Did Somebody Say Strategy?

Making your number

(Image: Ed Yourdon/ Flickr)

Business Performance Management Magazine (the sister publication of Business Finance Magazine), just published our articled on how Enterprise Performance Management has a direct impact on Sales Management, Sales Operations, and the weekly forecast.

See How BPM Can Guide the Great Sales Debate.

 

 

What is Business Foundation about?

I like using sitemeter.com to track the search terms visitors to our website use to find us.
I looked at a report of the recent top search terms, and here's what I found:

asset utilization
barriers to strategy execution
business intelligence performance
cash cycle
closing the gap between strategy and execution
cost reduction
customer profitability analysis
customer referral value
hr transformation
information architecture
key performance indicators
key performance indicators for human resources
kpi to measure operational efficiency
maturity models
pharma it spend
radically simple it
rational strategy approach
revenue vs. cost reduction
roi vs tco
sales operations
strategy and execution
strategy epm
strategy roadmap
transforming strategy

So, in a small way, this is the market telling us what it thinks we do or what it thinks we're about.
What's interesting to me is that nowhere does the market think we do what we do, it thinks we are interested in the results that people are looking for.  In other words, all the features & functions of our methodology are less important than the results we produce for clients.

I noticed that the search term list naturally divides into two groups: the actual business impacts and results (what we deliver), and the levers in the organization that we can help move to get those results (how we deliver it):

Business Impacts (WHAT):
asset utilization
barriers to strategy execution
business intelligence performance
cash cycle
closing the gap between strategy and execution
cost reduction
customer referral value
radically simple it
revenue vs. cost reduction

Levers to Pull (HOW):
customer profitability analysis
hr transformation
information architecture
key performance indicators
key performance indicators for human resources
kpi to measure operational efficiency
maturity models
pharma it spend
rational strategy approach
roi vs tco
sales operations
strategy and execution
strategy epm
strategy roadmap
transforming strategy

Therefore, taking my cues from the market, I would have to say that this is what Business Foundation is about:

By working with I.T. and the business together, taking a hard look at the metrics and measures you use to gauge performance - and aligning them with your strategy - we use Enterprise Performance Management technologies and processes to help you deliver a tangible impact on the business.

Wow!  That's what we do.  Thank you market!

BI & EPM Competency Centers

We've had a lot of interest in Business Intelligence and Enterprise Performance Management Competency Centers / Centers of Excellence recently, especially real-world org. structures.  So we put up a SlideShare deck with some examples at http://slidesha.re/djpSZQ