Financial Executives Research Foundation highlights need for business performance intelligence

Creating profitable growth through superior strategy execution is one of the key challenges facing organisations today. According to the international Financial Executives Research Foundation (FEI), the trend towards integrated business performance intelligence (BPI) applications helps to address this concern.

In a report, issued by Financial Executives Research Foundation, a non-profit educational affiliate of FEI, BPI applications "enable organisations to establish strategy that is rooted in a clear understanding of the economics of a business, translate it into objectives and measures, and monitor/drive its execution," or more simply stated, "they enable the management process".

The report further explains that "the real value of these tools lies in better decision-making and excellence in strategy execution". The categories that define BPI are strategy development/execution and performance; planning, budgeting and forecasting; and strategic analysis and profitability management.

The foundation's report highlights SAS, global leader in business intelligence, as one of only two vendors to provide solutions for all three of the categories that define BPI.

"This is a strong, independent endorsement of the completeness of SAS solutions across the whole range of BPI applications," says Bruce Jones, sales support manager at SAS SA. The report notes that integrated BPI solution providers typically offer three key benefits:

* Automatically maintained application interfaces and reliable database accuracy through introduced enhancements;

* Greater potential cost-efficiency as a result of overlapping functionality in the three BPI categories; and

* Functionality that would not otherwise exist if applications were purchased individually.

"Creating profitable growth through superior strategy execution is one of the key challenges facing organisations today, and the trend towards integrated BPI applications helps to address this concern," said Dean Sorensen, author of FEI Research Foundation's BPI software report and principal of Bywater Management Consulting.

"New capabilities - emerging from the integration of activity-based costing, balanced scorecard, as well as planning and budgeting - provide the basis to fundamentally change the management process, transforming it from a control oriented device into a mechanism that coordinates value creation."

Organisations begin with strategy and finance as the dual focus for business performance, which includes activity-based management, financial management and strategic performance management. To govern performance throughout the enterprise, companies need to incorporate additional aspects, such as customer relationship management, supply chain management, supplier relationship management, and human capital management, all of which affect financial performance and strategy execution. SAS offers unmatched breadth and depth in addressing all aspects of business performance.

"Today's uncertain economy requires companies to focus scarce resources and ensure that current operations are in line with most recent financial projections," says Jones. "A key business challenge is distilling huge volumes of operational, customer and supplier data from disparate computer systems spread around the globe into an accurate, intelligent 'big-picture' perspective and strategic plan. With the 'data problem' continuing to be alive and well, companies are looking to SAS for an end-to-end solution to answer this enterprise-wide financial dilemma."