Business performance management (BPM) is set to become the way in which companies are managed. Executives who understand and embrace this reality will gain significant competitive advantage over the next two years; those that do not will find themselves marginalised and CIOs who ignore BPM will be out of a job.
This was the overall theme to emerge from Solutions Africa 2002, the annual Hyperion User Group conference, held recently at Sun City. Presented jointly by Hyperion and local distributor Global Technology Business Intelligence (GBI), the conference brought BPM very much to the fore.
BPM enables companies to continually measure performance, anticipate results and drive profitability across key business activities.
"BPM is much more than just another three-letter acronym for a new technology fad," said Alain Blanc, Hyperion VP for EMEA and the keynote speaker. "BPM is a clear and unstoppable business imperative that will forever change the way businesses conduct themselves. In every sense it is the systems, metrics and methodologies required for businesses to manage themselves from strategy to execution. CIOs who fail to understand and drive it in their organisations will be outflanked by those who do, and as such they are unlikely to stay in their posts for long."
A range of local and international speakers presented at the conference. Companies presenting included Sasol, Sappi, Eskom, Liberty Group and AngloGold - all clients of GBI - and international giants Norway Post and Maxxium, the world`s fifth largest liquor distributor.
GBI, the business intelligence specialist company in the JSE Securities Exchange-listed Global Technology group, announced at the conference that it is about to secure its seventh HFM (Hyperion Financial Management) contract, out of 135 worldwide in total. This makes GBI the most successful HFM distributor out of all Hyperion distributors. HFM is the next-generation financial management suite that builds on the success customers have enjoyed with Hyperion Enterprise financial consolidation solution.
In addition, GBI announced that it had won the Hyperion Distributor of the Year award, and that it had the most successful salesperson among the distributors in Gerrardt le Roux.
"We are very proud of such achievements," said Johan Cloete, CEO of GBI, "but we could not have done it without our clients, and we are very grateful to them for their support."
More than 150 delegates from GBI`s extensive customer base attended the conference over its three days.
Managing key business activities, such as budgeting, planning, forecasting, query and reporting and scorecarding, off a single view of the truth, was a core concept repeated time and again by speakers.
"The ability for all executives to drive all of these activities off a shared multidimensional OLAP (online analytical processing) platform - the single view of the truth - is what is driving the acceptance of BPM," Cloete emphasises. "I predict an exciting three years ahead as South African corporate clients begin to explore the potential and power of BPM."
Hyperion`s BPM platform is made up of Performance Scorecard; Business Modelling; Planning; Financial Management; and the multidimensional OLAP platform, Essbase XTD.
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