Reality checks

Heather Harreld

The economic downturn has propelled BI (business intelligence) data to center stage as companies struggle to transform transactional data into critical performance reports that executives can leverage to ensure the enterprise is meeting strategic goals.

BI vendors that once limited their wares to reporting and querying technologies are increasingly adding BPM (Business Performance Management) analytics on top of their platforms. This extends BI data outside the realm of the traditional "power user," such as business analysts, to propagate the entire enterprise via scorecards and executive dashboards.

The ultimate goal is to ratchet the BI data locked in transaction-system silos up to the executive suite for daily comparison to strategic goals and budget targets. As a result, an executive can be notified within minutes of critical variations in sales or production, instead of learning about them at quarter's end.

"The transaction-capture piece is important, but what companies really want to get to is this information system that gives them a good barometer of where their business is at any point in time," says John Hagerty, an analyst at AMR Research in Boston.

Capturing these current updates on company health is becoming even more critical for enterprises seeking enhanced visibility into operations. The struggling economy is applying intense pressure to the bottom line, and C-level executives are increasingly required by the federal government to certify the accuracy of financial reports.

The push for BPM is also sparking a rash of partnerships and strategy changes among enterprise app vendors and BI players. Comshare and Microsoft, for example, teamed in July to link Comshare's CPM (Corporate Performance Management) solution with Microsoft's BI platform to provide execs with an integrated system to monitor company performance.

"The economic downturn has companies whipping out their magnifying glasses to try to find where every penny of their business is going," says Dave Kellogg, senior group vice president of worldwide marketing at Business Objects in San Jose, Calif. "We're seeing a lot of interest in BPM. In a perverse way, the recession has actually helped the BI business."

Seeking better visibility

Pushing BI throughout the enterprise creates the foundation for solid BPM capabilities, which means plugging BI into multiple enterprise systems. Hyperion's Business Performance Management Suite, for example, is based on an integrated BI platform designed to allow companies to set goals; plan targets; and measure, predict, and report results in a collaborative way across an extended enterprise.

The suite is designed to boost the yield from ERP systems, which oftentimes hail from multiple vendors, says Nazhin Zarghamee, chief marketing officer of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Hyperion.

"What [companies] are looking for is a platform that can scale across all the ERP systems that can unify all the operational information that comes out of these systems and apply analytics on top of that," Zarghamee says. "It's extending planning outside of the purview of 'just finance' to all the other departments. The CFO is trying to move from [being] a scorekeeper, to a change agent and strategic partner to the business units."