S.E.C. looks to cut costs of meeting audit rules and new guidance for smaller public companies

July 12, 2006 from The New York Times - "The Securities and Exchange Commission, scrambling to find ways to cut the costs of complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act without gutting the act, said yesterday that it expected to propose a rule aimed at curbing costs.

The commission published a "concept release," setting forth numerous questions regarding both how the carrying out of the law had proceeded and what should be done now. It asked for comments on those questions over the next two months.

At issue is Section 404 of the law, which requires public companies to assess the adequacy of their internal financial controls and to have that assessment reviewed by external auditors. That provision of the law was based on a law passed in 1991 requiring banks to certify their internal controls and was expected to add little in the way of costs.

But there have been widespread complaints that the cost has been excessive. An S.E.C. advisory committee recommended that smaller companies, which have not yet been required to comply with the section of the law, be exempt. A bill introduced in Congress proposed going further and exempting the vast majority of companies.

"Our goal is to develop practical guidance for companies to help improve the reliability of financial reporting and to make Section 404 implementation more efficient and cost effective for investors," said the commission's chairman, Christopher Cox.

The commission gave little firm indication of what a new rule would say, but in numerous sections it indicated impatience and concern that the process had proved so costly and expensive. It noted that some companies had complained of excessive documentation being required by auditors and added, "We have anecdotally heard that this documentation, in many cases, substantially exceeded that normally produced by financial institutions," even though the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the 1991 law were similarly worded.

The commission indicated that it suspected that audit firms had done too much work, saying it was "skeptical of the large number of internal controls that some companies have identified, documented and tested." It said it thought one cause of problems might have been an "overly conservative" interpretation of the rules by auditors.

The commission pointed to a document issued yesterday by a group of accounting organizations, known as the Council of Sponsoring Organizations, aimed at providing a simplified framework for smaller companies to assess their financial controls.

"What we are saying is no company is exempted from good internal controls,'' said David Richards, the president of the Institute of Internal Auditors, one organization in the group. "It does not matter what your size is."

He said the document was aimed in part at helping companies identify a relatively small number of controls that needed to be carefully checked because of their importance to accurate financial reporting.

Despite widespread complaints about cost, Section 404 does appear to have had some benefits. In the first year, about one of six companies reported material weaknesses in their controls, while that figure was down to about one in 15 during the second year.

A report by Grant Thornton, an accounting firm, noted that about 10 percent of banks had such problems, even though they had been complying with the 1991 law, which did not require external auditors to monitor the assessment. It said that indicated that auditor review was critical to assuring adequate controls.

The S.E.C. said earlier this year that it was beginning to consider how to modify the carrying out of Section 404. Yesterday's announcement may have been most significant in that it indicated that the commission thought a new rule, rather than increased guidance, would probably be necessary.

Also significant, however, was the renewed endorsement of Section 404 itself.

"Quality financial reporting is a critical cornerstone to our capital markets, and investors are entitled to rely upon it,'' said John W. White, director of the commission's Division of Corporation Finance, in announcing the new action. "Section 404 has a key role to play in enhancing the reliability of public companies' financial statements."

180 View - Every problem is an opportunity for someone. Y2K was a huge opportunity for ERP software developers such as SAP and Oracle. Sarbanes-Oxley has been a huge opportunity for auditors. It seems that some have been overzealous in their work as they rack up their fees. It seems to us that fees would go down dramatically if the auditors applied more common sense. If the absence of a control does not cause material risk, why document and test it? As well, there may be a myriad of controls that contribute to a particular business process. However if one of the controls is sufficient, why bother documenting and testing all the secondary controls?

The article makes reference to the Council of Sponsoring Organizations (COSO) providing a simplified framework for smaller companies to assess their financial controls. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Institute of Management Accountants have both affirmed support for new guidance for smaller public companies released during a webcast on July 11 by COSO. Click here for the webcast.

A survey of Canadian decision makers on business performance and regulatory compliance in the Finance function

July 2006 form KPMG - "KPMG's Advisory practice conducted a survey of 170 of Canada's senior executives to determine how their Finance functions have responded to the new regulatory mandates, and how successful they have been in maintaining the balance between activities supporting compliance and those supporting business performance. In an effort to focus on the views of Finance functions' key customers and stakeholders, the survey included Chief Executive Officers, Presidents, and Chief Operating Officers, but specifically excluded Chief Financial Officers themselves…

Business leaders are concerned that regulatory requirements have caused the Finance function to focus on compliance at the expense of other areas of its mandate. Three-quarters of respondents believe that corporate growth and profitability have suffered as a result of the Finance function's focus on compliance. Management reporting, budgets and forecasts, corporate finance, risk management, and strategic planning represent areas of opportunity for Finance departments to rebalance their activities and improve contribution to the business. Decision makers are prepared to make investments to rebalance the activities of their organizations' Finance function."

180 View - We think that compliance auditors should provide value related to business performance at the same time. By identifying inefficient and ineffective business processes, compliance auditors would support business performance. Inefficient business processes do the job with the least amount of resources. Re-keying or duplication should be easy to spot. However effective business processes are more difficult to identify. Effectiveness requires knowledge of CSFs (Critical Success Factors are what an organization must do well in order to be successful). If the business process does not support the CSF, then it's not effective.

SMBs offer SAP big opportunity, big challenge

June 2, 2006 from InfoWorld - "Some business application vendors see it as highly fragmented, others as inherently complex. Donna Troy sees the small and medium-size business (SMB) market simply as "a huge opportunity." Troy, senior vice president of SAP's global SMB business, is on a mission to carve out a bigger chunk of the global SMB market.

"There are more than 75 million small and medium-size companies globally," she said Thursday at the Sapphire customer event in Paris. "There's plenty of room to grow."

SAP has swung its attention to SMBs after having nearly saturated the market for large enterprises. The company hired Troy last year to craft a plan that would carve inroads into the market and try to give SAP a solid lead over rivals such as Oracle and Microsoft.

The SMB market is expected to grow faster than the large-enterprise accounts, according to IDC. But vendors must spend heavily to ensure the quality of sales and support staff in the channel. The research company highlighted SAP, Microsoft and The Sage Group as "channel friendly" vendors who've seen growing momentum among their partners.

Establishing a skilled network of channel partners weighs big in Troy's strategy. Currently, more than 1,200 companies sell SAP's Business One package for small businesses and another 800 sell its All-in-One package, a slimmed down version of the mySAP Business Suite for large enterprises.

One of her first moves was to introduce the PartnerEdge Channel Partner Program. Under the new global channel framework, the company awards resellers, ISVs (independent software vendors) and other partners points based on their performance. The points are given not only for the volume of sales but also for the ability to satisfy customers through enhanced applications and service. With the points, partners can move across three levels: associate, silver and gold. The higher the level, the greater SAP's support, which includes funding and training."

180 View - Good idea to reward partners on performance and not just sales.

ERP flavor of the week: Vanilla

May 29, 2006 from fcw.com - "The horror stories of poorly implemented enterprise resource planning systems - disrupted orders, backed-up shipments, screwed-up payrolls - are well-known. Merely mentioning the acronym "ERP" to a chief information officer can induce cold sweats, heart palpitations and other symptoms of acute discomfort.

ERP deployments are challenging, but they have also improved since the 1990s, when many of the worst disasters occurred. In recent years, a number of municipalities have adopted the systems to manage their human resources and financial functions. The experience of those cities, counties and towns constitutes a road map that can help other municipalities navigate the transition from mainframe systems to ERP. Lesson one: It will be harder than you think. Lesson two: A lot harder.

ERP survivors recommend a number of transition strategies to minimize the pain: Take your time. Do the due diligence. Evaluate potential products and partners thoroughly. Shun open-ended contracts in favor of fixed-price deals. Know what you want from an ERP. To the extent possible, keep it simple. Put the best and brightest employees on the implementation team…

"An ERP system builds in a large multitude of flexibility," said Bob Hendricks, CIO for Fresno, Calif. "With flexibility comes complexity." The appeal of ERP systems is that they break down information silos, aggregate data and put the results at the fingertips of many users. The processes of managing budgets, tracking employees, requisitioning supplies and keeping tabs on vendors become streamlined and paperless. As a result, ERP systems provide the means for radically retooling business practices. Getting organizations to understand and accept this key point is essential to a successful implementation, experts say.

"An ERP is as much a strategy as a software system," said Anthony Cresswell, director of the Center for Technology in Government, which assists with the development of information strategies that enhance public services. "It has a lot of technical capabilities to link it as an organizational change and reform strategy in the sense of re-engineering business processes and potentially changing the way the organization interacts with its shareholders and customers."…

In the interest of simplicity, experienced users also advise against giving in to employees' demands to customize software vendors' ERP modules…The city acquiesced to employees' demands for customized reports but later learned that the benefits of tweaking the software were not worth the headaches. Introducing custom code to commercial applications creates compatibility issues that can cause problems each time a system is upgraded."

180 View - Customization need not be the big problem that it used to be. Today you can make changes to screens outside of source code so that you don't need to redo them when upgrades are released. Reporting should also not be a problem using a report writing tool such as Crystal Reports. Developers may add new fields but would rarely change any existing fields. There is no reason for reports not to work when upgrades are provided as the tables and fields remain the same.

Is there real business value behind the hype of SOA?

June 19, 2006 from ComputerWorld - "The No. 1 business priority for CIOs in 2006 is business process improvement 1 -- implementing technology to help the business become more streamlined and easier to do business with. The good news is that IT executives realize that collaborating with business leaders to drive business process improvements is vital to company success; the bad news is that even though business/IT alignment has been a top priority for the past eight years and IT organizations are transforming, the issue of business/IT alignment remains.

Now comes service-oriented architecture (SOA) with promises to change the way that IT helps drive business process improvements and even how IT and business work together. The idea behind SOA is that a services-centric application and IT infrastructure can be assembled flexibly to support changing business demands, growth and innovation. But is SOA just another vendor initiative to sell more hardware, software and services, or is it truly an industry-changing construct? In other words, is there real business value behind the hype?

SOA is being sold as a flexible way to configure all IT assets, both current and future, so that each is available as a service. SOA is supposed to provide the foundation for rapid, dynamic adaptation to changing business conditions.

The ills SOA is meant to cure are well known. Application and infrastructure investments have created islands, with applications developed to support a specific business function or need -- a payroll application, say, or an order-entry application. The IT group works with the business to identify a specific business process need, then procures, develops or customizes software to solve the problem. It deploys the software on dedicated server and storage hardware. Later, when the business realizes that these islands need to communicate and interact with one another, large integration projects are undertaken. And when the applications are modified, vendor enhancements, upgrades and support are all in jeopardy. In the end, much of the dedicated capital investment in hardware and purchased software has been underutilized, highly customized and inflexible to change.

With SOA, the organization begins by trying to better understand business processes, mapping out various process steps and then devising Web service-enabled applications and integrations in support of these steps. Process improvement has its roots in the Total Quality Management movement in the late '80s, but the goal of process automation wasn't possible until the Internet became part of a global network that can provide a foundation for program-to-program communication and standards-based information exchange. Today, Web service enablement allows for application components to deliver data and processing to other applications. And as the library of service-enabled applications grows, each service can be reused to optimize other business processes…

The coverage SOA has received recently may make it seem like pure hype. However, the benefits are tangible and substantial. Those who have taken even minor steps on the road to implementing SOA are reaping immediate IT cost reductions and incremental business benefits. Those that have gone farther down the road, embracing enterprisewide implementation of service-oriented applications and a service-oriented, virtualized infrastructure, are finding that they have made a fundamental change in the way IT and the business invest in technology and work together."

180 View - The article gives an example of Visa with "savings said to total $52 million a year in direct operating costs and $300 million in ancillary savings" using SOA. Unfortunately it's so easy to find numbers that support a business case especially when the numbers come from the people responsible for the project. In the VISA example, a paper based system was replaced. Perhaps, the savngs would have been even more with a different technology.

It's time to stop measuring and start doing...

May 2, 2006 from Silicon.com - "Over the past few years I have been working in companies and other organizations including those in the health and education sectors where the introduction of performance metrics has had a profoundly negative effect.

In every case there has been a liberal application of simplistic thinking that has resulted in a vastly reduced overall performance with a combined increase in operational costs. How come? Very often those to blame are in political office and under pressure to show the electorate they are earning their elected position.

For sure, if you are to manage anything effectively you need measures, and if you are to improve performance you need metrics. But the first question to ask is: does it actually need managing and is there any space for improvement?

It is unfortunately a truism that most managers don't see that they are often in the way, can add no value and should just get out of the way. An awful lot of processes and activities just don't need managing in the first place. For those that do, they require a liberal application of intelligence and understanding. If you give people targets, they will achieve them; if you demand a change in performance from managers, they will show you one. In the first instance they will try and do your bidding but in the second they will resort to embellishing the truth, polishing the numbers and plain fiddling.

In the worst areas infected by the (modern) metrics disease we see irrelevant or conflicting requirements and targets, and more managers of metrics than those actually trying to achieve them.

The real killer? People stop becoming effective and turn the metrics game into a full-time career. In many countries we have police, medics and educators spending more time reporting than doing! So the supervisory overhead is very often the dominating portion of the overall spend and budget. This is a surefire route to failure in any system. Admin really ought to be less than 10 per cent and not 80 per cent of the budget.

So what is the solution - beyond good management that is? Once a set of sensible and minimal performance targets and metrics have been decided and agreed, automation is the only route to success. Just because something can be measured and recorded doesn't mean it should be!

In the worst case people will always resort to telling lies, gilding the truth and interpreting results in their favour. So most of the information created by such human systems is a travesty, waste of time, detrimental distraction and expensive hobby! In contrast, our machines will only tell it the way it is, provided the entry of data is also fully automatic.

All of this begs the question: why isn't modern management and politics up to the job? Simple! They are operating in some 18th century regime of quill pen and parchment thinking. Until we see the application of game theory, war gaming and situation modelling, combined with automated data recording, gathering and analysis, we will continue to see the waste and disruption continue to accumulate.

We have the technology but it seems we don't yet have the wisdom."

180 View - SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely) metrics should solve all the problems above.

Web 2.0 has corporate America spinning

June 5, 2006 from BusinessWeek - "Silicon Valley loves its buzzwords, and there's none more popular today than Web 2.0. Unless you're a diehard techie, though, good luck figuring out what it means. Web 2.0 technologies bear strange names like wikis, blogs, RSS, AJAX, and mashups. And the startups hawking them -- Renkoo, Gahbunga, Ning, Squidoo -- sound like Star Wars characters George Lucas left on the cutting-room floor.

But behind the peculiarities, Web 2.0 portends a real sea change on the Internet. If there's one thing they have in common, it's what they're not. Web 2.0 sites are not online places to visit so much as services to get something done -- usually with other people. From Yahoo!'s (YHOO) photo-sharing site Flickr and the group-edited online reference source Wikipedia to the teen hangout MySpace, and even search giant Google, they all virtually demand active participation and social interaction. If these Web 2.0 folks weren't so geeky, they might call it the Live Web.
And though these Web 2.0 services have succeeded in luring millions of consumers to their shores, they haven't had much to offer the vast world of business. Until now. Slowly but surely they're scaling corporate walls. "All these things that are thought to be consumer services are coming into the enterprise," says Ray Lane, former Oracle president and now a general partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

For all its appeal to the young and the wired, Web 2.0 may end up making its greatest impact in business. And that could usher in more changes in corporations, already in the throes of such tech-driven transformations as globalization and outsourcing. Indeed, what some are calling Enterprise 2.0 could flatten a raft of organizational boundaries -- between managers and employees and between the company and its partners and customers. Says Don Tapscott, CEO of the Toronto tech think tank New Paradigm and co-author of The Naked Corporation: "It's the biggest change in the organization of the corporation in a century."

All that's going to require more than slick technology. Executives, long used to ruling from the top of the corporate hierarchy, will have to learn a new skill: humility. "Companies that are extremely hierarchical have trouble adapting," says Tim O'Reilly, CEO of tech book publisher O'Reilly Media, which runs the annual Web 2.0 Conference "They'll be outperformed by companies that don't work that way." Ultimately, taking full advantage of Web 2.0 may require -- get ready -- Management 2.0."

180 View - Sounds like hype to us. The article fails to explain Web 2.0. It seems like it's all about using the internet more effectively than before. Has anything changed or is it just creative people taking advantage of what already exists. We think it's both. As far as what's changed, two technologies come to mind - one is web services, which has been around for years, but has not really taken off yet. The other is Ajax. Web services, amongst other uses, will allow sharing of data (such as purchase orders) across any system. And Ajax is allowing internet applications to have as much functionality as our favourite PC applications.

What do users want?

June 26, 2006 from ComputerWorld - "Want to complete a project successfully? Then you'd better have success at the start. That means getting requirements right, and there are as many ways to do that as there are business analysts charged with getting it done.

But impatience, miscommunication, misunderstandings and overlooked users can produce requirements that aren't clear or complete. "You want to have as little ambiguity as possible, because ambiguity creates defects," says Andrew Ari Clibanoff, a senior business analyst at GSI Commerce Inc., a King of Prussia, Pa.-based provider of e-commerce services.

Those defects can be costly. Ellen Gottesdiener, principal consultant at EBG Consulting in Carmel, Ind., and author of The Software Requirements Memory Jogger (Goal QPC Inc., 2005), says that roughly one-third of the budget for a typical project goes to fixing defects that originated in faulty requirements.

The following tips will help you avoid becoming part of that depressing statistic.

Understand the overall objective. "You need to have a point of reference: What is the strategy for the organization? What are they trying to accomplish in the medium and the long term?" says Josephine Day, director of customer care and technology at the Project Management Institute in Newtown Square, Pa.

When the objective is clearly defined, you can identify the right stakeholders and users, as well as which other programs could be affected by the proposed project -- all important steps toward success, says Day."

180 View - The article goes on to give some practical advice in collecting user requirements. However we think there are huge problems with the advice. Users often don't know what they want. They know the business process and the problems, and that's what a good analyst should document. Users may also not know what's possible. As well, some users may not be forthcoming because of job security concerns. Another problem with the approach in the article is that the level of detail in requirements will vary depending on the project. If you're documenting requirements for a system that will be purchased such as an ERP system, there is no need to document the basics. For example, if you're documenting Accounts Receivable, it's a waste of time to document the requirements related to an Aged Trial Balance. All the systems have it already. It would be better to focus on requirements that differ across systems. And lastly, all requirements don't have the same priority. You need to prioritize each requirement. Only those requirements that allow companies to achieve their CSF's (Critical Success Factors - defined as those things that must be done well in order to achieve success) can be classified as critical. But we do agree with the writer's view on being unambiguous.

The Top 10 Business Performance Management vendors

July 2006 from DM Review - "Any vendor-ranking list is going to end up being subjective, controversial and open to debate. However, the benefit to end users of having a core list outweighs the pain of the arrows that I am sure will come my way from those not included.

The business performance management (BPM) vendor marketplace has, by my count, approximately 90+ vendors, and it is continuing to grow. Recently, a number of vendors entered the market with a very narrow but deep focus on one aspect of BPM. This list is not about them. The Top 10 reflects those I see as the core, established vendors in the space.

The primary criteria for inclusion in the list are: 1) a fairly comprehensive offering, covering most if not all areas of BPM, 2) a focus on the BPM market (which leaves out the ERP vendors because BPM is just one small component of their offerings), 3) a significant track record of success in the field, 4) demonstrated company viability and growth, and 5) continued innovation. There was another criterion that I had in the back of my mind as well: is the vendor's marketing and sales pitch in line with the product's reality? There were some otherwise capable vendors who insisted they did a lot more than I could find in their actual products.

Now on to the list, which is in alphabetical order. The list of 10 is intended as a starting point for those considering BPM - nothing more, nothing less.

Applix: This vendor, building on its high-performance TM1 OLAP engine, has added a planning manager, a consolidation framework and a financial reporting solution to round out its BPM offering. At this point in time, Applix provides the necessary BI, budgeting, consolidation and dashboard tools to cover the core BPM bases. In addition, thanks in large part to their core engine, Applix is well positioned to address the burgeoning operational performance management area of BPM. Applix's highly satisfied clients often place it at the top of BPM satisfaction surveys. The categories that customers highlight as being most impressive are ease of implementation, ease of use and performance.

Business Objects: A strong vendor in the BI space for years, Business Objects' primary BPM capabilities were based on dashboards. While dashboards (and the scorecards they display) are a key component of BPM, this is not enough for a full BPM initiative. The wise souls at Business Objects realized this and acquired SRC, a small but successful budgeting and consolidation vendor. In addition, SRC filled out some vertical BPM offerings for financial services and health care. More recently, the combined company focused its vertical energies on the retail market. Its clients give it high marks for product quality. With its size and breadth of offering, Business Objects can be one of the leaders in the space.

Cartesis: Strong in Europe, particularly on its home turf of France, Cartesis' North American operations had lagged behind until recently, when the firm shuffled its North American management team and sales force. The result has been a significant uptick in number and size of U.S. deals. The core product was always strong in complex financial consolidation. Cartesis had some basic budgeting capabilities but greatly enhanced the offering with the acquisition of a company called INEA that focused on BPM for financial services companies. In addition, Cartesis picked up a consulting company that had developed strong capabilities around information delivery. The recent announcements about XBRL access to benchmark data and expanded vertical focus begin to differentiate Cartesis from some of the competition. The end result is a re-energized North American team, with a product set that addresses all the core BPM application modules.

Clarity Systems: While probably not as well known as some of the other vendors on this list, Clarity does have a fairly complete BPM suite and a satisfied client base. Clarity started life as a consulting company, and this background serves them well in a continued focus on meeting customer needs. Clarity's Web-enabled solutions make extensive use of Excel, which allows users to leverage existing models they have built. An open architecture supports multiple database choices. Within its applications, Clarity uses both relational and multidimensional data structures. The current product set addresses budgeting, consolidation and dashboards.

Cognos: This vendor is one that appears on almost everyone's BPM shortlist. There is good reason for this: they have a fairly complete offering and a highly satisfied customer base. In particular, their clients point to product functionality, quality and ease of use as areas where Cognos excels. Cognos enhanced its suite significantly in the past year with its strategic initiative and long-range planning blueprint models and the release of Cognos 8. This release provides a single BI solution with robust reporting and analysis integrated with Cognos' sophisticated planning, budgeting and consolidation solutions. The recent addition of their GO! Search service that finds relevant BI content as part of enterprise search results only serves to strengthen their offering.

Extensity: Formerly known as Geac, and Comshare before that, this vendor has a strong financial performance management product set. Recent enhancements to their strategic planning and modeling capabilities complement their leading planning, budgeting and consolidation solutions. The addition of smart consolidation capabilities focusing only on impacted data improves application performance response and analysis times. At press time, Extensity announced that it will acquire Systems Union. While this will add more BI capabilities to their offering and broaden their geographic reach, it also introduces significant product overlap and organization integration challenges. Take this into account when considering this vendor.

Hyperion: With a comprehensive and strong BPM offering, Hyperion is usually near the top of the list of vendors to be considered. Customers cite Hyperion's depth and breadth of product functionality as one of the things they like best. Hyperion has made major advances in the past year. With the release of System 9, the company now provides a unified front end to its deep portfolio of BPM tools and applications. In addition, the purchase of Razza Solutions has enhanced Hyperion's ability to synchronize metadata across multiple products. The introduction of its Workforce Planning module has streamlined the headcount and salary-planning process. The recently announced acquisition of Upstream Software enables Hyperion to focus on the movement and quality of financial data.

Longview Solutions: Longview's BPM solution includes comprehensive planning, budgeting, consolidation and reporting capabilities. Customers give their highest ratings to Longview's product functionality and price/value equation. This vendor expanded its software with the release of its Strategic Tax tool, which facilitates tax data collection, planning and compliance reporting. As one of the few truly unified solutions, Longview's robust product competes effectively with the biggest vendors in the BPM market.

OutlookSoft: This vendor has a lot going for it. They have fully integrated Excel (and other elements of Office) into their offering, reducing the learning curve and resulting in high ease-of-use ratings from their clients. In addition, they were the first to offer a truly unified, fully Web-based solution. More recently they introduced predictive analytics capabilities, which the BPM Pulse survey indicates is high on the list of next-generation capabilities BPM prospects are seeking. Since its introduction in 2000, the OutlookSoft product has been entirely and exclusively Microsoft based. They just announced full support for Oracle 10g, which now gives their clients and prospects a choice.

SAS: Well-known in the BI/data mining arena, SAS has been playing catch-up in the BPM space. It's not because of their product set. Their offerings touch all areas of BPM, including some specialized areas that not all vendors address, such as activity-based costing. They also offer deep verticalized solutions that are not just window dressing for the sales cycle; rather, they are industry-specific modules that supplement and expand their cross-industry BPM products. With all of this and a new marketing focus on performance management, I expect to see them show up in more and more BPM deals.

A number of other vendors just below the Top 10 are worth noting. KCI addresses financial and operational BPM with a focus on performance and scalability. ALG Software comes at BPM with an activity-based costing and profitability optimization approach. Hosted solutions are starting to gain traction in the space, and both Host Analytics and Adaptive Planning offer components of performance management delivered as a service. For the mid-market, FRx and Prophix offer robust solutions at a reasonable cost, and Satori Group provides both BPM applications and tools with a vertical focus.

Clearly, there are many good solutions to choose from. The key is picking the right one for your organization. In the end, that comes down to having a razor-sharp focus on your requirements and evaluating how each vendor stacks up when it comes to your specific needs. Investing in a comprehensive due diligence process up front will provide significant payback down the road."

180 View - Business Process Management (BPM) is also called Corporate Performance Management (CPM) and Enterprise Performance Management (EPM). We prefer the CPM acronym. For our article published in June 2006 on CPM, click here.

Salesforce.com bites bullet on need for more integration

July 24, 2006 from ComputerWorld - "Salesforce.com Inc. last week rolled out the latest version of its hosted software with added features that include a built-in link to SAP AG's ERP applications. The move is part of an effort by the customer relationship management vendor to address integration shortcomings cited by current and former users.

Several IT managers and corporate executives said that despite its continued momentum in the CRM market, Salesforce.com still faces the inherent limitation of selling a best-of-breed offering that doesn't easily connect with other business applications…

There will always be a debate over whether it's better to standardize on a single application platform or use best-of-breed systems, he noted. But he said that he's willing to accept the inherent problems of the latter approach. By using Salesforce.com's software, Kramer added, "we don't sacrifice on the technology that manages our biggest asset: our customer relationships."

In some cases, though, the lack of widespread integration offerings and the cost of running separate CRM and back-office systems have led users to defect from Salesforce.com.

"If I were to say one single reason for our change, it was that we needed tight integration," said Flora Sun, chief operating officer at Adina for Life Inc. in San Francisco. "We needed fully functional end-to-end processes."

180 View - "End-to-end processes" is today's mantra of the ERP systems, and it includes processes embedded in CRM. If Salesforce.com is to continue its leadership role in CRM, we think it will need to develop hooks to many other ERP systems.