The Latest Buzzwords: Unified and Independent

The significant merger and acquisition activity currently taking place in the business performance management (BPM) space has caused most of the vendors to rethink their market positioning and messaging. Vendors who have stayed out of the fray are touting their unified product set and independence (read: openness). Interestingly enough, some of the newly merged companies are trying to claim the unified and independent mantle as well. Let’s take a look at some definitions and realities behind the messages, how these capabilities impact BPM users, prospects and some of the vendors involved.

Unified

A unified back end is essential in minimizing data integration challenges. Most performance management systems take data feeds from multiple transactional source systems. They store this data in the same database that is already holding the plan data. You end up with a single database holding financial, sales, customer and other key data for the current year, prior years and plan/forecast periods. This is true even if there are separate and distinct modules that are acting on and creating the data. This is one way BPM is able to deliver a single version of the truth.

The third flavor of unified is a single product that does it all. By default, these products have only one interface and one database, and all of the BPM functionality is in one place. This may seem ideal, and for many companies it is the best choice. However, it may mean buying more capabilities than you need at the time because all functionality is there day one, versus a more modular approach of buying just what you need. Of course, you can grow into it over time, but there may be greater up-front costs and complexity to deal with.

When looking at the current BPM market, there are very few remaining fully unified products available. Clarity Systems provides a unified BPM solution that addresses the needs of the upper end of the midmarket as well as the enterprise market. In the midmarket you also have Adaptive Planning, PROPHIX, Centage and a handful of others offering unified solutions. The largest and most well-known BPM vendors do not currently have fully unified solutions. This is mainly due to the fact that they have been fleshing out their product set via acquisition. While not offering unified solutions, these vendors have very strong solutions in each area of BPM. They also have product plans and roadmaps that focus on creating a unified product set over time. They usually target a common user interface or at least a common look and feel first. This way the various acquired products give the appearance of being part of the same BPM solution. During this phase, there are also data movement tools available to provide the ability to get data from one product to the next as needed. A single back-end database comes later. Due to the fact that these products were built by different companies with different toolsets and architectures, it is unlikely that they will evolve into a single fully unified product any time soon. If you are focused on just one aspect of BPM today, these vendors may have the most robust versions of what you are looking for. Hopefully, they will complete their integration projects before you are ready to move to the next phase of your BPM project. Most of the major players fall into this category: SAP (with OutlookSoft, Pilot and Business Objects), Cognos (with Celequest and Applix), Microsoft (with FRx and ProClarity), Infor (with Geac, MIS and Systems Union), Oracle (with Hyperion) and Exact Software (with Longview). SAS is another major player that does not have integration issues due to acquisition but has functionally rich, purpose-built applications that are unified with data integration tools and similar interfaces.

Independent

Depending on who is using the term, “independent” can mean different things. After the major enterprise resource planning (ERP) companies snapped up some of the last few standalone BPM application vendors, the remaining non-ERP performance management vendors began to use the term. They were essentially saying that their BPM solutions could work with any ERP system available. This message would certainly appeal to companies that do not have a standard ERP system companywide, or those that didn’t like the BPM offering of their ERP provider. In addition, these vendors were also trying to imply that the formerly independent BPM vendors that were just acquired would now only really work well with the products of the ERP vendor that acquired them. This independence message was touted by the BPM vendors that also offer business intelligence (BI) tools. The pure BPM application vendors took it a step further, saying their systems would work with almost any ERP as well as whatever BI solution you already had in place, one-upping the BI/BPM vendors. Other vendors refer to independent as their implementation of relational and multidimensional technology for the data repository within their application. Some vendors support multiple multidimensional engines, including Oracle’s Essbase, Microsoft’s Analysis Services and/or Cognos’s Applix TM1. On the relational side, the vendors would include SQL, Oracle, DB2 and a host of others. In this case, the definition of independent is that you can select the internal database that best suits your business needs and aligns with your internal staff’s experience.

In the end, though, I wonder how important this independence and openness really is. For the right set of functionality, many companies are willing to take on additional technologies. Or, if they require a system that works with their existing systems, they probably don’t care how open or closed the back end is as long as their particular systems are supported.

How important is it that your BPM solution is unified and independent? It comes back to the basics: what are the business requirements for your BPM system? If ease of use is high on the list, then a single unified product or at least a unified front end should be a key requirement. Because most systems can share data via extract, transform and load (ETL) tools, weighting needs to be given to the importance of supporting your existing database directly versus bringing in a new database and relying on ETL tools because that new system better addresses business needs. If supporting your database directly is key, then that would be one of your BPM system requirements. It doesn’t mean you need an independent vendor though. A vendor may only support its own database for all of its products, but if that happens to also be your underlying database, does independence matter?

Craig Schiff, a pioneer in business performance management, helped create and define the space known first as analytic applications, then business intelligence and now BPM. He has published several articles, spoken at numerous BPM conferences. He is a recipient of the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. BPM Partners is a vendor-independent professional services firm focused exclusively on BPM, providing expertise that helps companies successfully evaluate and deploy BPM systems. Schiff may be reached at cschiff@bpmpartners.com or (203) 359-5677.

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