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October 1, 2003

Ventana Research Product Assessment Guide for Performance Management

More than 60 products scored for their ability to meet business requirements

by Mark Smith

The Assessment Guide (PDF, 473k)

The Ventana Research Product Assessment Guide for Performance Management

Performance Management

How to Use the Assessment Guide

PerformanceCycle: Process Steps, Functionalities, and Capabilities Defined

DecisionCycle

Real World Business Examples Applying the DecisionCycle

Disclaimer

About Ventana Research

"The Ventana Research Product Assessment Guide for Performance Management" is an aid to assess and recommend BI technologies — such as query, reporting, analysis, planning, information delivery, and data mining — that provide performance management capabilities. Ventana Research created the Product Assessment Guide to assist you in assessing more than 60 products from 17 vendors for your new and existing performance management-related BI solutions.

We designed this Assessment Guide to be used with the Ventana Research DecisionCycle™. The DecisionCycle is a unique methodology that applies business and IT requirements in a rational process to help companies select the software that will best align to the needs of the people and roles within their organizations.

Performance Management

Companies are searching for ways to bring IT investments in line with their most critical business priorities. This quest has created a shift from transaction-centric to information-centric approaches that facilitate collaboration and information to drive action on decisions throughout organizations. This transition is the impetus behind a new class of software capabilities evolving from the roots of BI: performance management.

Performance management is the strategy, methodologies, and processes of managing the performance of the organization and its business network by leveraging assets to achieve a common set of goals and objectives. This approach focuses on understanding, optimizing, and aligning actions and decisions by ensuring the collaboration and empowerment of all individuals across the business network. It enables all individuals to work across strategic, tactical, and operational levels to align actions to ensure optimal performance for business processes or operations.

Ventana Research recommends that you use this product assessment guide in the context of the DecisionCycle methodology. All successful business and IT projects must have structure from start to completion, and your BI/performance management project is no exception. The DecisionCycle identifies the steps necessary for successful vendor selection and provides the framework and process to rapidly and accurately reap the full value of IT for performance management.

How to Use the Product Assessment Guide

We designed the Ventana Research Product Assessment Guide for Performance Management to be used with the DecisionCycle Methodology, the Ventana Research methodology for assessing and evaluating software for new or existing performance management initiatives. To utilize the Assessment Guide, we recommend you read the section on The DecisionCycle.

The Assessment Guide is based on the Ventana Research PerformanceCycle, the framework used to successfully implement performance management. The PerformanceCycle and this Assessment Guide employ a closed-loop, three-step "understand-optimize-align" process that enables organizations to manage performance. The Assessment Guide lists products and indicates which capabilities in the "understand-optimize-align" process each product supplies

Within each of the three process steps is a subset of Functional Requirements, and within each Functional Requirement is a subset of Functional Capabilities.

Using the DecisionCycle methodology, you must define user groups (managers, analysts, business users, and so on), the necessary Functional Requirements, and the Functional Capabilities from Table 1 for each Requirement based on the needs of the user groups. Once you have these defined, you can refer to the Assessment Guide to see which vendors and products best fit your users' needs

The three PerformanceCycle steps and their corresponding Functionality Requirements and Capabilities are described in the section "PerformanceCycle: Process Steps, Functionalities, and Capabilities Defined."