Enterprise Performance Management: What Every Business Leader Needs to Know

Do you wish you had a better way to analyze the health of your enterprise? For some companies, as long as you’re not in the red, you assume you’re doing fine. However, there are more performance metrics that should be evaluated than just revenue generation.

To ensure your enterprise is operating at maximum profitability and can meet future goals, you need to engage in enterprise performance management (EPM). In this article, we’ll explore what enterprise performance management is, the challenges that come with EPM, and how you can leverage EPM processes to improve your business.

What is Enterprise Performance Management?

Enterprise performance management, at a high-level view, is the evaluation of your organization’s performance. EPM takes numerous facets of your business into account – budgeting, strategy execution, planning, and more.

Let’s look at the enterprise portion of EPM. Enterprises generally have different needs, challenges, and goals than smaller companies do. However, due to the sheer size of an enterprise, it’s a challenge to effectively analyze the health of an organization and take steps to improve performance.

Common Challenges with EPM

If enterprise performance management is so valuable for companies to track, why do many fail to do so? In large organizations, some common challenges that arise with EPM include:

• Too much data to track. In large enterprises, massive amounts of data are generated each day. Accurately gathering and updating all of these metrics in Excel is a logistical nightmare, taking up valuable time and energy that your accounting department likely doesn’t have to spare.
• Collaboration with other departments. While some departments may be diligent and accurate when it comes to tracking and submitting departmental data, like expense reports or budgets, to your enterprise’s accounting team, other departments may not be as responsible. Tracking down this essential data from every department across your enterprise requires a large investment of effort.
• Keeping documents consistently up to date. Though your accounting team may have received and input sales reports yesterday, what happens when three new sales are closed today? Is there enough communication between departments to keep enterprise performance management documents constantly up to date? Without instantaneous updates as soon as new events occur, your documents could be out of date mere minutes after you updated them.
• Accurate data set analysis. Due to all the other challenges that come with enterprise performance management – sheer volume of data, collecting data from other departments, and constantly updating data sets – it’s nearly impossible to be sure that the data you’re analyzing is accurate. Thus, the conclusions you draw from these data sets probably aren’t accurate either. Unfortunately, that means many enterprises are making crucial decisions about their businesses using outdated information.

Enterprise performance management holds too much value to do it incorrectly or not at all. While the challenges that come with EPM are numerous, there are ways to overcome them.

How to Tackle Performance Management in Your Organization

When it comes to enterprise performance management, tracking key metrics manually only leads to challenges for your organization. The best way to easily and accurately tackle enterprise performance management is to adopt an EPM software solution.

EPM solutions were designed to streamline performance management processes. With an EPM solution, you can:

• Auto-populate data sets, eliminating the need to manually input data.
• Instantly create detailed reports with accurate data for greater insight into organizational performance.
• Ensure the data sets you’re relying on reflect the most accurate numbers.
• Eliminate the need for spreadsheets, which can be error prone and confusing.

With the right EPM solution, you’re able to make better decisions about your business based on more accurate metrics. Instead of hoping the reports you’re evaluating truly reflect the state of your organization, you can be sure they do.

How to Choose the Right Performance Management Tool for Your Enterprise

While there are a variety of EPM solutions on the market, not every solution has the same capabilities or is right for all businesses. Selecting the perfect solution is essential to maximizing your business efficiency and improving performance.

To ensure you’re adopting the right solution for your enterprise, there are a few questions you should ask the providers you’re evaluating.

• What size organization does your EPM solution cater to? Because the goals and challenges of small organizations differ from those of an enterprise, you need to ensure the solution you choose works for a business your size. For large enterprises, it’s imperative that you choose a solution with the capability to support enterprise-level data quantities.
• Does this solution have all the features I need for effective enterprise performance management? Some features you’re looking for may include:
  • Automated data import
  • Integration with other solutions (i.e., CRMs, sales solutions, human resources information systems, etc.)
  • Budgeting and forecasting capabilities
  • Automated report creation
  • Adequate security and administrative controls
• Does this solution offer features specific to my industry? Each industry has its own enterprise performance management concerns. For example, manufacturing enterprises want to maximize production efficiency. Companies in this industry would want an EPM solution that can help them track any inefficiencies in each step of the manufacturing process.
• Will this solution provider offer the support needed for successful implementation? What about ongoing support? Implementing a new software solution can be a huge challenge, especially for larger organizations with numerous people who need to learn the solution. Look for an EPM provider that will offer support and training during the implementation process. You also want a partner who will provide ongoing support even after the solution is implemented.
• Do you have a positive reputation with your clients? One of the best ways to know you’re selecting the right partner for your EPM software is to verify that their other clients are satisfied both with the solution and the solution provider. Ask for references you can contact to talk about their experience with the solution (especially ones in your own industry). The solution providers you’re considering can also offer case studies, so you can verify that their solution has delivered positive results for their clients.

Adopting an effective enterprise performance management solution gives you a level of insight into the health of your company that you have likely never experienced before. Now, your organization’s leaders can make the best decisions based on real-time data. And, your accounting team can eliminate the burden of manual enterprise performance management, putting time back into their schedules.

Do you want to learn more about how the right software solution can help you better manage your company? Download this free guide now.