Recently, I went to a Business Objects conference, featuring ex-Forrester analyst Keith Gile, who joined the BI vendor in October as Senior Director, Strategic Marketing. Keith advised the audience to participate in some “intelligent cost cutting… save 30% to 70% of your BI costs by standardisation”. Not many Business Objects customers I talked to were rushing out to buy more Business Objects licences to save money. But hey, it's Xmas, so you never know ;-)
Keith follows in the illustrious footsteps of ex-Gartner analysts Frank Buytendijk and Howard Dresner who now have similar positions for Hyperion. The implication is that BI vendors are struggling with the serious question of 'where to now?’ and need some heavyweight brainpower in support. Not a bad plan. Certainly times are tough and vendors could do with more strategic direction. Sales executives and senior executives are jumping ship (the latest being Steve Rogers, the Business Objects VP who joined SAP UK) and deals are hard fought-for and hard-won. The BI gravy train will be poured on a less inviting turkey this year.
The saviour appears to be Performance Management. Business Objects calls this ‘alignment’ and refers to the “melding of BI and financial applications”. Earlier in the week, Graham Walter, VP for Cognos, talked of “BI within the context of PM” and that “people do what you inspect rather than what you expect” at the Bloor Knowledge Management conference. So is performance management really a better way of controlling your staff through implementation of a new piece of software?
Well, not according to an article in Business Research in Information and Technology that states: “integration (of performance management into business planning) is achieved by first establishing the common organizational change goals that will drive business plans and then linking the organizational change goals to the roles, competencies and performance improvement measures needed to achieve them… A performance management system will only be effective in supporting organizational change if it is objective, valued by both employees and managers, judged to be fair and realistic and proven to make a positive contribution to personal and organizational development”.
We all know this in our hearts. Performance Management is not about software. It is about organisational culture. And culture is all about beliefs and values, knowledge, attitudes of mind, customs, rituals, and artefacts. In the organisational context it includes leadership styles, company heroes, founders, and folklore. It considers such elements as the treatment of people, ethics and integrity, customer focus, innovation, and unwritten ways of working and behaving. Complex stuff. There is no such thing as a piece of software that fits this requirement like a glove.
Software is now moving beyond the boundaries of feature, function, and form. It is becoming a living breathing organic entity that melds to user needs and takes into consideration a complex set of human and organisation characteristics. It is up to the vendors to architect unique finely-tuned and people-sensitive performance management solutions that will be a source of sustainable competitive advantage for their customers. Because for sure, the software alone will not deliver these benefits.
