Unlike many companies in the BPM (Business Performance Management) space Hyperion has completed its moves, assimilated it mergers and integrated its product portfolio. Whilst competitors in catch-up mode are forced into hastily arranged mergers and acquisitions to shore up their product sets, Hyperion is not similarly encumbered. It can leverage its dominant market position to pursue assuredly the next phase of its strategy. Godfrey Sullivan, Hyperion's President and CEO, explains to FSN's managing editor, Gary Simon, how Hyperion is seeking to make BPM technologies easier to use so that 21 st century companies can link strategy to performance and confidently deliver on their visions.
Hyperion invented the term Business Performance Management (BPM) says Sullivan so it's no wonder that he has a very clear vision of how the marketplace has developed and where it's going. "Our intention was to pull the technologies together necessary to help manage the business and support decision making. Ours was the first serious attempt to turn that vision into a system. In the past everything has been disconnected so it has been challenging to align management goals with day to day activities across the enterprise. We had most of the application pieces but needed more integration".
However, Sullivan recognises that having the right technology is only half the story. Getting people to use it is quite another matter. The challenge as Hyperion sees it is ultimately, to make the systems as easy to use as a motor car. It's a good analogy - after all, a modern vehicle is a complex close coupled network integrating all sorts of safety, performance and entertainment applications into a simple dashboard and a few controls.
Hyperion's eagerly awaited "Avalanche" development will start to address the challenge of making BPM easier to use. The initial version will concentrate on interfaces, consistency of workflow, administration and integration to Microsoft Office. "We want users to be able to choose the tools they feel most comfortable with. It shouldn't matter to them whether they are accessing a multi-dimensional database or a relational database," says Sullivan. "Nor should they need to fire up different tools or applications when moving from one form of analysis to another", he adds. Avalanche certainly sounds inviting.
Whilst Hyperion is channelling its energies into the next phase of performance management its competitors are shoring up their product portfolios with hastily convened acquisitions. "Our competitors are acquiring their way to our road map but they are several years behind," says Sullivan, who points out that they will need to integrate both their technologies and their organisations.
Hyperion is also not immune to acquisitions when the need arises, but under Sullivan's leadership it seems more adept these days at handling the sensitive people issues and tensions that can arise in these transactions. The recent Brio acquisition was essentially a technology driven decision designed to provide production reporting off relational databases. Sullivan was determined to avoid a repeat of the poorly executed Arbor merger some years earlier and before his tenure.
"The leadership team sat in a room for a day describing their best and worst experiences of acquiring a company or of being acquired. How would we do it and what values and principles did we want to reflect in the way the transaction was handled? We concluded we wanted to treat all of the employees equally and with respect whether they came from Hyperion or Brio. We evaluated talent carefully. We wanted to avoid the assumption that people from the acquired company are the ones to get run over."
The strategy paid off. In the year just ended demand and sales for the Brio product segment exhibited the strongest growth out of all of Hyperion's offerings.
Sullivan's concern for people is also reflected in the way that he approaches the external market. Ask him about the biggest challenge facing the BPM industry and he automatically responds "changing human behaviour". Specifically he is concerned that people are still wedded to the spreadsheet even though this presents a huge risk to compliance and control. Sullivan likens the change needed to the Herculean task of persuading people a couple of decades ago to jettison their fondness for keyboards in favour of the mouse.
Interestingly, Sullivan does not rate the ERP vendors as a major challenge. At one time they were seen as natural competitors because of their desire to 'own' the management information space as well as the transaction world. "Every company is nibbling in everyone else's space. It's what I call 'edge creep', but it's not a major worry", says Sullivan. It seems that the ERP vendors have bigger fish to fry. "Each other!" chimes Sullivan. "We're working collaboratively with ERP vendors, for example, on joint technology initiatives with SAP and have even been invited to exhibit at their user conferences."
Sullivan is optimistic about Hyperion's prospects for the future. The US economy is gathering pace and IT spending is once again in the ascendancy. But he worries about Europe and the macroeconomic indicators for the region. "If it hadn't been for strong Hyperion management and leadership in Europe we might have had a problem," he concedes.
Growth in the US has been fuelled in part by the growth in the compliance related business but Sullivan is refreshingly forthright in his condemnation of over-regulation. "Compliance unfairly burdens the majority of businesses for the transgressions of a few" he says. "The first wave of compliance has been a totally negative experience for properly run companies. Hopefully, the next wave will be less about 'covering tail' and more about running the business properly."
The compliance discussion brings us onto corporate social reporting and we end the interview talking about cars again. Hyperion exhibits its good citizenship by supporting the purchase of environmentally friendly cars by its workforce. The idea came to Sullivan during a 100 mile, 24 hour, horseback endurance race near Lake Tahoe , California . As a new CEO back in 2002, Sullivan wanted to find ways of influencing and reinforcing corporate culture. "I wanted to bind the workforce and re-enforce our culture and values. So I decided to help employees do what they already cared about". Under the scheme, employees buying cars with fuel consumption equal or better than 45 miles per gallon are given $5000 by the company. Already around 70 employees have signed up to the scheme.
Sullivan is definitely a 'people person'. He could have said that the biggest challenge he faces is displacing spreadsheets but prefers to "change human behaviour". He emphasises the need to make BPM easier for people to use, he applauds his team in Europe , takes care over the people aspects of acquisitions and supports his employees' environmental concerns. One suspects that Hyperion's more collaborative stance with ERP vendors also has something to do with Sullivan's management style.
BPM is transitioning from a collection of applications into an essential management system for running a company. Sullivan understands that supporting this endeavour means that technology companies have to engage with people with a wide variety of skills and backgrounds whether this is employees, customers or external stakeholders.
Hyperion has the technologies under its belt and a strong collaborative culture. Under Sullivan's stewardship it appears confidently poised for the next wave.
