Is there a bright side to this economic downturn? No. Not in the short term. No one likes to see increased anxiety in households. However, in the long term, organizations that seize the opportunity to build more robust decision support with business intelligence systems and the performance management solutions that leverage them will get a jump start that competitors never get a chance to overcome.
In a recent article titled “How the New Obama Administration Might Impact Business Performance Management,” IT analyst John Colbert describes reasons why organizations should start now expanding and integrating the methodologies that comprise the performance management framework. John says,
“Regardless of timing, if you are going to be running any kind of a business during this cycle, you will need to have a robust platform for planning for the twists and turns on this economic road. I know that many will think that they can monitor fluctuating oil prices, currencies and credit rates in their trusty Excel spreadsheets; but for true collaborative enterprise planning and modeling, with advanced analytics that can be run by less spreadsheet savvy general managers, you should likely revisit your planning and reporting platform. In many cases, this may require simply upgrading to the current version of your performance management software vendor’s modeling platform. However, if you are still doing the bulk of your modeling and planning in spreadsheets, this may be the time to consider a more enterprise-grade solution. Also note that several of the leading vendors, as well as a few innovative new vendors, are developing “planning-specific” functionality in their product – different from traditional budgeting. Planning often involves fewer (yet more senior) resources and requires the ability to model and save a variety of scenarios while enabling collaboration amongst the team for detailed business discussions on these scenarios.”
I totally agree with John’s observation of the limits of spreadsheets and remarked about this in my blog, “Excel Heaven – or is it Hell?” In his article John continues to describe how business intelligence and performance management solutions can improve complying with anticipated increased government regulation and proactively embracing corporate sustainability initiatives.
An organization’s options are simple: blindly cut costs with shaving-the-icecube, across-the-board employee layoffs for short-term appeasement of Wall Street analysts … or prudently invest for long-term sustained economic value creation.
Gary Cokins
