With the current state of the economy, there can be little debate about the importance of having effective enterprise performance management (EPM) systems to nimbly react and plan for the future. There are three components to having an effective EPM capability:
- The process state of your company examines the current state and associated challenges, as compared to how you seek to influence your process post implementation. For many companies, the process itself is going to be identical pre and post implementation, and any improvements will be largely limited to gains from automation. While there will be benefits from this effect, focusing exclusively on this type of improvement will miss a tremendous amount of opportunity.
- Technology will also have a major impact on the outcome of your solution. Do you have multiple ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) steps requiring translation from one nomenclature to another? If so, you may be embedding points of failure and increasing your total cost of ownership (TCO). Do you have myriad platform requirements that unnecessarily complicate your environment, increase licensing costs and increase TCO by requiring more administrative steps and more specialized staff? These aspects are seldom thoroughly vetted during the technology-selection process, but the impact to the long-term success of your initiative can be significant.
- Finally, selecting the right partner can make a world of difference. It has been said a good partner can make even flawed technology sing, and a bad partner can ruin even the most technically sound solution. Some firms exhibit the kinds of markers that indicate the quality level of the experience you can expect, while others’ involvement in a given market may be limited to projects won with minimal effort on an opportunistic basis. Since many partners’ websites look the same, however, a proper due diligence process is essential for separating the skilled teams from the pretenders.
In an upcoming post, I'll discuss the 8 essential qualities to look for in an implementation partner.
Column5 CEO David Den Boer founded Column5 Consulting in 2005. Applying his significant technical delivery experience and broad experience providing solutions across varying industries, he has created the premier global professional services provider of SAP EPM solutions. He can be reached at ddenboer@column5.com.