Business Performance Management

In early October, PROPHIX Software upgraded its performance management solution. New with Version 4.2 are auditing and reporting capabilities, including a way to track business modeling processes for better transparency. Procedural calculations engine and currency conversion enhancements have also been made to the interactive, graphical tool InfoFlex.

BI vendor MicroStrategy has released new data-visualization widgets for its Dynamic Enterprise Dashboards. The widgets, developed in Adobe Flash, are designed to make information more quickly and more easily understood than is possible through standard graphs and charts. The Bubble Grid widget lets users plot metric values as bubbles of different colors and sizes within a grid. The Funnel widget helps users visualize data such as forecasts of the sales pipeline through funnel shapes on a bar chart. And the Waterfall widget displays incremental and decremental data in a way that is useful in scenario planning.

iDashboards has released version 6.0 of its flagship product. Billed as a “user-friendly and cost-effective” alternative to the business intelligence (BI) offerings of the big guys, iDashboards 6.0 offers real-time, customizable analytics. This version generates unique, animated visual displays faster than previous versions could, especially when drawing on large quantities of underlying data. It enables users to display data from a wider range of sources. And it includes three new categories of charting: thermometer, bullet, and report.

Last week, Panorama Software introduced an upgrade to its pivot table addition to GoogleApps. The objective of the Panorama Analytics Gadget upgrade is to make data analysis even simpler for business users. In addition to processing data in Google spreadsheets, the gadget enables users to examine corporate line-of-business data and information in OLAP data cubes.

Late last month, Information Builders went horizontal; it teamed up with PMG to develop a supply chain management solution. The system combines key performance indicators (KPIs) that come from the Supply Chain Operations Reference and benchmark data from PMG, with personalized dashboards, alerts, and collaboration and organizational alignment tools via the WebFOCUS Performance Management Framework. “Embedding SCOR metrics and PMG benchmarking data into our WebFOCUS Performance Management Framework … [means that] companies can be up and running in a few weeks comparing and analyzing their supply chain performance against internal as well as external targets,” said David Cook, director of Performance Management Solutions at Information Builders.

Infor is also now offering performance management for small to midsize businesses. Infor PM Business Edition includes scenario-planning capabilities and Web-based access to operational and financial planning data, which enhances collaboration during the corporate planning process. It helps automate the budgeting process. And it includes reporting capabilities that can integrate planning and budgeting data with information from other source systems.

This month Host Analytics released a new version of its software-as-a-service BPM suite. Host Analytics version 8.1 includes some new functionality, but the biggest change is in the packaging of the company’s performance management offerings into three editions. The Team Edition is designed for businesses that are fairly small or have fairly simple BPM needs. It includes budgeting, planning, dashboards, and reporting via a relational model; it does not include Host Analytics’ OLAP engine. The second package is the Standard Edition, which includes budgeting, planning, and dashboards, as well as the OLAP engine and a Balanced Scorecard feature that relates corporate scorecards with departmental scorecards — one of the functionality upgrades in version 8.1. Finally, the Enterprise Edition includes everything in the Standard Edition, plus consolidation capabilities and a revenue forecasting feature, which is also improved compared with previous versions.

In mid-September, Cognos released version 9.4 of its TM1 OLAP engine. Among its new features, this TM1 offers “active forms,” which simplify report authoring by allowing for asymmetrical drill-down, parameter-driven row definition, and style-based formatting options. In addition, input and reporting templates in TM1 9.4 work in both Excel and a Web environment. The product includes new logging functionality to enhance Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. And it supports two new languages: Chinese and Japanese.

New research by Ventana Research suggests that increasing numbers of companies are improving their systems for decision-making by improving the analytics technologies they rely on. The firm rated participants’ maturity in four categories: people, process, information, and technology. Surprisingly, more companies excelled in the information and technology categories — with evaluations focused on activities such as their use of spreadsheets in data analysis and their attention to data integration and data visualization – than in their people or processes. In terms of people, only 28 percent of companies received Ventana Research’s highest maturity rating (“innovative”), and in terms of processes, only 14 percent of organizations reached that level. Reasons behind this discrepancy, according to the study, include poor communication and a widespread lack of confidence in planning processes.

Despite these problems, the benchmark research rated nearly two-thirds of organizations as mature (either “innovative” or “strategic”), overall, in terms of their use of analytics in performance management. Technology is helping companies make better decisions. Companies that have not invested in processes and technologies in the area of performance management analytics cite the following reason: budget (66 percent), resources (56 percent), and a failure to recognize the value of an upgrade (46 percent). The study concludes: “To maximize the value of what [business analysts] do, organizations must provide them with tools and support that make their work easier and more productive. Doing so involves committing to moving away from spreadsheets and inefficient processes and establishing a shared platform and technologies that enhance analytics for decision-making and performance management. Giving analysts and management immediate access to accurate information can yield business value in the form of optimized prices, successful marketing of products, and more effective competition.”

Extensible business reporting language (XBRL) may have moved to the SEC’s back burner in the past few weeks. There are obviously more pressing issues demanding the agency’s attention. Nevertheless, it’s a topic that isn’t going away – and it’s a topic that many people responsible for corporate planning and reporting remain clueless about.

In August, BPM Magazine conducted exclusive research on the topic, sponsored by TITAN-Pinnacle, a TITAN Technology Partners company. The results are astonishing.

Of the 196 respondents to the survey, two-thirds work in public companies that file with the SEC (a handful work in companies that file overseas; the remainder are in private companies or government agencies). Yet only 1 percent of respondents work for companies that have implemented XBRL.

The companies that haven’t implemented XBRL offer a range of reasons. For 9 percent of respondents, cost of new software to support data tagging is the largest obstacle; lack of demand for XBRL holds back another 16 percent. This is significant for some survey participants. Wrote one: “[XBRL] isn’t for our benefit; it is for the benefit of regulators, vendors, information aggregators, analysts, etc. It is foolish for a company to think it will save them money. We already know all our numbers and can look at them every which way. Some analyst or regulator will make assumptions and make a wrong analysis, and then we will have to spend more time and money explaining to them the error of their ways.”

Clearly, many of our readers have not bought into SEC chairman Christopher Cox’s assertion that using a standard, searchable data format such as XBRL “promises to let companies prepare their financial information more quickly, more accurately, and for less cost.”

Even worse for XBRL’s prospects in the near term, at least among organizations that aren’t required to adopt it, is the fact that our survey respondents most frequently cited “time and effort needed to learn about XBRL” as their company’s biggest barrier to data tagging (selected by 32 percent of participants). When asked to describe their current level of knowledge about XBRL, 43 percent called themselves beginners, and 38 percent said they have no knowledge at all. Of those who have no knowledge of XBRL, 81 percent work in public companies, and 43 percent work in companies with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. They include finance managers, financial and business systems analysts, vice presidents of finance, project managers for BPM software implementation projects, even consultants with well-known firms.

Perhaps these results aren’t as alarming as some of the other news rocking the SEC this week – but they’re worth noting. A proposed SEC rule would require certain very large companies to use XBRL in all of their SEC filings for fiscal periods ending this December 15 and beyond. Says KPMG director of advisory services Michael Ohata, “CFOs and other finance executives don’t need to be XBRL experts, but they should understand XBRL’s potential impact on the organization’s financial reporting processes, including what XBRL reporting actually looks like and how it differs from current filings.” Our research indicates that many finance managers remain far from this base level of understanding.

If I’m describing you, what can you do? The BPM Magazine and BPM Express online archives can help. In May’s newsletter, I explained XBRL at a pretty fundamental level. We’ll continue to cover XBRL reporting in future issues. It’s also a good idea to monitor the XBRL information coming out of the SEC, and many software vendors and consultants are interested in making the case for benefits companies stand to gain by making their data more accessible to investors, analysts, and others.

XBRL is coming, whether companies like it or not, and there’s no longer a good excuse for finance professionals in public companies to stay uninformed.