9 Critical Reasons to Automate Performance Management
As a human resources manager, you understand the importance of having a strong performance management process in place at your company. Such a process helps you better motivate and retain top performers, more closely align individuals’ goals with those of your organization, and create a more engaged workforce— all of which leads to greater productivity, and ultimately, improves your company’s bottom line.
Stacey Epstein Sr. Director of Marketing, SuccessFactors
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  Applying Change
Revitalizing a company from the inside out by changing processes can also offer a road map for division heads and executives. Reacting to instantaneous company and sales data is only a narrow view of the coming abilities of business performance management. Echoing the father of modern day management, Peter Drucker, BPM also helps you to continue to define your business and who buys what you make or offer – or in Drucker’s words: “What is our business? Who are our customers?”
Brian Queenin, Xtropian
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  Avoid These Performance Pitfalls
Success depends on avoiding the common myths in the pursuit of performance management. A good way to start is to adopt an accurate perspective. It will guide the rest of your approach and expectations.
Rodney Brim, Performance Solutions Technology, LLC
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  Creating ‘Above and Beyond’ Performance
When you look at American business today, you see the same human resource practices being applied throughout all types of organizations – performance appraisal, reward and recognition programs, leadership development and incentive pay to name a few. But, with all of the advances in technology, science and education, why do organizations continue to struggle with managing the performance of their employees? Quite simply, they aren’t looking at behavior.
Aubrey C. Daniels, Aubrey Daniels International
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  Effectively Managing Master Data to Help Improve Information Quality
Would you like to improve the quality of information at your company? If you answered, “yes,” you’re not alone! Many companies today are caught in a quagmire of poor information quality. Common information quality issues include:
Deloitte Consulting, Hyperion
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  FAST CLOSE IN 2006: Achieving Quick Wins And Big Wins
The “fast close,” a concept used to describe a corporation’s ability to complete its accounting cycles and close its books quickly, is re-emerging as an important project for today’s global finance function.
James Fisher, Cartesis, Inc.
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  Getting and Keeping Competitive Advantage
Do you know what your most important asset is doing right now? We’re talking about your workforce: the people that deploy your capital, translate your objectives into strategies and strategies into execution, and serve your customers to generate value.
Peter Djokovich, Strategix Performance, Inc.
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  How to Get the Most Out of Your Metrics
Dashboards and scorecards have become ubiquitous in the enterprise executive suites these days. There’s no denying that there are many outof- the-box and custom software that tout up-to-thesecond visibility into your company. However, the misconception about measuring company performance is that the metrics have all the answers. This is simply not the case. In fact, a governing tenet of performance management is that change for change’s sake without a holistic point of view is just decision making in a vacuum.
Eric Reyes, Montgomery Research, Inc.
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  It’s Combine Time
While integrating performance management systems now will pay off in the long run, how you go about it will also determine what kind of success your company has. It is no longer acceptable to leave the goals of integration to IT. Line of business must draw up the plan and sign off on specific target areas of your business.
Eric Reyes, Montgomery Research, Inc.
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  Looking for the Information Balance
Companies looking to balance the demands of compliance and performance are making changes to their consolidation, reporting and planning systems.
Delbert Krause, Cognos
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  Managing Information as Imperative
It’s a classic collision: Irresistible force meets immovable object, with the added spectacle of the overextended, overstressed CFO stuck in the middle. Even as they struggle to improve financial performance in the face of fickle customers, shrinking product cycles, changing technology and volatile economies, CFOs are besieged by the escalating distractions and costs of regulatory compliance. Every day it seems there are more controls to correct, more questions to answer, more reports to prepare, more rules to follow.
Delbert Krause, Cognos
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  New Challenges Demand New Answers to Measuring Performance
Rarely will a day pass without experts commenting on the pace of change in modern organizations. It truly does seem as if change is the only constant in the turbulent world of 21st century business. But if you’re looking for a seemingly safe haven, one tightly protected from the winds of change, look no further than performance measurement. For literally thousands of years the measurement of business has focused almost primarily on one single dimension – financial performance. Bookkeeping records used to support financial transactions can literally be traced back thousands of years, and at the turn of the 20th century it was financial innovations that fueled the growth of the early industrial giants such as DuPont and General Motors.
Paul R. Niven, The Senalosa Group
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  Performance Management: Interaction of People and Processes
In today’s fast-paced business climate, the agility with which a company manages performance can determine its market position and profitability. Businesses are driven by competitive pressures to reach higher standards of competence in day-today operations and to capitalize on the interaction of their people and processes; optimizing these to generate better outcomes is what performance management is about.
Mark Smith, Ventana Research
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  Redefining the Executive Role
It used to be easy to make decisions about software and how they fit into your business. Need something to process credit cards and interact with a database inside and outside your firewall? No problem. That stuff comes out of a box. While there are a dizzying number of box choices, the focus of a chief executive and his or her board needs to be to redefine the relationship your company has with IT, especially if the overarching goal is to enact performance management initiatives.
Eric Reyes, Montgomery Research, Inc.
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  Synchronizing for Success
Success in business requires two components: The first is a thoughtful planning process that develops and communicates a companywide strategy and sets out the appropriate performance metrics – metrics that map to and support that strategy. The second is the ability to synchronize the execution of those strategy components across various organizations of a company. That synchronization requires access to up-to-the-minute business metrics and the ability to respond quickly as deviations occur.
Yale Tankus, Hewlett-Packard
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  The Agile, Intelligent Enterprise
Executives aspire to be more omniscient about their performance – keenly aware of important events as or before they occur, and able to make ontarget, informed, split-second decisions for the betterment of their businesses. This is the first step toward becoming an agile, intelligent enterprise. The reality is that most executives lack the necessary information and tools required to find real business insight beyond basic financial reporting. By improving business intelligence practices and developing an “information on demand” environment, companies can leverage their information assets to provide the real insight required to truly become an agile, intelligent enterprise.
Michael J. Schroeck, IBM
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  The Global Advancement of Enterprise Performance Management
Enterprise performance management (EPM) starts with a simple question: “How’s my organization performing today?” But unless you can get a straight answer, it ends there, too. EPM is not a new idea. Businesses have always sought to grow revenue and reduce spending to maximize profitability. But today, it’s more difficult than ever. Infrastructures are more complex. Data volumes have swollen. And in a challenging global economy, the stakes are higher than ever.
Robb Eklund, Business Objects
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  The Impact of the newly emerging field of Financial Data Quality Management (FDQM) on Group Reporting and Performance Management Processes
Data quality management could be regarded as the less glamorous and exciting end of the Reporting Supply Chain (RSC). After all, most of the attention and interest is lavished on the latest portal, reporting tool or dashboard. Yet mismanagement or neglect of underlying balance information or interfaces can place the integrity of the whole process in jeopardy.Whereas a Grandfather clock, whose hands have stopped dead on 12 o’clock, can be guaranteed to be correct twice a day, an error in structural information such as an account code or cost centre, or transaction data can be guaranteed to be wrong forever - unless it is trapped and corrected.
Alan Lindsay, Hyperion
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  The New CFO
New compliance regulations are now a fact of life. Aside from shining more scrutiny on chief executives and control systems, the regulations also bring into the spotlight your finance managers and their new roles and responsibilities. Suddenly, the CFO and his department are now laden with accountability in a fishbowl.
Eric Reyes, Montgomery Research, Inc.
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006

  Turning Have-To’s Into Must-Have’s
Companies in every sector have had to deal with an onslaught of new regulatory compliance requirements. These requirements have caused companies to respond by rebuilding their information processes and have spawned thousands of data-related initiatives. Although these steps were necessary, a lot of them were simply aimed at documenting old processes and focused on merely completing auditing checklists. As such, they didn’t materially provide new value or differentiation. Companies should now look to maximize their information investments by expanding (and perhaps combining) these efforts targeted more toward producing business intelligence. By producing business intelligence, and ultimately insight, companies can create significant new value from their compliance initiatives.
Michael J. Schroeck, IBM
Managing Performance Volume 1, May 31, 2006