InformationWeek

May 17, 1999

Objective Measurement

CorVu updates will help companies determine if they're meeting their goals

By Beth Davis

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orVu Corp. this summer will ship updates to the Balanced Scorecard module in its integrated application suite. The software is designed to help companies determine whether they are meeting strategic goals. It measures such indicators as finances, customer relations, operations, and employee performance, then compares the results with a company's stated objectives.

The Georgia Department of Defense is using the software to help ensure it is meeting goals set as part of a reorganization. The software is being deployed at several test sites across the department so that senior leadership can more quickly and easily monitor performance in five process areas: people, readiness, facilities, community, and communications and IT.

"This organization, because of its military nature, has lots of metrics and lots of information, and it's all stored in multiple databases," says Lt. Col. Don Venn, project manager for Balanced Scorecard. "Keeping your finger on the pulse of the organization was difficult to do without expending a lot of time and energy."

The new software will let senior managers easily determine how well each process is performing by viewing icons that flash in red (poorly), amber (average), and green (well). "The ability to tap into those different databases and easily bring the information up on the computer is what drove us to implement this software," says Venn, who's interested in the update's improvements, such as the correlation capability. "The business we are in is to provide a ready force. To be able to see immediate correlations between people and readiness would help."

Ultimately, companies can use the software to determine which activities have the greatest impact on their strategic goals. The updated version will also let users perform what-if analyses on business activities, and tighter integration with CorVu's forecasting software will help companies understand how long it will take them to reach specific goals. If a company reduces its inventory carrying costs from $2 million to $1.5 million, for example, it can generate a new forecast at that current rate of improvement.

CorVu's Balanced Scorecard relies on data from a variety of systems. CorVu already offers RapidApps--packaged integration between Balanced Scorecard and an operation system--for several enterprise resource planning systems, including JBA Software and J.D. Edwards, as well as for customer-relationship management and other systems from a variety of vendors. CorVu is developing RapidApps for ERP vendors Baan, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and SAP.

The Balanced Scorecard software starts at $4,000 per user in a client-server environment; pricing for the Web version ranges from $100,000 to $300,000. The enhanced version will be generally available in August.