Editor's Comments
12th March 2010
Judging by the news flow this week the performance management market is really hotting up. Sometimes called, CPM, BPM or EPM, the term “performance management” usually refers to a combination of financial reporting, budgeting, planning, forecasting and reporting. So why have all of this week’s leading news pieces come from this segment of the market?
When we were in the depths of recession last year, it was noticeable how companies turned their attention to financial forecasting. The frequency of forecasting started to increase as companies sought to get a better (more frequent and accurate) handle on performance and deeper insights into what was happening on the ground. The difficulties of the credit crunch cruelly exposed the inadequacies of spreadsheets for planning and so many companies invested what meager budgets they had at their disposal in better forecasting systems. But as we climb out of the recession in many regions of the world what does the continued investment in performance management systems tell us?
Hopefully, it means that some of the lessons of the past have been learned and that the idea of continuous performance monitoring and forecasting is beginning to gain traction – except now we are planning for a recovery. Long may it continue!
