BPM Viewpoint: Suite Vs. Stand-Alone: The Latest Debate
March 2006 from Business Finance - "Business performance management (BPM) was the little kid on the finance-application block when it emerged as a category of software a few years ago. Stand-alone BPM packages sit on top of mammoth enterprise resource planning (ERP) suites, giving companies budgeting, reporting and analytics capabilities that fit their needs. In Business Finance articles on the debate about suite vs. best-of-breed, there was never any doubt where BPM software from non-ERP vendors fell.
But times are changing, and the scrawny kid is bulking up. BPM systems will never challenge ERP as transactional repositories, but they are becoming bigger and more complex every year. And the "stand-alone vs. suite" discussion is beginning to surface within BPM-specific software purchase decisions. Several major players in the BPM software space completed recent acquisitions in a push to offer a broader spectrum of BPM functionality. Then late last year, they announced that they had integrated those disparate systems into comprehensive product suites.
The appeal of the suites is easy to understand. Without one, a complex company with lots of operational data coming from a wide range of source systems has to assemble a variety of software packages to cover budgeting, forecasting, consolidations, management reporting and financial analytics. In the process, the organization struggles to ensure that the applications always use the same up-to-date version of all data. The total cost of this undertaking can quickly skyrocket because of the effort required to maintain a myriad of different data connections.
But, warn many consultants, BPM buyers looking for consolidated data management and ease of integration from product bundles sold as suites need to do their homework. The promise of tight connectivity may be hollow. Some software packaged as a "suite" is tied together more at a marketing level than in the source code. The user interface may look the same across products -- which can be a plus for training requirements -- but under the covers, applications that share a name and front end may still be radically different.
The other big risk in purchasing a suite is that buyers may not obtain as much functionality from each of its components as they would get if they bought the planning, reporting and analytics pieces separately. This is especially likely for organizations in industries for which distinct vertical solutions are available. These companies may find that the extra expenditure of resources required to keep multiple unique applications from multiple vendors running in unison would be more than offset by the savings they can reap by buying an application that closely meets their requirements. They would need to customize software either way, but when they make their purchase decision, they should weigh the cost and value of each option.
Of course, determining how much customization a product will need and how much effort will be required to connect data analysis packages with data source systems is a daunting challenge. Purchasers should find out all the requirements for linking products into a smooth operation. Many a BPM project has been put on hold or canceled because the purchaser expected implementation to be far cheaper and quicker. But buyer beware: Routine vendor demos and high-level discussions with salespeople don't provide enough information. Help is available from other sources, including independent consultants with considerable BPM experience. And the due diligence process for a software purchase always should involve in-depth meetings with companies that already use products on the organization's shortlist.
This doesn't mean a BPM initiative isn't worth the effort. I regularly talk to organizations that have deployed performance management software, and many say they can't imagine managing a business without their new tool. It just means that the bigger and more complicated these systems become, the closer the correlation between the thoroughness of the due diligence process and buyers' satisfaction with their purchase."
March 2006 from Business Finance - "Business performance management (BPM) was the little kid on the finance-application block when it emerged as a category of software a few years ago. Stand-alone BPM packages sit on top of mammoth enterprise resource planning (ERP) suites, giving companies budgeting, reporting and analytics capabilities that fit their needs. In Business Finance articles on the debate about suite vs. best-of-breed, there was never any doubt where BPM software from non-ERP vendors fell.
But times are changing, and the scrawny kid is bulking up. BPM systems will never challenge ERP as transactional repositories, but they are becoming bigger and more complex every year. And the "stand-alone vs. suite" discussion is beginning to surface within BPM-specific software purchase decisions. Several major players in the BPM software space completed recent acquisitions in a push to offer a broader spectrum of BPM functionality. Then late last year, they announced that they had integrated those disparate systems into comprehensive product suites.
The appeal of the suites is easy to understand. Without one, a complex company with lots of operational data coming from a wide range of source systems has to assemble a variety of software packages to cover budgeting, forecasting, consolidations, management reporting and financial analytics. In the process, the organization struggles to ensure that the applications always use the same up-to-date version of all data. The total cost of this undertaking can quickly skyrocket because of the effort required to maintain a myriad of different data connections.
But, warn many consultants, BPM buyers looking for consolidated data management and ease of integration from product bundles sold as suites need to do their homework. The promise of tight connectivity may be hollow. Some software packaged as a "suite" is tied together more at a marketing level than in the source code. The user interface may look the same across products -- which can be a plus for training requirements -- but under the covers, applications that share a name and front end may still be radically different.
The other big risk in purchasing a suite is that buyers may not obtain as much functionality from each of its components as they would get if they bought the planning, reporting and analytics pieces separately. This is especially likely for organizations in industries for which distinct vertical solutions are available. These companies may find that the extra expenditure of resources required to keep multiple unique applications from multiple vendors running in unison would be more than offset by the savings they can reap by buying an application that closely meets their requirements. They would need to customize software either way, but when they make their purchase decision, they should weigh the cost and value of each option.
Of course, determining how much customization a product will need and how much effort will be required to connect data analysis packages with data source systems is a daunting challenge. Purchasers should find out all the requirements for linking products into a smooth operation. Many a BPM project has been put on hold or canceled because the purchaser expected implementation to be far cheaper and quicker. But buyer beware: Routine vendor demos and high-level discussions with salespeople don't provide enough information. Help is available from other sources, including independent consultants with considerable BPM experience. And the due diligence process for a software purchase always should involve in-depth meetings with companies that already use products on the organization's shortlist.
This doesn't mean a BPM initiative isn't worth the effort. I regularly talk to organizations that have deployed performance management software, and many say they can't imagine managing a business without their new tool. It just means that the bigger and more complicated these systems become, the closer the correlation between the thoroughness of the due diligence process and buyers' satisfaction with their purchase."
Labels: CPM
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