There comes a moment in the life of every growing small business when
the traditional performance review -- management interviewing staff,
then printing up reports -- falls far short. Keeping on top of the human
factor, which employees need which opportunities and challenges, how
and when to move or remove talent, is critical to reaching the next
stage. Corporate performance management can be as important as finance,
sales and grooming top managers.
Software and specialized business performance consultants can help fill
the gap if human resources capabilities are lacking: Scorecards, industry
metrics, in-house consultants, all of them play a role in revitalizing
and recognizing your business performance management needs.
Covered in this guide:
1. Digitizing human resource processes through corporate performance
management
2. Finding performance management consulting
3. Corporate performance management at the financial level
4. Sizing up grow-as-you-go business performance management software
5. Balance scorecards and change management as corporate performance
management
Performance management software allows organizations to objectively
answer that age old question, in a business sense. It's all about gathering
and examining information to make informed decisions. As such, performance
management is often part of a big-ticket enterprise software solution.
A performance management software package allows the big guns to observe,
appraise, and (hopefully) reward. After all, the foot troops love to
be showered with incentives for their hard work ...
The United States Agency for International Development defines performance
management as "the systematic process of monitoring the results of activities;
collecting and analyzing performance information to track progress toward
planning results; using performance information to inform program decision-making
and resource allocation; and communicating results achieved, or not
attained, to advance organizational learning."
Other Fed functions offer differing viewpoints. The Office of Personnel
Management describe the process as "work that involves assisting managers
and supervisors in establishing, maintaining, and monitoring effective
performance management programs to plan, monitor, develop, rate, and
reward employee performance, and services that support formal and informal
award programs to provide employee incentives and recognition."
What is the difference between business intelligence (BI) and corporate
performance management (CPM)? What is the difference between BI and
CPM vendors?
The answer to the second question is that they are the same. And, the
fact that the vendors are the same clouds the answer to the first question.
Marketing literature and industry articles further confuse the issue
by using the same terms, applications and benefits for both BI and CPM.
BI has become the term describing the technology used to access, analyze
and report on data relevant to an enterprise. It encompasses a wide
spectrum of software including ad-hoc query, reporting, on-line analytical
processing (OLAP), dashboards, scorecards, search, visualization and
more.
These software products started as stand-alone tools, but BI software
vendors have incorporated them into their BI suites. BI software is
always part of an overall CPM solution. CPM, however, is not just about
technology. CPM involves the processes, methodologies, metrics and technology
(applications and software tools) used to monitor, measure and manage
a business. The business processes may include financial, marketing,
sales, customer relationship management, supply chain management or
others.
Build versus buy is always an important consideration in an IT systems
project. Often the default position is that buying a pre-built, vendor-supported
software package has a lower total cost of ownership (TCO). But the
conventional wisdom that buying has a lower TCO than building is based
on an assumption that the purchased solution meets your business needs.
If it doesn't, the cost to customize pre-built software -- or worse,
the costs of changing your business to fit the software -- can seriously
impact that supposedly low TCO. When evaluating a build versus buy decision
for CPM packages, it is critical to assess your business and technical
requirements. Often, any IT systems purchase decision is solely based
on technical and cost considerations. The technical specifications are
clear, so it's easy to see what you are getting. A CPM package evaluation,
however, isn't so clear. In order to really understand what the CPM
package provides you need to dive beyond the sales PowerPoint slides
and into the details of what processes, metrics, data definitions and
data sources are implemented in the package.
Oracle has bought Moniforce, a Dutch vendor of Web application performance
management software.
Key to this, it said, is a module of Moniforce's software called UXinsight,
which can detect errors in application logic. Because of the way it
works, it can monitor the performance of custom applications based on
Oracle or non-Oracle infrastructure, Oracle said, making it of interest
to its integration partners.
Those who provide network fault and performance management software
have been experiencing new challenges as technologies advance and new
software emerges. Enterprises using network management software unchanged
for only two years will be behind the curve; in fact the vendors themselves
are struggling to keep up. Think of the challenges. There is virtualisation—of
the servers, storage pools and the networks—which builds in extra (hidden)
layers of complexity in continually mapping the virtual to the physical.
Various trends include a shift towards more server-based shared applications
and content management, service-oriented architecture (SOA) and software
as a service (SaaS). Conversely, there is also peer-to-peer networking,
as well as converged data and voice sharing the same wire, and wireless
networking for both. This is all very clever, but also complex to manage
from one central point, and it has also to be seen against a backdrop
of network managers wanting less complexity while they maintain 24/7
live operation. It is a tricky time for vendors and no single network
management product covers the whole gamut. So what is to be done?
Just as they installed warehouse and transportation management software
a few years back to streamline their order fulfillment and freight operations,
companies are now installing event management and performance management
software that will allow them to respond instantly when things go awry.
"Companies have come to the realization that to thrive today, it's not
just about having a good plan," says Randy Littleson, vice president
of marketing at Kinaxis, a software maker based in Ottawa, Ontario.
"It's about responding when the plan does not go as predicted."
That's exactly what these two software applications are designed to
do—detect, diagnose, and resolve performance exceptions. The first type,
event management software, collects data in real time from multiple
sources so that it can monitor a shipment's progress against predetermined
milestones, such as the ship date, and notify supply chain managers
if an event fails to take place on schedule. The more sophisticated
versions of the software enable companies to respond to exceptions as
well.
FoxBusiness
reports: ""The complex enterprise-wide performance management
challenges that we are now addressing require complementary functionality
and a tight integration at all levels of the supporting technologies,
including data integration tools, database platform technology, and performance
management software," said Frank Brooks, senior manager of data resource
management and chief data architect, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee.
"It's also critical that each of these components provide world-class
capabilities based on their own merit. We've already benefited from the
capabilities and integration of IBM's DB2 Server technology and their
Information Server suite of data integration tools. We've also implemented
a number of innovative business solutions using Cognos' expanding set
of Business Intelligence and Performance Management tools.""
Report:
"BURLINGTON, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ivara Corporation, the industry
leader and innovator in asset performance management solutions, today
announced that AbitibiBowater Inc., a global leader in newsprint, commercial
printing papers and wood products, has selected Ivara EXP Enterprise software
to optimize the performance and reliability of its pulp and paper assets.
Working with USCCG, a leading management consulting firm and certified
Ivara Implementation Partner, the solution will be deployed throughout
AbitibiBowater’s 29 paper mills."