Within the realm of corporate performance management (CPM) achieving just one version of the truth is near impossible. This is because people are an integral part of any IT solution and people have a subjective view of the truth.
This was the view of Keith Jones, MD of global business intelligence (BI) provider Inca, who spoke this week at the ITWeb BI Summit and Awards held at the Forum in Bryanston.
Jones maintained that to achieve perfect CPM one true version of the truth would include: all costs to be fully allocated to the lowest level of granularity, all accounting principles applied at the time of transaction, and monthly revenue figures that add up to the year end figures.
However, he argued that any IT solution is made of four pillars: people, data, process and technology. “We can automate almost any process, we can clean, structure, load or capture any data and technology is getting there and will do a good job,” opined Jones. Therefore people must be the problem, he suggested.
“Everybody's version of the truth is different,” maintained Jones. “Every process has a different owner and sponsor, every process has a different granularity and every sponsor has a different agenda,” he continued.
To this end, one version of the truth is extremely difficult to achieve, stated Jones, what you can do, he suggested, is to find the golden thread.
The golden thread
When you are doing your CPM design you need a single thread that runs through the business right from the top running down to the operational business.
The golden thread is a set of measures and themes that are translated down through the business to cover all aspects. Every single thread must relate directly to the next associated process, he explained.
Jones stated that the golden thread is found and established by creating and managing a strong corporate information logistics strategy. Once the processes have been linked by this single thread then you will be able to find your way from a single operational report right the way through the business with links to strategy, he concluded.
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