower performance:
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Linkage of plans to cross-functional operations objectives;
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Root-cause performance analysis to inform better future decisions; and
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Systematic propagation of best assumptions, analysis, and decisions.
For example, in the document titled Closed-loop Corporate Performance Management Benchmark Report, a multinational consumer goods manufacturer needed rapid market penetration for new and enhanced products, but was faced with 11 transaction, planning, and performance management systems; inconsistent metrics for defining corporate health; and thousands of spreadsheets of disparate data.
The company embarked on a program to implement an integrated system for planning, metrics, and business intelligence that included the following:
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Determining major sales and marketing business processes that drove competitive performance;
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Shifting from a departmental to an enterprise scope for success; and
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Introducing a set of aligned scorecards and applying better use of business intelligence via integrated operational and financial planning.
To achieve these results, AberdeenGroup says there is a clear and growing trend for enterprises to choose a "prime vendor" for performance management rather than "best-in-class."
Best-in-class versus prime vendor in a corporate performance management (CPM) strategy
| Characteristic | Best-in-class | Prime vendor |
| Best-practices cycle modules | Single | Multiple |
| Integration | Data | CPM process |
| Module linkages | Manual/extracted | Automated |
| Technical architecture | Multiple | Single |
| Closed-loop workflow | No | Yes |
| Root-cause analysis | Functional | Cross-functional |
Solutions Spotlight
07/31/2004Ask AberdeenGroup
08/01/2006
