Prioritizing and Investing in Performance Management

At SAPPHIRENOW today SAP customers including Steelcase, Forest City Enterprises, Dow Corning, Under Armour and USDA came together with leading industry analysts from IDC and Aberdeen for a lively and interactive debate about the performance management market looking at why EPM is important to them, how it helps drive value and what the future holds for this exciting growth market.

One element of the debate focused on the economic climate with customers focusing on why they invested in EPM during a period of economic uncertainty. Steelcase, a manufacturer of office products open the debate explaining how their business is one of the first to be impacted and last to recover from an economic downturn. They explained how their investment in SAP BusinessObjects Spend Performance Management was the only software investment allowed during the recession as part of a wider project to increase visibility and lower costs. Dow Corning, a joint venture between Dow Chemical and Corning, implemented SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation to insure greater visibility which was critical for them during this period. Under Armor who was seeing huge growth chose to implement SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation version for SAP NetWeaver to drive greater visibility and model new business opportunities. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) added that for all federal government organizations the key words are “accountability” and “transparency”. This has become even more important where funding is at a premium in a tight economy but also where government mandates increase the focus on these areas. They explained how SAP BusinessObjects Profitability and Cost Management is used to help them comply with the mandates and demonstrate value to key stakeholders.

Aberdeen’s Cindy Jutras commented on the importance of investments suggesting that organizations are showing greater optimism and that is now feeding back into their planning processes. She cautioned that the recovery may take longer than people think which may require them to be ready adjust plans and have the mechanisms to cope with this if and when required.

IDC’s Brian McDonough took the debate one step further to look at how companies are looking to expand beyond a point EPM investment into a broader portfolio of solutions. Forest City Enterprises suggested that this is about doing things in the right way for the business. Moving beyond SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation they see their EPM expansion moving toward SAP BusinessObjects Spend Performance Management and SAP BusinessObjects Strategy Management. Dow Corning added that today it’s even more important to bring together investments as part of a broad EPM and BI strategy and see how these assets can be leveraged together. This prompted a quick survey of where investment priorities lie and the results speak for themselves – expanding beyond planning to support Strategy Management and Profitability and Cost Management, the continued inclusion of BI and a new focus on sustainability. All good news for SAP then.