As IT focuses on the cloud, mobile, and Big Data, business users are still focused on improving budgeting, forecasting, and reporting. How do these technology trends and business needs come together? What are customers in 2013 looking for from their performance management/business intelligence/business analytics vendors? How happy are they with the vendors they have? What devices and operating systems do they expect to use for mobile access to this data? This year's BPM Pulse survey attempts to get answers to all of these questions. To particpate in the survey and see the results for yourself go here. The survey will be closing mid-April and the results will be made available at that time.

Of course they do, but you wouldn't know it by looking at many of the companies we meet with while they are in the process of selecting a performance management solution. A company we worked with a few months ago illustrates this point perfectly.

When we walked in the door they were far down the path with a particular vendor and they just wanted us to 'validate' their decision. In other words, did we believe their assessment was right that this vendor could meet their requirements. Well, we'd have to see those requirements first. The good news is that on the technology side they had a decent set of requirements outlining required interfaces, supported databases, desired performance/responsiveness, remote access needs, security, etc. It was a 12 page document and also included a project timeline.

On the business side, it was a paragraph someone had sent as an email. It went something like 'need to implement a system to replace Excel-based planning and reporting'. Now of course the finance team and business unit leaders involved had a lot more thoughts on what they wanted, but it was all in their heads. It was not clear that they had even discussed it with each other. There was no way this was going to end well. So, we recommended they step back for a moment and let us help them develop detailed requirements.

They put together a team of 40 key stakeholders and we interviewed all of them (some in departmental groups, others individually). The end product was a nearly 60-page document reviewing the current status of their systems, related challenges, and required functionality of the new system. While the raw interview data was maintained, the requirements were summarized by product functionality area and prioritized by frequency of request. One of the first things that became apparent was that they were looking at capabilities that went far beyond just planning and reporting.

The end result of all of this was that the vendor they were about to purchase was now obviously not a fit. Using these new detailed requirements we helped them identify several vendors that could potentially meet their needs. They went on to evaluate four of them against their specific requirements. They then scored them according to their ability to meet each requirement and went into contract discussions with the top two scoring vendors.

Without detailed business requirements you could easily select the wrong solution, as almost happened here. In addition how can you compare vendors without knowing what specific criteria you are using for the evaluation and scoring? There is also a hidden benefit to this requirements process. Those 40 people that were interviewed now feel that their voices were heard and their input was taken into account. While it is unlikely that 100% of their requests will be met by the new solution, because they were part of the process they will help support a successful rollout and accelerate user buy-in and adoption.

 

Last year was a good one for performance management.  Vendors continued to add customer-focused enhancements, they acquired or partnered their way to broader suites, new vendors appeared with surprisingly well developed offerings, and the pace of end user adoption accelerated. Where do we go from here? Hopefully we'll see more of the same plus some growth in specific functional areas and utilization of the latest technologies. Here are my 5 predictions for performance management in 2013.

1) Focus on Forecasting

While almost every vendor that offers budgeting also offers forecasting capabilities, it is clearly not their focus. In fact it is more of an afterthought. More and more users though are looking for solutions optimized for forecasting. This means specific functionality, such as predictive analytics, as well as not having to be burdened by the overhead of menus, options, and functions better suited for budgeting. In our 2012 BPM Pulse Spotlight survey on budgeting, planning, and forecasting the most requested product capability was support for continuous forecasting. While most organizations are not actually there yet, it is clearly a direction they expect to be moving in. What really brought this home for me was a conversation I had late last year with a large telecommunications company. They informed me that they had abandoned their budgeting process four years ago because it couldn't possibly keep up with their market realities. Now all they do is forecast at a fairly summary level. They had looked at the usual performance management vendors and were struggling to find one that had a strong forecasting focus. We pointed them to two smaller vendors that might meet their needs, but the fact remains that there is room for improvement in the forecasting solutions offered by the mainstream vendors.

What we expect to see in 2013: vendors will start to flesh out their capabilities in this area and perhaps even begin to package and price this functionality separately as opposed to just bundling it in with budgeting.

2) Increased Importance of Financial Consolidation

While budgeting and performance dashboards have been at the top of most organizations must-have performance management lists for year, financial consolidation has been near the bottom. Last year many projects, even those ostensibly focused on budgeting, added some consolidation functionality to their requirements. In some cases it was driven by the need for intercompany matching and eliminations, in others it related to currency conversion and partial ownership, and for some it involved the ability to make journal entries in their performance management system. For the vendors the opportunity is large for two reasons - not having basic capabilities can cause them to be eliminated even if it is not the focus, and financial consolidation led deals tend to be larger than budgeting deals. The largest multi-million dollar project we worked on last year was primarily focused on consolidation.

 What we expect to see in 2013: at least one leading performance management vendor will introduce their first financial consolidation module, while other vendors will continue to enhance their existing capabilities in this area.

3) Expansion of Cloud-based Performance Management

Performance management has been a bit of a laggard in the acceptance of cloud-based solutions. The primary reason has been perceived security issues and the nature of the data stored in these systems. Of course any company that has been passing around spreadsheets loaded with confidential data has much bigger security issues than any hosted solution could ever have. In fact, unlike many systems and processes in use today by these companies, the leading cloud-based performance management solutions meet very stringent security standards. However, what is beginning to really turn the tide is the reality of overwhelmed IT departments. We have seen numerous organizations move to cloud-based performance management in the past year primarily because their IT groups told them they would have to get in line and wait for IT support for any new systems. The next issue to arise is that there is general confusion in the end user community when comparing true cloud-based solutions and single-tenant hosted versions of on premise solutions. In the end though, most organizations looking for cloud-based solutions have been purchasing products built from the ground up for that environment.

What we expect to see in 2013: the cloud-based vendors will see continued growth in demand, and several on-premise vendors will begin to develop their hosted offerings to more effectively compete with full cloud solutions. While we don't expect any short-term re-architecting for the cloud, we do see pricing, marketing, and branding that will enable them to be taken more seriously.

4) New Choices

Several years ago there were a sizeable number of independent performance management vendors to choose from. Then came the great wave of acquisitions and we were left with a handful of mega vendors and a much smaller number of performance management focused application vendors. I personally thought it was going to stay that way because the barriers to entry seemed so high (how could a new vendor compete with the marketing clout of the big guys and the established track records of the remaining independent players). Apparently, I was wrong. Several impressive new performance management vendors have emerged  in the past year or two. They are run by management teams made up of people that came from many of those companies that got acquired several years ago, so they clearly know what they are doing. Some solutions are simply incremental improvements upon what has come before, while others are truly innovative. Either way, more choice is always a good thing for end users. It also helps to keep the other vendors on their toes and constantly moving forward.

What expect to see in 2013: more new vendors! The year is young and we have already met with two vendors new to the performance management market. They continue the pattern of having seasoned management teams with deep experience in the space. One is somewhat innovative, the other is a new and improved version of a unified performance management solution. Both should be solid options for organizations looking for solutions this year. We will share more details as we spend more time with these vendors.

5) More Due Diligence

While performance management is no longer the Wild West of its early days when unsubstantiated marketing claims were flying all over the place and buyers had limited relevant knowledge and experience, it is still a challenge to get it right. By getting it right I mean: getting the best solution, at the best price, in a timely manner, with end user buy-in and a successful roll-out. While there are still many organizations that go off on their own, do some web research, and buy a product based on a canned demo, there are many more that are doing it the right way. They put together a team of internal stakeholders, prepare a long-range roadmap, gather detailed requirements, look at multiple vendors that could potentially fit, put them through scripted in-depth custom evaluations, score them against their ability to met the prioritized and weighted requirements list, and aggressively negotiate the price with the finalists. Since BPM Partners provides tools and expertise to guide companies through this process we get to see this first-hand. In 2012 we worked with more organizations than in any year in our history.

What we expect to see in 2013: the continuation of this trend. There are a number of reasons for this, one of which is the abundance of viable options to evaluate and choose from. Another is the fact that companies that have waited until now to move forward with performance management tend to be more risk-averse. In addition, list prices are higher than ever and finding a more cost-effective solution or knowing where and how far to push in price negotiation is critical.

Those are our thoughts. Now share yours: take the BPM Pulse 2013.

On Monday there were two significant performance management announcements. First, Adaptive Planning announced its acquisition of myDIALS. Adaptive Planning has been a pioneer in the delivery of cost-effective, easy to use performance management in the cloud. The best indicator of how successful they have been is their #1 rating in our annual vendor customer satisfaction survey. We have also been following myDIALS for several years and have been impressed with their easily personalized operational dashboards. This acquisition extends Adaptive Planning's offerings from budgeting, planning, forecasting, reporting, and data visualization into true operational analytics. When they introduce financial consolidation capabilities at some point in the future they will have covered all the performance management bases and will have an offering that equals or exceeds what many of their on-premise competitors offer.

Also on Monday SAP announced their first cloud-based performance management offerings. This certainly validates the move to cloud-based solutions in this area and may help some larger organizations begin to take this approach more seriously. SAP's initial focus is on expense analysis, P&L analysis, and capital planning. While it is certainly a step in the right direction the limited scope of the initial release will also limit its appeal. For existing SAP performance management customers it might be an easy way to add new capabilities. Right now though for anyone looking for a comprehensive cloud-based performance management suite there are better alternatives.

Speaking of those alternatives, they haven't been sitting still either. In addition to Adaptive Planning, two other broad-based performance management cloud solutions have had some major news of their own this year. Earlier this year Host Analytics partnered with Birst to add business intelligence and analytic capabilities to its already fairly comprehensive offering. Just last month, Tidemark announced the general availability of their next generation HTML5-based mobile/cloud/big data/analytics-based performance management suite.

With several solid cloud-based performance management solutions now available, the question becomes - is the demand there? The answer based on our own BPM Pulse 2012 survey results is an unequivocal 'yes'. For the first time more than half the respondents (57%) said they would consider a cloud-based solution, and the numbers were even higher for smaller companies. In addition, of those that said 'no' to the cloud for now, 76% said that may change over time.

In the end this is all great news for performance management buyers. They have more and better cloud choices than at any other point in time, in addition to many solid on-premise options as well. 

They all claim that they have very happy customers, but only one can have the happiest. Our annual BPM Pulse survey has wrapped up and the related customer satisfaction ratings are always eagerly anticipated. We will be revealing the results of the survey tomorrow during a live webcast (don't worry if you are viewing this after April 26th, a replay should be available at that same link address). In addition we will name our selection for Best New Vendor of the Year, as well as identify the core list of vendors that we believe everyone should use as a starting point for finding their ideal performance management solution. Lots of  other information will be covered including updates on the latest vendor releases, and market feedback on topics such as the willingness of finance departments to utilize cloud-based solutions for performance management.