In the world of "operational business intelligence", there are three main areas in my opinion.

• Corporate Performance Management (CPM) or Business Performance Management (BPM)
• Business Process Management (BPM - yep another BPM))
• Business Activity Monitoring (BAM))

Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) and Business Process Management (BPM) are different than Corporate Performance Management (CPM) or Business Performance Management (BPM) otherwise known as the practice of "balanced scorecards". Balanced scorecards look at how a particular metric, or series of metrics, relates to itself and three (3) other strategic components. BPM and BAM look at, or into, a particular process with the goal of monitoring or improving the process within itself, but not necessarily how it relates to the overall strategy of the company.

Here's a breakdown of they relate:

• Corporate Performance Management (CPM) or Business Performance Management (BPM) Balanced Scorecards provide the highest level presentation that includes four (4) strategic aspects.


• Example - A car dashboard. The speedometer (internal process), gas indicator (financial), clock (customer), GPS (employee learning) all provide information on the "strategic" performance of the car. However, if you have a police officer asking you questions, you may not care where you are or what time it is... You may just care how fast you were going back about three miles.


• Business Process Management (BPM) looks at a process from a "black box", or mid-level, perspective and how that process is performing


• Example - Again our car dashboard, but this time just the speedometer. You know how fast you are going and can compare that to past performance. However without the tachometer, you do not know how the engine is performing relative to your speed. For those who drive automatics, this is not much of a concern. However for those of us who drive manual transmissions, this is a key component of how to operate a car.


• Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) looks into a process from a "white box", or lowest level, perspective and looks at the component parts of the process to determine how a process is performing.


• Example - Back to the car dashboard, but now with speedometer, tachometer, engine temp, etc. You now know how the engine is performing and can tune the engine processes to meet existing or new standards for performance

Each of these can be independent of each other, but they can also build upon each other very easily since they use many of the same data sources and presentation methodologies.

In the future, I see business process management (BPM) and BAM to start to merge as concepts since they are so closely related at this point in time.

Technorati Tags: Business Performance Management, Business Process Management, Business Activity Monitoring

Waaaay back, I was a proud customer of AT&T Wireless (then again proud wireless customer is a somewhat crazy concept...). When the "mother ship" started selling off assets and Cingular bought AT&T Wireless, I was inundated with messaging that my AT&T Wireless phone was now somehow less than it was a few months before and that only the "cool kids" were using Cingular phones. In due time, I switched over to a Cingular phone and account, but was never that happy about how Cingular decided to treat my AT&T Wireless account. I even put something to that effect in one of my articles.

Now, it appears that the folks at AT&T, the new one and not the old one, will have the last laugh over the guys at Cingular. Recently, it was announced that AT&T will start to phase out the Cingular name and all that brand equity. Do you think that the CMO at Cingular will get a letter in the mail telling him/her that there is something wrong with their Cingular phone and that all the cool kids are using the new AT&T Wireless phones....?

Technorati Tags: Cingular, AT&T

In my opinion, business activity monitoring (BAM) is one way to avoid the pitfalls of the "No Auditor Left Behind" Act - otherwise known as the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act. With BAM, you can automate and monitor (and yes even improve) all those internal control processes dictated by Sarbanes-Oxley. BTW - And at a lower long-term cost than those wonderful annual audits.

However, as with many things, Sarbanes-Oxley has given the CxO suite of many companies the excuse to eliminate all the risks associated with a public company. They are doing so under the guise of not having to report on those risks. It is similar to the concept of ignoring problems instead of fixing them.

In a recent article from Forbes, Elizabeth MacDonald opines that Sarbanes-Oxley should be modified/curtailed to allow executives the ability to incorporate more risk into their operations. I disagree with Ms MacDonald in that the CxO suite in America should be using Sarbanes-Oxley as an excuse to not take risks. Instead those executives should be embracing the reporting and internal control aspects of Sarbanes-Oxley to allow investors to see the vision and leadership of the executives they pay ohhh so much to captain their corporations. As they say here in Colorado on the black diamond slopes:

"No guts... No glory!"

Technorati Tags: Sarbanes-Oxley, Business Activity Monitoring, Risk