The Dozen 2004Hyperion Corp.Sunnyvale, Calif.For performance management, 2003 brought the perfect storm: and perhaps no other IT solution provider was better positioned than Hyperion to ride the big wave to success. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other corporate governance imperatives caused CFOs to focus intensely on overhauling financial management and instituting better enterprisewide transparency, accountability, and intelligence about business processes. Seeking competitive advantage coming out of the recession, business and IT executives were all ears for solutions that could help them leave "spreadsheet hell" behind and truly understand, optimize, and align performance. These imperatives played to Hyperion's strength, and will continue to do so in 2004. The company grabbed the wheel early and has not shrunk from the challenge. It did, however, mystify some in July, when it acquired faltering Brio Technology for $142 million. Did Hyperion veer off course? The company may have had little choice. After Crystal Decisions was scooped up by rival Business Objects, Brio was about the only "Switzerland" left in BI reporting — a crucial component of performance management solutions. Hyperion's strategy is to use the Brio acquisition to broaden its impact beyond finance and into operations, thereby enabling "breakthrough performance everywhere," as CEO Jeffrey Rodek puts it. With dashboards and scorecards in demand across the enterprise, Hyperion's slight course change may prove fortuitous.
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