A Management Operating System

August 28, 2014 2 Comments

I would like to introduce a framework for thinking about Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence. The genesis of this framework came from my days working at Hyperion Solutions (later acquired by Oracle Corp.). It’s been called a management “operating system” for your company because, like the operating system of your computer, it helps govern input and output and manage what applications (or decisions) are being run and helps make the most effective use of resources (memory, disk space, CPU cycles). You can start anywhere on this closed-loop process to tell the management operating system story, and today I’ll share Gather – the most common part of the cycle, with you.

Enterprise Performance Management, A Management Operating System, EPM, Ron Dimon

A Management Operating System

Gather – While you are busy running your business (Execution, which means service customers, making products, selling in markets), you are generating lots of data. You gather that data and transform it into useful information (according to its context) and deliver it to the right people (according to impact and areas of responsibility).

This is the place where managers consume reports about the results of the business. It’s where they answer the question “where are we, right now?” Depending on your industry and your business, there are generally two kinds of reports: mostly financial and mostly operational. The trend has been to combine financial and operational information on one report, which is a good idea since the two are interrelated: financial investments help drive operational results, and effective operations help contribute to financial performance.

Reports are delivered in a variety of formats with a variety of tools and can be categorized as:

  • Canned (static) reports
  • Ad hoc or interactive reports
  • Dashboards and scorecards
  • Spreadsheets

Reports give their readers a snapshot of what results have been produced to date to help them gauge how close to their goals and targets they are.

You can learn more about EPM and how it can help your organization build a common business process to execute its strategy in my book Enterprise Performance Management Done Right: An Operating System for Your Organization (Wiley CIO)

Filed under Commit, Debate, EPM Processes, Gather, Strategy, The Book, The Middle, Understand Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

3 Benefits of Using EPM in Your Organization

August 21, 2014 Leave a comment

EPM was designed to fill the strategy to execution gap. It’s the new approach to management that makes strategy everyone’s job, that gives them the tools and processes to execute based on focus, alignment, and accountability. Let’s discuss three of the five benefits of EPM that I share in my book Enterprise Performance Management Done Right: An Operating System for Your Organization (Wiley CIO):

  1. Management Efficiency

    Enterprise Performance Management. Difference between "Run the Business" and "Manage the Businesss"

    Differences between “Run the Business” and “Manage the Business”

EPM enables standard management processes that every company must do well: Budgeting, planning and forecasting Financial consolidation and statutory reporting Management reporting and business intelligence Profitability analysis, and Other financial and operational modeling, planning, analysis, and reporting EPM leverages the investment you have already made in Enterprise Resource Management, Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, Sales Force Automation, and other transactional systems.

  1. Executing Strategy

EPM can help close the loop between what you want to happen in the business (and how), and what actually happened (and why): Records and documents business model assumptions, constraints, and drivers Connects those models into your annual operating plans, budgets, and forecasts Monitors and alerts exceptional variances from actual to plan Helps you understand the root causes of variance and plug that corporate knowledge Ties it all together with a common business language and common master data to improve visibility, focus, and alignment Giving more stakeholder alignment .

  1. Improving Performance

EPM can have a material impact on the top and bottom line, on the balance sheet, and on overall return on capital: It can improve visibility into the key drivers of value in the business. It can show the cause and effect relationship of operational metrics on financial performance. It helps you focus on the right things in the business. It can bring agility to business models and organizational structures. Giving better business decisions that are based on more timely information

You can learn more about EPM and how it can help your organization build a common business process to execute it’s strategy in my book Enterprise Performance Management Done Right: An Operating System for Your Organization (Wiley CIO)

Filed under EPM Processes, Strategy, The Book, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

Top 7 Signs Your Organization Needs Enterprise Performance Management

August 14, 2014 Leave a comment

In working with my clients across a wide spectrum of business sizes, industries, and geographies, when it comes to EPM, there are some “buckets” of pain I have found common to them all. Here Enterprise Performance Managementare 7 reasons your organization needs EPM:

  1. More time is spent on assembling the numbers than on analyzing them— all this manual effort makes us inefficient and not very scalable.
  2. People show up to meetings with “their” numbers, and we don’t know how they got those numbers—there is not a lot of confidence.
  3. Some people aren’t getting the reports or analyses we’re sending out— it either gets lost in their email or the right people aren’t on the distribution list (or they’re ignoring it).
  4. There is little alignment across functions (Sales, Marketing, Development, HR).
  5. People aren’t following the prescribed processes, especially for submitting their plans and forecasts—they make different assumptions and interpret what we want differently.
  6. The right people don’t have access
  7. Sometimes the data is just plain wrong— it doesn’t include the latest numbers or it’s an old version, or it’s missing parts.

You can learn more about EPM and how it can help your organization build a common business process to execute its strategy in my book Enterprise Performance Management Done Right: An Operating System for Your Organization (Wiley CIO)

Filed under EPM Processes, Strategy, The Book Tagged with , , , , , , ,