Business Intelligence Network - The Vision for BI and Beyond

Danger – BPM Ahead, Part 1

Published: April 23, 2008

This article, the first in a two-part series, covers two of the three problems that can cause significant issues for the companies implementing business performance management solutions.

We have written many articles on the benefits of business performance management (BPM). We still firmly believe that every company can improve its performance with a focus on specific business processes and supporting systems and that every company should proceed full speed ahead with BPM. However, the road to improved business performance is full of potholes. While there are many ways companies have struggled with BPM, there are three fairly common ones. These three problems can cause significant issues for the company, and perhaps for the individual(s) responsible. However, they are avoidable if an appropriate process is followed.

Problem #1: Selecting the Wrong Solution

After all of the BPM and business intelligence (BI) vendor mergers of the past 12-18 months, there is a perception that it’s hard to purchase a “bad” solution. In other words, if one of the big name brands is purchased with all of the capabilities they offer (whether acquired or in-house developed), how can you go wrong? The problem is, you can in fact go very wrong. For one thing, while these vendors have developed brilliant product road maps, it will take years for some to deliver. In the meantime, they are selling a hodgepodge of product modules that may or may not be integrated and may or may not have a future. Even vendors that have not recently gone through the merger process can have their own challenges. Do you want your name to be the answer to this senior executive’s question: “Who selected this slow, difficult to use, no longer supported software application?” It seems to us that well educated and experienced individuals in both finance and IT are forgetting the basics.

Today more than ever you must do your homework. You need a detailed set of requirements for evaluating the various available offerings. While most vendors provide much of the same functionality, how they go about providing those capabilities is very different (which is why a high-level RFP is virtually useless, unless you are looking to get a series of positive responses from all vendors). Vendors will vary dramatically in ease of use, ease of maintenance, degree of integration (between their own modules as well as external systems), response times, and costs. Most of this will not be obvious from canned demos, so you need to script customized demos that focus on your unique needs. For example, you can find dozens of BPM solutions that will work with Excel, but only a handful probably work with it in the way that your organization and existing spreadsheets require. If your needs are fairly straightforward and you go with one of the big guys, you will probably end up paying for extra functionality that you may not need. If your requirements are very unique, there may be a specialized, but not as well known, vendor that offers the deepest capabilities in that area. Buying the solution that worked so well at your last company may not be the answer either. You are doing your current company a disservice if you don’t evaluate your new organization’s specific requirements against a slate of vendors to find the best fit for them.

In addition, before you make this multi-year, costly, high-visibility decision, you may want to think about investing in some in-depth research or expert guidance.

Problem #2: Delivering a System that is Underutilized

What’s worse than not having a performance management system? Having one that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and several man-years of effort to implement that few, if any, use for decision-making. How could this happen? Lack of end user buy-in. There are many reasons for this: allegiance to prior systems, limited training, general skepticism, politics, etc. Better communication throughout can help alleviate some of this. Make sure people understand why the company is purchasing a new system, what the anticipated benefits are, how the data will be utilized, and what’s expected of them. Also, demonstrating early wins is a way to encourage gradual adoption. So, instead of disappearing for a year or more while developing the system, focus on small pieces that can be delivered sooner and provide short-term benefits to the users. The best way to avoid user defection, however, is to involve the users or their representatives in the vendor selection process. That is why it is important to create a cross-functional team (or steering committee) at the start of the performance management project. Even more important is to go through a full-scale vendor selection process with this team – even if you think you already know which solution is best for the company. This will get everyone on the same page, help them understand why a particular solution was chosen over others, and make them proponents for the new system (since they helped select it) instead of sideline critics. While you may very well end up at the same solution you were thinking of initially, this approach produces a much better result than telling the team that the CFO or CIO told you to select vendor X.

Once you have purchased the best BPM solution for your needs and have strong user support, what could possibly go wrong? For that answer, you will have to wait until next month when we delve into common problem number three in depth. If you can't wait until next month or your project is at a critical stage, feel free to contact us for an advance peek.

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