Summary:

A few short years ago BPM was primarily focused on addressing the budgeting and planning needs of the finance department. Today, business performance management has become much more than that. Craig Schiff, President and CEO of BPM Partners writes that BPM is has become the primary front-office strategic decision-making tool. By utilizing business intelligence (BI) tools, BPM converts data from transactional systems into meaningful and actionable information for management decision making.

Financial reporting, particularly management reporting, along with profitability analysis and optimization, has also grown in importance in BPM.

Article Quote:

“Many companies have come to the realization that you really can’t fully understand the business by just looking at the consolidated numbers at the top. You need to examine what is going on, on a daily basis, at the operational level.”

Link: http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/12282

Business performance management will continue to grow and change with business needs. Comprehensive business performance management has become a mission-critical initiative for many companies, while for others, it remains a back-burner item.

Performance technology is yet another tool in the business performance management arsenal. Performance technology software allows users instant access to vital information regarding their strategic plan and day-to-day performance objectives. By regularly monitoring results, management can course correct when necessary while watching for opportunities to present themselves.

For more on business performance management, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/

Summary:

Craig Schiff has defined the essence of BPM by combining the recent history of business performance management with current trends as we head into 2010 . Although BPM has evolved a great deal over the last five years, Shiff asserts that there are still many aspects that remain the same. Budgeting, planning, forecasting and strategic planning are still part of the core foundation, and performance dashboards displaying scorecards containing an organization’s key performance indicators are still one of the main ways BPM data is made available for decision making.  Even though BPM has grown significantly beyond its humble beginnings, some in finance and IT still view it as budgeting and/or dashboards.

Schiff takes a look at what’s new with BPM and how these applications effect changes in the way organizations conduct business. Growing beyond the financial construct, it has become the primary front-office strategic decision-making tool.  Newer aspects include financial reporting, profitability analysis and optimization, risk reduction and operational analytics. This new, comprehensive business performance management has become a mission-critical initiative for many companies.

Article Quote:

“Five years ago BPM was primarily focused on addressing the budgeting and planning needs of the finance department. For information technology (IT), business performance management meant graphically displaying information from a data warehouse in a performance dashboard. While BPM has grown significantly beyond its humble beginnings, some in finance and IT still view it as budgeting and/or dashboards.”

Article Link: http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/12282

As a tough economy accelerates the focus on effective business performance management, taking a look at efficient management software becomes critical. A strategic management system that incorporates tracking progress, goals and individuals responsible for activities provides management with greater control over all business operations.

For more on management software, see http://www.managepro.com/management.html.