Organisations to use BPM for compliance and process management, says META Group

META Group announced the availability of its newest METAspectrumSM In Depth report, covering the business performance management (BPM) market. This market offers an integrated solution approach consisting of web-based analytical applications providing key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be tiered and distributed within the enterprise, business plans that are intended to achieve KPI values and actual reporting and forecasting linked to KPIs.

According to the market analysts, as the market becomes more demanding, there will be consolidation of requirements around management and financial reporting (including regulatory consolidations). A key driver in this consolidation is regulatory compliance/corporate governance, as firms seek to improve visibility and internal accountability. Robust BPM solutions should be considered for both internal performance management initiatives and support of visibility/transparency requirements for regulatory compliance (e.g., Sarbanes-Oxley ).

'Although the BPM market grew at least 10%-15% in 2003 to approximately $1.1B, this was primarily from more penetration of planning/budgeting solutions and replacements of reporting platforms, not from compliance-driven sales,' said John Van Decker, vice president with META Group's Technology Research Services and lead author of the report. 'This will change by 3Q04, as firms seek to optimize internal financial processes to support compliance. During 2004, BPM will grow 15%-20% as firms utilize BPM for both compliance activities and internal process management.'

”The best approach for a BPM initiative is to evaluate integrated suites from business intelligence vendors, financial analytic vendors, and ERP vendors. Many BPM vendors have application linkages to numerous ERP suites, because they must be ERP-agnostic to play in this space. When evaluating solutions, firms must consider the following criteria: financial reporting, financial consolidation, localization, ERP integration, support for dynamic planning/budgeting, business modeling, visibility through dashboards/scorecards, distributed access via portals, usability, and technical architecture”.

2004-04-06

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