Did Somebody Say Strategy?

Talent Management for the Twenty-First Century

It looks like the March 2008 issue of Harvard Business Review was full of EPM-related articles.
Peter Cappelli comes up with a very thoughtful approach to talent management.

As you read this article, keep in mind how enterprise performance management (the one we talk about, not the 'performance management' of annual-review ilk), can support the talent management process by modeling people & performance, enabling the demand forecast, scorecarding professional development, reporting & analyzing productivity & effectiveness, and making sure human capital management is directly tied back to strategy.

Radically Simple IT?

David M. Upton & Bradley R. Staats, in the March 2008 Harvard Business Review, attempt to solve the enterprise systems complexity problem.  They outline Shinsei Bank's success in using a path-based approach to building systems.

Transforming Strategy One Customer at a Time

This fascinating article (in Harvard Business Review by Richard J. Harrington & anthony K. Tjan, March 2008) discusses how to re-frame market segmentation: Look at customers by end-user types (or roles), rather than by company types or purchasing departments

When Growth Stalls

I read a very interesting article on the sources, causes and remedies of stalling growth in the March 2008 Harvard Business Review by Matthew S. Olson & Derek van Bever & Seth Verry.

Better Practices for closing the IT/Business alignment gap

Please read our latest CIO.COM article at
How To Close the IT-Business Alignment Gap

Ram's Rules for using a downturn to make your company better

The February 18, edition of Fortune Magazine says “There is no one-size-fits-all solution when the economy goes South…smart executives can use the downturn to make their companies better, stronger, and faster,” and has an article called “Ram’s Rules” by über-consultant Ram Charan.  Here’s an XPM (eXtended Performance Management) look at Ram’s Rules:

What Enterprise/Corporate/Business Performance Management is not.

We still see confusion at client sites, in the press, on the web, and from vendors and consultants as to just what is EPM, CPM, BPM, IPM… or as we call it xPM (no wonder there’s confusion, we still can’t even agree on what to call it!).  There are too many solutions that don’t tie-back to the vision and definition of xPM.  There are a number of good working definitions, let’s look at two of them:

My Fave Fives

My friend and former colleague, Frank Buytendijk of Oracle, posted his “My Top Fives” list on his blog today and asked a few of us to do the same. So here goes: