InetSoft BI Webcast: Weren't ERP Systems Supposed to Solve the Problem of Linking Performance Tracking with Your Planning?

Below is a continuation of the trascript of a Webinar hosted by InetSoft in May 2010 on the topic of Current Trends in Performance Management. The presenter is Mark Flaherty, Vice President of Marketing at InetSoft.

Mark Flaherty (MF): Well, they continue to try to. Of course, SAP has made acquisitions, Oracle made acquisitions, so arguably they are getting close to be able to do much of this. Historically ERP, by itself, has offered reporting capabilities but not really performance management capabilities. And even within or across the various modules, sometimes you have inconsistent reporting tools, inconsistent views of information and KPI’s. So really it is incumbent upon the user to try to stitch it all together.

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If the first step is acquire a business intelligence platform like InetSoft's, what the next step towards performance management?

After some months of active use of the platform, go back to the users and find out where they get value out of the system, what they’ve been using it for, and start to use those thought leaders, the folks that have been the most aggressive users getting this value out of it. Use them, perhaps, as a way to add the additional performance management capabilities into the organization.

For example, adding in modeling and planning processes. And when you talk about planning, it’s not necessarily budgeting, although budgeting is a form of planning. It can be anything. It can be operational planning. It can be almost anything that you do which allows you to document your assumptions about the business, and to start making commitments about what you think you’re going to be able to achieve. So it is drawing that line in the sand and using that to focus the business intelligence activities that they might already be doing.

Is performance management expensive?

There clearly are expenses associated with it. It’s not so much the technology. Good systems can be bought for tens of thousands of dollars. They don’t have to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. But what’s the cost associated with how you do things? Or how you look at things? The benefits are pretty extraordinary if you crack the code on that.

Performance management really shines you have a C-level executive, whether it be the CFO or the CEO, or in some instances, the CIO. But typically it’s the either the CEO or the CFO who have vision for performance management. They realize that they need to do things differently. And not just for things like compliance, but for real transparency. Then things can start to happen.

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More Resources:

		Performance Scorecards
		Performance Management Software
		Performance Management System Information
		Key Performance Indicators - Using InetSoft's Software