The acquisition of Business Objects by SAP and Cognos by IBM has caused a great deal of turbulence in the Business Intelligence (BI) world, and this in turn is having an effect on the BI applications market. However, there is also another reason for the slow-down in this particular market: abstinence.
In a move to differentiate its wares and to extend the reach and range of its BI platforms, vendors in this space have spawned an adjacent market comprising applications designed to help organisations run their businesses better. One of these application areas - ‘performance management' - has gained significant momentum over the last four years, with BI (and non-BI) vendors investing heavily in order to secure their share of the market.
Performance management solutions are presented in many different guises: Enterprise Performance Management, Business Performance Management, and Business Performance Software, with Corporate Performance Management (CPM) being Butler Group's preferred term.
In the current climate, one would have thought that the market for CPM solutions would be booming, as business leaders seek to control their companies and institutions better; but my impression at the moment is that organisations are being ultra cautious in all areas of IT spending, even though CPM should be viewed as a mission-critical business investment project.
Holding off CPM projects for another year is not really an option in my opinion, as although many factors influence the performance of an organisation, none is more critical than the decisions business users make every day. CPM solutions help individuals make these decisions and enable organisations to answer three key business questions: “How are we doing?”, “Why are we doing this?”, and “What should we be doing next?” In terms of CPM offerings, this equates to: score-carding, dashboards, and financial consolidation; reporting and analysis; and planning, budgeting, and forecasting.
Most organisations do of course have systems in place to measure and monitor aspects of business performance, but all too often these systems stop at the finance department. CPM extends this practice to other areas of the business, and provides operational managers and employees with actionable BI, i.e. information that is both relevant and timely.
The current trend towards IT abstinence, i.e. the conserving of expenditure relating to IT projects in order to build up capital or savings, may be damaging to an organisation's prospects when the global economic slow-down reverses. Cancelling or postponing BI projects in particular can only weaken an organisation's position with respect to the competition. Organisations must of course be prudent in the current economic climate, but CPM provides a way for organisations to illuminate the business as they search for the light at the end of the tunnel.
