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TDWI Issues New Study: Best Practices in Business Performance Management – Business and Technical Strategies

Critical findings indicate business performance management (BPM) is gaining adherents in all industries as early successes continue to drive interest.

Click here to download the report: http://www.tdwi.org/display.asp?id=6986

The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), the leading provider of in-depth education and research in the business intelligence and data warehousing industry, has released the first report in its 2004 Report Series titled, "Best Practices in Business Performance Management: Business and Technical Strategies." Report findings indicate that although few organizations have fully deployed business performance management (BPM) yet, activity is ramping up.

Today, early adopter companies are deploying BPM initiatives to better communicate and execute business strategy at all levels and gain greater visibility into organizational performance. Their early successes are stoking red-hot interest in BPM from organizations in all industries. According to TDWI research, only 13 percent of respondents have implemented a BPM solution. However, another third (33 percent) are under construction or in the planning/design phase, and another third are exploring whether to implement a BPM solution.

Other key findings in this report include:

  • Most existing BPM deployments are enterprise-wide in scope (72 percent), although organizations "exploring" BPM envision smaller implementations.
  • Half of organizations start with fewer than 50 users and plan to expand support to175 users in 18 months. The median number of users suggests that many BPM solutions start small even if the metrics or planning models reflect enterprise-wide interests.
  • Two-thirds (65 pecent) said they have adopted BPM to gain "greater visibility into the business." An even greater percentage of respondents (73 prcent) who are still exploring BPM cited the same reason, suggesting that pressures to accelerate financial and performance reporting are increasing.
  • Organizations as a whole appear to be struggling to find key performance indicators (KPIs) that impact employee performance, only 13 percent said their KPIs are "very effective" at changing employee performance, 34 percent said they were "fairly effective," and 23 percent said their KPIs were only "somewhat effective."
  • More than one-third of organizations (37 percent) with BPM solutions have restructured incentive systems to reinforce KPIs.


Figure 1

The report was authored by Wayne Eckerson, director of research at TDWI. "This report sheds light on several key questions surrounding BPM initiatives today," said Eckerson. "Where to begin? How to create effective KPIs? How to architect a BPM solution? How to ensure usage? We hope that this snapshot of BPM activity and lessons learned will help establish BPM as a legitimate, high-value business endeavor."

The research for this report is based on a survey that TDWI conducted in October 2003, as well as interviews with BPM "experts," including end-user organizations, BI consultants, industry analysts, and report sponsors. A majority of the 540 qualified respondents (56 percent) were corporate IT professionals. The remainder were independent consultants (28 percent) and business sponsors/users (16 percent). Respondents' company sizes ranged from small to large corporations (33 percent more than $1 billion in annual revenue; 28 percent between $100 million and $1 billion; 30 percent less than $100 million).

The TDWI Report Series is designed to educate technical and business professionals about critical issues in data warehousing and business intelligence (DW/BI). TDWI's in-depth reports offer objective, vendor-neutral research consisting of interviews with practitioners and industry experts and a survey of DW/BI professionals worldwide. TDWI in-depth reports are sponsored by vendors who collectively wish to evangelize a DW/BI discipline or emerging technology.

Report sponsors included: Applix, Inc.; Business Objects SA; Cognos, Inc.; Hyperion Solutions Corp.; and ThinkFast Consulting, Inc.


This piece is brought to you by the DM Review editorial staff.

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