The Amazing Zombie Products

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:53:22 -0700

Just in time for Halloween, the BPM vendors are creating their own band of zombies. More specifically, their dead products are being brought back to 'life'. Killing a product in the first place is often a difficult decision for a vendor. The internal staff that helped create and market the product may be reluctant to let it go. Some customers may not want to see the product they purchased disappear, even if its replacement has better features and performance.The reality though, is that it is the right decision. If you are releasing a major new replacement product you need to re-allocate resources and start consolidating customers on the new platform. The significant merger and acquisition activity of last year left several vendors with overlapping and redundant product sets. The best of the vendors officially killed off the weakest links and worked on enhancing and moving forward with the strongest in each category. The worst of the vendors also have dead products, they just didn't announce it for fear of a customer revolt. Which brings us back to the walking dead.

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Won't Get Fooled Again

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:45:03 -0700

Life can be tough for consulting companies. Some potential customers have ben burned by unscrupulous consulting firms in the past and can now be somewhat hesitant to give the consulting industry another chance. Most consultants of course are fair, ethical, and deliver good value but end up paying the price for the few bad apples. I have recently had the unfortunate opportunity to observe a number of situations in the performance management consulting industry where the customer was being misled and will probably be left with a bad taste of consulting. In some cases the performance management software vendors are adding to the problem.

BPM Project Red Flag

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:33:42 -0700

While meeting recently with a Fortune 100 company planning out their Business Performance Management initiative, something came up that I felt could derail the whole thing. Unfortunately, they didn't see it that way. These are very senior, smart people and they did a brilliant job of analyzing their data needs and developing a standardized data structure to handle everything. Where their brilliance failed them was on the people side of the equation. They did share that they were getting a little pushback from some of the divisions about moving to a new, standardized performance system. This was attributed to stubbornness and ignorance. It was their belief that they could overcome this by re-assignment of problematic individuals and hiring new people who wouldn't have been exposed to anything other than the new way of doing things. It was also suggested that people would come around if they thought about how this new system could help improve the company's stock price. From my perspective there was a much simpler, less heavy-handed approach they could take that would have a greater chance of success.

The Future of IT?

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 08:37:08 -0700

It's no secret that in many companies the relationship between Finance and IT can be somewhat strained. Business performance management (BPM) initiatives tend to bring those underlying tensions to the surface. For BPM to succeed Finance and IT need to work closely together as a team. In some companies there is such strong disagreement around BPM approaches, priorities, and technologies that they fail to reach consensus and the project simply stalls out. Of course if there was a good senior executive sponsor in place they could break through the logjam, but many companies fail to fill that role with the right person. A company we have been working with recently has absolutely no Finance/IT issues to deal with. The reason is that they took a proactive approach to head off problems of that type. They simply have the CIO reporting to the CFO.

Bigger is Not Always Better

Fri, 16 May 2008 10:11:59 -0700

In the performance management space there are currently at least 6 vendors that could be classified as 'big'. While they all have a broad and deep range of offerings, for some end users these solutions can be overkill - too complex, too expensive, too much of a good thing. For some vendors, their sheer size has also had a negative impact on their behavior in the field and therefore their ability to win business. We have recently observed the actions of one of these vendors at several prospects where their 'big company behavior' cost them the business. In at least one case it was a multi-million dollar deal that ended up gong to a much smaller competitor.

Decision Time

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:46:53 -0700

Most of the newly merged vendors have now stepped up to the plate and made the tough decisions they needed to about people and products. This has resulted in removal of staff redundancies, restructurings that have caused additional staff to consider new opportunities, and sunsetting of several products. While it is impressive that the vendors have made the tough decisions (in spite of earlier protestations that nothing will change), it now comes down to execution.

Aren't Things Confusing Enough Already?

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:16:58 -0700

Companies evaluating business performance management (BPM) solutions in 2008 are still trying to make sense of all of 2007's mergers and acquisitions. Which vendor owns which products? Will all of these sometimes overlapping products survive? Do I need to own the transactional and/or BI products from a vendor to get the full benefits of their BPM solution? What is the timeline for integration? While BPM prospects are pondering these issues they don't need anything else to muddy the waters. Well, along comes IDS Scheer with an attempt to ride the performance management wave that can only serve to further confuse prospects.

Best and Worst of the Year Update

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:39:04 -0700

Since there is a lead time of several weeks from when an article is written until it is published there is always the possibility that some elements will be out of date the moment they come out. In the fast moving world of BPM it is even more likely. In our article 'Best and Worst of Performance Management in 2007' we lamented the fact that Applix and its solid mid-market offering got lost in the IBM/Cognos shuffle. Well, we are happy to report that all has now been made right with the world. What we anticipated in our article has actually come to pass - a new financial performance management offering for the mid-market: Cognos TM1 MidMarket Edition.

The New Vendor Landscape

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 08:15:43 -0700

As you would expect after all of last year's merger and acquisition activity, the business performance management (BPM) world looks very different in 2008. Conventional wisdom would lead you to believe that there are fewer, but larger vendors to choose from. While it's true that there certainly are some very large vendors now offering BPM, the actual number of viable BPM vendors has gone up, not down. Why? A handful of new entrants in the U.S. market coupled with ERP vendors that had marginal BPM solutions in the past now able to offer robust product sets from their recent acquisitions. To make sense of it all we have developed a BPM Vendor Landscape Matrix, viewable as part of our Beyond the Hype 2008 webcast. In addition, we list all of the viable BPM vendors in this PDF.

Vendors Benefit from Prior Relationships

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:53:35 -0700

I have noticed a disturbing new trend in BPM vendor selection in the past few months. There have now been several instances of vendors being selected solely on the basis of prior experiences or business relationship with that vendor. For example, a media company I am familiar with determined that a specific BPM application vendor was the best fit for their particular needs. However, the CEO stepped in and said that 'since our ERP provider, who we have a long and positive history with, has recently acquired a well-known BPM vendor that is who we are going with'.

Last of the Big BPM Purchases: IBM/Cognos?

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 14:45:24 -0700

Just when I was about to blog about something other than all the BPM mergers, this comes along. Well, thankfully I think we have run out of large BPM vendors to be bought, and by now most of the companies doing the buying should have had their fill as well. Its time for everyone to settle down and digest what they bought, and then come out fighting. The purchase of Cognos by IBM combined with the other recent M&A activity has created a powerhouse field of huge performance vendors: IBM, Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle. Make no mistake about it, this is all about performance management. Business intelligence on its own would not have been as interesting to these companies. Business performance management is driving the purchase of BPM applications, as well as BI tools, as well as related applications, and even the underlying transactional systems they feed off of. That's why some of these new mega vendors, regardless of their roots, are billing themselves as performance vendors. BPM sells. Doesn't every company want to/need to improve their performance, or at least better understand what is going on? Now to the specifics of this particular transaction ...

Bet You Can't Eat Just One ... SAP to Acquire Business Objects

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:39:56 -0700

This performance management stuff must be addictive. These big vendors just can't stop acquiring more vendors in the BPM (business performance management) space. Coming on the heels of its acquisition of OutlookSoft in June, today SAP announced its planned acquisition of Business Objects. Both fine companies with good product sets. The issue is that, at least in the performance management space, they have much of the same product set. Let's see, over the years Business Objects acquired BPM vendors SRC, ALG, and most recently Cartesis. SAP had its own SEM, acquired Pilot and most recently OutlookSoft. In the combined company that means they will have about six different flavors of essentially the same thing (take that Oracle/Hyperion and your measly two flavors of BPM). Now I know that these products have different strengths and weaknesses. Still, someone has to figure out how each will be developed and marketed and how it all fits. That's a tough job, but not as tough as the job prospects will face trying to figure out which pieces make sense for them, and hoping those particular pieces actually work well together.

Technorati Tags: SAP, Business Objects, Oracle

Another One Bites the Dust: Longview to be Acquired

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:37:44 -0700

Exact Software of the Netherlands has announced its intention to acquire Canadian performance management vendor Longview Solutions for a little over US$ 50 million. Not as significant as other recent deals in dollars or the multiple paid, but significant in its ultimate impact on the business performance management market in the U.S. After the acquisitions of SRC, Geac, Cartesis, and OutlookSoft, they were one of the last of the truly independent (not part of an ERP or BI company) BPM application vendors.

Cognos to Acquire Applix

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 07:10:37 -0700

Cognos announced today a $ 339 million cash agreement to acquire Applix. Based on Applix trailing 12-month revenues of approximately $ 61 million it looks like a good deal for their shareholders. For the two companies, employees, customers, and prospects there is a lot that makes good sense about this deal. First of all, these are two growing, successful companies with highly satisfied customers and strong technologies. The recent major acquisitions in the space (SAP/OutlookSoft, Oracle/Hyperion, Business Objects/Cartesis) have changed the playing field. In the end, size does matter. By acquiring Applix Cognos picks up 3,000 more performance management customers they can sell their applications to, and 200 additional performance management experts join their staff in sales, services, and development. Applix has the high-performance TM1 OLAP engine, an extremely satisfied customer base, and strong partner network. However, as a relatively small company in a space dominated by big players they were missing out on being involved in many performance deals. With Cognos' larger sales force, marketing, and deep R&D pockets this is a big win for Applix. What about customers and prospects?

The Future Looks Bright for BPM

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:43:49 -0700

I recently met with the executives responsible for defining the product roadmaps at SAP/OutlookSoft and Business Objects/Cartesis. I am very impressed with what I heard. While many of the details discussed are still confidential, there are certain observations I can share. For starters, the executives in charge of these decisions are precisely the right people for the job. In both instances they have a depth and breadth of performance management expertise that is hard to match. These are not political appointments or rushed into mistakes made after a major merger. These guys (and women) know their stuff. Most surprising to me is the recognition by management of the true strengths and weaknesses of each component of their combined product set.

Blog: Craig Schiff