BI Spotlight: The Business Intelligence Knowledge Forum

Using an EPM Maturity Model to build a roadmap for winning

Today, it’s no longer adequate for companies to focus only on their enterprise systems (Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, etc.) for ways of improving operating efficiency or processes.

As a former Hackett-Certified Advisor, we found no shortage of benchmarked companies where improving SG&A by one quartile could yield a 5 to 9% improvement (based on total revenues) directly to the bottom line. There are similar returns and efforts involved in working capital improvement initiatives, as well. While these transformational improvement opportunities continue to be true for many companies, it takes time, and lots of it to begin to deliberately move an organization from one quartile to the next. More time than many companies currently have the luxury of taking.

So how does this fit into an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Maturity Model?

Here’s an analogy…When you want to turn a horse, your only need to turn his head, and the 2,000 pound body follows.

EPM is the head of your organization, the processes, measurements, and technologies that link your strategy (where you want to turn) to your organization and operations. It’s also the key to finding where quick improvement opportunities are to be found.

This EPM Maturity Model is a guide to understand at a high level where EPM fits within an organization including Culture and Organization, Core Processes, and Technology. Comparing these subject areas across four dimensions - Marginal, Planned, Aligned, and Transformational, we get a starting point for areas of improvement and the beginnings of a transformational roadmap.

For more information on our complete EPM Maturity Model , please contact us.
Meanwhile, when it comes to EPM this is an economic race you want to win, place, or show - but not lose!

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