News & Views

September 2009 from CAmagazine – “…Many companies fail to include critical evaluation functionality that takes into consideration key business process requirements (for Corporate Performance Management systems:

• the ability to produce real-time reporting at select points in a business process while scaling the solution to a broad user base; this applies to operational reporting, management reporting and the budgeting process;
• the ability to handle large data volumes or data models in a cost-effective manner that meets both end user and IT needs;
• the ability to meet a planner’s real-time modelling cycle time (from input of drivers to output of key performance indicators and metrics);
• the ability to meet the data access security requirements of your organization’s end users in a cost-effective manner; and
• the ability to produce high-quality financial and management information through built-in preventive and detective data integrity controls…”

180 View – Business Intelligence must be a hot topic. There were two good articles about it in CAmagazine this month. This article agrees with Mark Cane’s article (“Business intelligence for the SME”) in that it’s a “struggle for companies to turn the huge amounts of data they produce into the sort of information that is useful at the right time.” This article also includes discussion of Corporate Performance Management (CPM) systems and the quote above adds some good points to consider in the selection of a CPM system that are often not considered.