Improving your enterprise with Business Intelligence
Consider the following:
Data is plentiful; however, useful information is limited
Each department has the information THEY need, but the company vision and bottom line is not very apparent to them
Departmental systems are not synchronized with the enterprise
Individual departments believe they know what is best for the business, but lack the communication medium to share their insights with the entire organization
Through the implementation of Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), existing investments can be leveraged to their full potential. During the process, a common language is defined to capture the key business drivers and help communicate those drivers throughout the organization.
EPM describes a process-centered approach to business decision-making. It is meant to improve a business’s ability to gain insight and manage its performance at all levels. This is done by combining stakeholders, managers, and employees within an integrated management environment. EPM creates an interactive and collaborative work space that allows the entire organization to collectively measure performance, anticipate results, and drive profitability.
The vision of EPM is to provide businesses with cost effective solutions. These solutions allow businesses to adopt the cultural changes to their management process by providing an infrastructure for systems that spans the entire business, regardless of business unit or even enterprise boundaries. This has three effects:
The individual business units run more effectively, requiring fewer resources to meet their goals
Management teams become more productive within their own business unit
Managers from different business units interact more effectively as peers start to jointly meet the goals of the business
Let us take a closer look at the stages best achieved through EPM:
VISIBILITY
Best Practice – Create better visibility to make the best business decisions
Leverage your existing data investment by use of Business Intelligence. Business Intelligence takes the volume of data your organization collects and stores, and turns it into meaningful reports and analysis that everyone can use.
Build a complete line of sight with accessible reports and analysis. You can see results across departments and drill down to discover underlying causes to understand the "Why" behind your business performance
Align everyone with one, reliable version of the truth. With common data definitions and understanding of priorities, you will spend less time debating the data and more time deciding what to do with the information.
Shorten the time to make the right decision. With timely reports and self-service analysis of your key business drivers, you see changes when they happen and make the right decisions at the right time
Meet the information needs of all users. Using flexible user-friendly reporting means everyone can have the right information delivered in the right way: whether managed reports, dashboards, scorecards, online analysis, or self-service reporting and queries
PLANNING
Best Practice – Employ real-time and smarter performance
Plan and budget in real-time with dynamic plans that provide real-time feedback to everyone who is part of the process
Secure a single, accurate view of key information by consolidating multiple systems into a single, consolidated environment
Engage all necessary participants with inclusive plans that improve buy-in, rather than the pain of multiple, unlinked spreadsheets
Communicate plans enterprise-wide and with external partners as necessary to keep everyone on the same page
MONITORING and ACCOUNTABILITY
Best Practice – Create better accountability and greater conformity
Communicate strategy effectively. Express your key drivers, performance expectations, and the results: to make strategy relevant to everyone
Monitor performance against targets by answering at any time the key question: Are we making progress on the things that must be done?
Increase accountability by providing people with the information they need to take ownership of their performance: visibility into strategy, understanding of the part they play in making the strategy succeed, and the metrics to measure their success
Connect departments by scorecard metrics. Scorecard metrics are interdependent and make visible the impact one department has on another, leading to proactive cooperation among different areas
FORECASTING
Best Practice – Improve predictability and alignment ability
Ensure the business plan is forward-focused, looks to the future not just the present
Build you systems around your forecasting model; do not build your forecasting model around a system you just happen to have in place
To fully enable performance management, you must be vigilant with leading indicators and incorporate them into your revised forecast
When needed, exercise your ability to realign your business to forecast in real-time by feeding current and expected future results to adapt the next forecast
Ensure systems are in place and have the capability to provide timely and accurate ad hoc reporting; preferably through a web-based portal
Make adjustments as necessary with rolling forecasts that let you realign as events occur rather than annual budgets that are out of date as soon as they're printed
Enterprise Performance management should be a business critical process driven by key performance indicators, lead by line management. It is about lifting organizational performance that is best realized through the use of Business Intelligence. Given the increasingly competitive and constantly changing economy, tapping into this critical asset is key to sustaining competitive advantage.
