Performance Management Finds Its Legs

IT buyers who happen to be critical thinkers -- and I think that's most of them -- aren't going to spend money on something they don't understand. That said, it seems there's little confusion remaining about Business Performance Management.

Forty percent of business and technology executives recently surveyed by CMP Media's Optimize magazine said their companies have deployed business performance management technologies and processes, or plan to do so within the next year. A true collaborative effort between the strategic and IT sides of business, performance management is the real deal.

Early on, I was a skeptic, and I know why: Every time I saw another announcement about some new business performance management (BPM) tool, I left having read a whole lot about BPM's supposed benefits, and very little about what BPM is. The problem was made worse by there already being a "BPM" out there in the form of business process management -- an issue we've addressed here at Business Intelligence Pipeline.

To be fair, though, performance management vendors had a whole lot conceptually to try to explain. Technology isn't the half of it. Business performance management is a set of management and analytic processes that use technology to measure and manage performance against pre-set strategic goals. In other words, it's more about strategic business thinking than it is about software. BPM is the true interweaving of business intelligence with business strategy.