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March 20, 2003

Numbers Crunch

Inside a business performance management implementation

With more than $20 billion in assets, WesCorp (www.wescorp.coop) is a corporate credit union headquartered in San Dimas, Calif. As a financial services cooperative, WesCorp is keenly aware of its mission to maximize member return by operating in an efficient and streamlined manner. To that end, WesCorp continually seeks cost-containment opportunities.

In WesCorp's case, this ongoing search is occurring via a performance management initiative involving the enterprisewide deployment of Hyperion Business Modeling, a component in Hyperion's Business Performance Management Suite. Intelligent Enterprise recently spoke with financial planning manager David Scott, who is responsible for managing this strategic implementation project.

IE: How did this implementation originate?

Scott: In the financial services industry, we compete not only with publicly held (for-profit) institutions, but government-sponsored entities as well. Because of this highly competitive environment, we're very focused on process improvement opportunities and any resulting cost savings. We searched for a solution that would allow us to more accurately and [quickly] measure member (customer), business-unit, and product profitability.

IE: What led you to Hyperion Business Modeling, specifically?

Scott: The features that were attractive to the finance team, including our CFO, included the ability to model what-if scenarios and structural changes to business lines and their processes, which allows us to take advantage of process improvement and associated cost-reduction opportunities. The solution allows us to model not only existing business lines, but to model what-if scenarios involving new products, new delivery channels, or changes to existing processes.

IE: What are your ultimate goals for this initiative?

Scott: Our goal is to provide our management team — whether you're a business unit or a support unit — the ability to see current member, business-unit, or product performance. We will also build customized metrics into each business and support unit.

We have several different business requirements here. Tactically, we need state-of-the-art technology that gives us the information we need. But strategically, we also need to better understand the cost of our products and services and use this understanding in our pricing strategies.

IE: How will this intelligence be actionable?

Scott: We're working directly with functional area managers to deploy the Hyperion Web-based reporting solution. Furthermore, we're giving them schematics that represent their operational processes and working to identify process improvement opportunities that can result in cost savings at the functional-area level and enterprisewide.

IE: You're deploying this solution one functional unit at a time, starting with item processing services. What are your biggest challenges in unfolding this implementation?

Scott: The main challenge is time. We're in the process of determining a reasonable time frame and the required resources to deploy not only unit by unit, but also enterprisewide. Until we've deployed the technology across the company, we can't exploit valuable opportunities that arise when you've modeled the entire enterprise.

IE: Such as?

Scott: First of all, until the enterprise deployment is complete, we won't be in a position to determine member profitability because our members utilize products and services from across four business lines. We also can't take advantage of opportunities involving enterprisewide efficiency gains.

IE: It sounds like an organization deploying this solution in only one business unit is almost missing the point.

Scott: Yes, that's accurate.

IE: What's the most important insight you've gained in this deployment?

Scott: The most important lesson we're learning is the value of communicating the solution's benefits for managers, department heads, and the management team as a whole — that it's not just another thing on their plates. To the extent that we're able to communicate how this initiative benefits them, I think we'll get them on board a lot faster.

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IE: Has this implementation fostered closer alignment between businesspeople and the IT department?

Scott: Yes. We'll be constantly retooling or reengineering specific functional area models because of process changes; we'll need to maintain a dynamic, real-time reflection of each functional area, and thus work closely with IT to help us gather operational data in a timely fashion. That task is a great challenge in any first-time initiative involving the gathering of data from various legacy systems. Because of this need for close collaboration, the alignment between the finance department and IT is really blossoming.