Critical Acclaim

A new class of applications offers ways to measure your enterprise's performance

Packaged vs. Standalone

To address this problem, enterprise application providers, such as Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP, have recently migrated their applications, including balanced scorecards, to operate on their maturing data warehouse platforms. (Maturing is the key word: These vendors have taken five years to evolve a data warehouse platform that may be suitable for large enterprises.)

Unfortunately, some vendors (for example, Oracle and SAP) have begun to repackage these offerings, which makes buying them independently without also implementing a significant number of their operational applications, like ERP or CRM, difficult. This bundling can be an asset or a detriment, depending on the evolution of an organization's enterprise data warehouse and whether migrating to another vendor's operational applications is acceptable (although most of these vendors do have certified partners that can provide information access and delivery tools).

Alternatively, application providers such as Corvu Corp., SAS Institute, and Hyperion Software provide EPM that offers score-carding methodologies (such as Norton & Kaplan Balanced Scorecard) that do not require using their proprietary enterprise data warehouses. This particular approach has provided these vendors some level of independence and success in adapting to existing data warehouse infrastructures, although still requiring some level of information readiness. But Gentia Software - the first provider of the balanced scorecard methodology - has been stumbling financially in its ability to maintain shareholder value and grow its existing business operations.

The Next Stage

The new class of EPM applications in this category offers a less structured application approach but provides a packaged enterprise data warehouse, and information access and delivery tools. This method addresses some of the problems experienced in balanced scorecard implementations that did not get deployed throughout an organization because it could not align information in a usable form to the broad workforce.

Informatica Corp. is leading this new approach with its cross value-chain analytic applications, which bring Informatica's depth of experience in providing data integration tools for data warehousing and a toolset for BusinessObjects BI integration. This package is possible because of acquisitions that provided enterprise data warehouse models and metrics for EPM. Look for further advancements in its information delivery capabilities based on Informatica's acquisition of Zimba in late 2000.

DecisionPoint Applications Inc. has accumulated a set of integrated enterprise data models and business metrics but still lacks a comprehensive information access and delivery offering. SAS Institute is taking a slightly different approach by providing more flexibility with its Strategic Vision application, which can implement a balanced scorecard or meet more generic performance-management requirements. In addition, it has more tightly integrated its data warehouse tools and has an EPM Ready program to ensure tighter information integration with its existing performance management offerings, which include CFO Vision, HR Vision, and IT Service Vision.

This new market opportunity has put a sparkle in the eyes of other vendors such as Cognos Inc. and Business-Objects, and you should expect similar offerings from them that will address this enterprise space in the future.

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The Right Approach

Which approach is best? There is no one answer, but a strategy for EPM is critical. Your organization's business and technology maturity levels will affect whether you use a vendor-supplied solution, a build approach, or a bit of both. What is clear is that having a strong enterprise information architecture, along with a complement of information access and delivery tools and score-carding applications, is necessary.

EPM can also provide the information backbone to support existing and future business process-centric analytic applications. It will also be the baseline for addressing cross-functional business challenges like customer profitability and supply chain performance. Providing enterprise performance metrics, from individual to organizational areas, that are easily accessible and can drive action inside of the organization is critical to everyone's success.

Mark Allen Smith [mark.smith@fullcirclestrategies.com] is principal and founder of Full Circle Strategies and an expert in the applied use of information and analytics in the areas of business intelligence, portals, and analytic applications.

Resources

DecisionPoint Applications Inc.
Informatica Corp.
SAS Institute Inc.