FSN: Meeting the demand for BPM skills

Meeting the demand for BPM skills

29th May 2006
The Business Performance Management Market (BPM) market is one of the fastest growing areas for technology spending. But as the complexity and breadth of BPM solutions expand and the scope of projects grows larger it is becoming increasingly difficult to find individuals with the skill sets required to implement them. Today's finance manager operating in the BPM space not only requires a broad range of technical and accounting competencies but also well honed process and project management skills. Increasingly, a multi-disciplinary and team based approach is required to satisfactorily implement theses system yet employers seems pre-occupied with specific package skills which are in short supply. Against this backcloth of growing resource shortages, FSN asks whether this package based approach is realistic or whether it is time to change tack in the quest to fill the skills gap.

Most commentators agree that as the financial systems market has shifted from 'best of breed' financial systems to complete suites of applications, so too has the complexity of the solutions on offer. Fuelled by increasingly tight reporting timescales, compliance and international accounting regulation, organisations have found that they can no longer satisfy the wide range of information needs from different stakeholders using stand alone applications that cannot share data. So the market for consolidation packages, budgeting, planning, forecasting and reporting systems has coalesced and through a series of mergers and acquisitions leading suppliers, such as Hyperion, Cartesis, SAS, Cognos and Extensity (formerly GEAC) have assembled a formidable range of performance management solutions capable of meeting a broad range of needs.

Some would argue that the skills base has not kept pace with the wider developments in the market. Before the advent of BPM concept, applications were much simpler. Best of breed solutions were implemented on a stand-alone basis and systems accountants could specialise in specific applications, such as Hyperion Enterprise, safe in the knowledge that they would rarely need to step outside of their comfort zone. But rapid advances in communications and web technology have expanded the scope and scale of these applications so that global deployments are relatively commonplace and, for example, new budgeting application projects involving significant process change and several hundred users are routine. In addition to these traditional applications there are stretching demands in the areas of scorecarding, performance dashboards and activity based management. Now that life has become much more complex, implementation specialists are called upon to have a more comprehensive set of competencies and a much wider business perspective.

According to John Adams, a director at Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, it is the complexity of the solutions on offer that is driving the demand for broader skill sets and larger implementation teams as it becomes increasingly apparent that even talented individuals are unlikely to possess the full range of skills required. Nowadays, implementing something as straightforward as a consolidation and reporting system requires an enlarged range of competencies.

Adams told FSN, "It is important to have a deep understanding of processes and workflow since it is vital that process elements are designed to take advantage of the capabilities of the software. The scope of the projects is wider and therefore we are dealing with much larger data sets than in the past, some of which may be drawn from different data owners. So the design of the application is more involved and often takes projects into other functional areas such as marketing, strategy and planning."

Adams concedes that it is not easy to find the appropriate skills, particularly in one person. "The skills required may be as diverse as reporting skills, the design and build of web-forms, or hands-on experience of handling ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) tools to manage the manipulation of data," he added. As a result, Adams says that even modest implementation projects require teams of three or four people and, because of the number of interfaces and project dependencies that need to be managed, there is a far greater call for project management skills as well.

"Ken Wareham, Group Financial System Manager at Old Mutual plc has also been at the sharp end of financial systems implementation for many years, working on ERP and performance management applications. He observes that working in a lean and efficient group function means that his small team has to be increasingly self-reliant from a skills point of view. "As a head office function we do not have the support of a large in-house IT organisation that one might find in divisions and so it is challenging to assemble a team with all of the skills we need. These could vary from SQL database skills to systems administration and structured business analysis as well as all of the knowledge of accounting and group journals," he told FSN.

"As a GEAC MPC user (now Extensity MPC) we would prefer to have people with specific skills in MPC but it also depends on the stage of a project. If we are not going through a major update then we might be prepared to compromise and take people with relevant experience of the processes and of using other packages. But if we are under pressure then we need package specific skills," he remarked.

Although cross-training between packages is feasible Wareham cautions that it is the knowledge of particular package features that is important when a project is under pressure. "It's the package nuances that are important. Although the principles of all consolidation packages are similar, it is the peculiarities or things that you won't learn on a training course that catch you out," he added.

Adams also considers that cross training is a realistic possibility but he believes its success largely depends on how current peoples' skills are. "Many of the current versions of software have only been available for a few years so there isn't a huge resource pool of experienced candidates. But in order for skills to be transferable from one system to another it is important that candidates have had exposure to the latest technology because the look and feel is very different from earlier generations of software," he said.

So far, Old Mutual's Wareham has not had to worry too much about finding resources. He told FSN, "In the past, I've always used SystemsAccountants a specialist in the BPM field who have a vast database of candidates. I've worked with them for a number of years and they always seem to find the right sort of people."

John Williams, Financial Systems Manger, Smiths Group plc, has also had to confront the skills shortage but has shunned the big consultancies in favour of the sub-contract market. He told FSN, "The large consultancies tend to say that they have the people with the skills but this hasn't always proved to be the case. I prefer to use sub-contractors because it is easier to check references and assess individuals' level of experience and capability."

Williams looks for experience of maintaining and implementing systems as well as individuals with deep product knowledge. "Implementing on time and to budget is only part of the story. These systems stay in companies for years so it is vital that they are easy to manage and maintain. There are lots companies out there that are saddled with 'monster' systems that have been implemented badly. It takes real product knowledge in order to design and build a system that can be readily maintained."

Transitioning from one product to another is not necessarily that easy, as Williams, a long standing user of Hyperion Enterprise discovered when moving to Extensity's (formerly Geac's) MPC solution. "Although I had many years experience of consolidation products, and much could be achieved with common sense, I needed people with good MPC experience in the team," said Williams. "SystemsAccountants have been very useful in finding resources over the years," he added.

Despite the commonly held view that sub-contractors are a barrier to effective skills transfer, this has not been borne out by the experience of employers that FSN has spoken to. Indeed, more difficulty is often encountered with external consultants whom often have their own agendas.

Once on-board, retaining skilled employees with good experience is a challenge. With skills in short supply many experienced professionals are tempted to work in the sub-contract market by the attractive pay and conditions. Keeping up with the demand for resources is going to be an issue for the foreseeable future.

James Bradshaw, Managing Director of SystemsAccountants told FSN, "Although the BPM market is very buoyant, there are relatively few projects overall and therefore a smaller number of candidates with deep product knowledge of the latest packages on the market who are prepared to move. The extended scope of projects also means that individual candidates are being stretched and it is increasingly unrealistic to expect any individual to possess all of the skill sets required. All of this means that employers may need to look more creatively at teambuilding to fulfil a range of different project roles and cross training to acquire specific package skills."

If the BPM market continues to grow as expected, then it will be some time before there are ample skills in the market, after all, software suppliers, consultancies and companies are all competing for the same resources. In the meantime, employers will need to take a flexible approach to staffing whist fiercely protecting the limited resources they have at their disposal.

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