Resource Center

Welcome to the BPM Magazine Resource Center, Julie Wenzel. Here you will find Webcasts, white papers, product demos/presentations, and the latest industry research. You can browse the vendor booths by clicking on the vendor logos or by clicking on a category below.

Profile: Ventana Research

6150 Stoneridge Mall Road, Suite 350 Pleasanton, CA 94588 http://www.ventanaresearch.com Phone: (925) 474-0060 Fax: (650) 240.1721 Email: info@ventanaresearch.com

White Papers

The Right View of Performance Management: Reasonable scope, incremental change and dashboards provide tangible benefits
Some executives shy away from the idea of performance management. To them it may suggest a large project intended to transform the corporation, which will cost lots of money and disrupt the flow of business. They fear that, like the fad for “business process re-engineering” in the 1990s, it will consume resources, require the expertise of consultants and end up making little difference in the end. These days, hard-driving companies have no time for such grandiose projects. They likely are handling most tasks reasonably well and don’t see a need for dramatic change. But they face the same intense competition and pressures as everyone else in the global economy. To maintain both profitability and their customer base, and to continue to grow, they must squeeze inefficiencies out of their business processes and perform their functions more effectively. It is in this sense that companies need performance management.

Aligning Business and IT To Improve Performance on SAP: Making BI and performance management work requires agreement from all stakeholders
Many organizations today have had notable success in their campaigns to increase the productivity and efficiency of their business processes. These improvements are due in part to more efficient use of information technology, particularly the enterprise-class applications –- such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM)-- that provide standard ways of executing transactions across business processes. SAP is one of the largest and best-known providers of enterprise applications to large and midsize organizations. In the years leading up to and following the Y2K change-over, the company took advantage of organizations’ demand for consistency in conducting business transactions utilizing information technology. As SAP’s overall market share among businesses grew, it also established its presence in vertical industries that have unique business processes, among them oil and gas, automotive and consumer packaged goods.

Decision-Making and Performance: Improving Essential Business Analytics and Technologies
Managing performance effectively through efficient decision-making is an important goal of most organizations. To reach this goal, management needs ongoing input from business analysts and the executives who rely on them. Yet our new benchmark research reveals that many organizations are not realizing their potential in this critical area of business. Executives often are unaware that their analysts are hampered in doing their jobs by organizational impediments, unreliable information and inappropriate technology. Many analysts and management personnel lack confidence in the effectiveness of their analysis and planning processes and mistrust the data contained in presentations. And an unwillingness to commit budget and other resources to maintain and improve their analysis and decision-making environment hampers many organizations from raising their performance and decision-making maturity.

Fragmented Platforms Impede Performance Management: Unified solutions are necessary but not easy to find
Most organizations' system infrastructures have grown in fits and starts, in response initially to the needs of local business units and then to centralized IT's efforts focusing on the operational infrastructure. The results are that applications are everywhere and data silos abound across the organization, housing multiple versions of the same information and creating complications obtaining data when needed. Indeed, investments in dedicated information systems that once seemed like a good idea now may be seen as impediments to growth. The same can be said for the continued reliance on inappropriate tools such as spreadsheets and on myriad separate business intelligence (BI) technologies.

Sales Performance Management: Improving the Performance of Sales Organizations to Maximize Strategic Value
This research examined strategic directions in sales performance management, evaluated the maturity of sales performance management deployments, identified best practices, and explored where organizations need education to improve their processes and systems.

Financial Performance Management for the 21st Century: A CFO’s agenda for using IT to align strategy and execution
Ventana Research defines financial performance management (FPM) as the process of addressing the often overlapping issues that affect how well finance organizations support the activities and strategic objectives of their company and manage their own operations. FPM deals with the full cycle of the department’s functions, including corporate and strategic finance, planning, forecasting, analysis, closing and reporting. It involves a combination of people, processes, information and technology. Ventana Research recently completed a benchmark research study that examines some important issues companies face – or think they face – in FPM. We conducted the study over the Internet and promoted it through our media partners, our membership community and the sponsor’s community. The targeted respondents were finance managers and IT professionals who support finance departments.

Research

Business Intelligence and Performance Management for the 21st Century
This benchmark research from Ventana Research assesses the current state of maturity, trends, and best practices of business intelligence (BI) and performance management in organizations to determine how organizations actually approach BI and performance management and prioritize their key components, and to identify what elements they desire in a comprehensive approach.

Research Findings -- Integrated Business Planning: Redesigning Planning for a More Dynamic Business Environment
Integrated business planning (IBP) is a new term applied to a longstanding objective: to bring together and improve the accuracy of the disparate strands of forward-looking activities across a corporation in order to foster internal alignment and enhance agility. The goal of IBP is to increase the organization’s financial return and improve its strategic position. IBP is about planning (not just budgeting) across an entire business (not just one department, business unit or function) in an integrated fashion. For this Research Report Executive Summary, Ventana Research evaluated the current situation of IBP, including a rigorous examination of key areas of business planning, the issues companies face in planning and the root causes of these issues.

Analyst Note -- Integrated Business Planning: Addressing Today’s Challenges and Opportunity
Integrated business planning (IBP) is a new term applied to a longstanding objective of executive management across finance, operations and the organization’s front line: to bring together the disparate strands of forward-looking activities across a corporation so as to foster internal alignment, enhance agility and ultimately increase its financial returns and improve its strategic position. Ventana Research asserts that especially in larger companies, fragmented planning efforts prevent companies from achieving these goals. Not having achieved IBP, they miss opportunities to sell more, incorrectly allocate their resources to less productive or less profitable activities and react too slowly to changing market conditions.

Analyst Note -- Tag Fannie and Freddie with XBRL
An asset-backed security (ABS) is a type of debt instrument that represents a pool of assets or is collateralized by cash flows from a specified pool of underlying assets. These securities have improved the overall efficiency of the credit markets by making small loans and other financial assets more liquid and more readily available to those wanting financial assets with those specific characteristics. Unfortunately, as currently structured ABSs have a serious flaw: limited transparency into the current state of the underlying assets. The current stress on the credit markets (and the home mortgage sector in particular) points to the need for having up-to-date detailed information about the specific asset pools behind each certificate. Using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) to capture key information about these underlying assets would give owners, buyers and sellers a clearer picture of the value of any certificate at any given time. When credit markets are stressed (as they are today), this information would help reduce uncertainty and therefore could improve liquidity. In its proposed takeover of the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA or “Fannie Mae”) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (“Freddie Mac”), as well as in the overall financial rescue package, the United States Treasury would do well to enhance the marketability of mortgage-backed securities these entities hold by retrofitting XBRL tags on their existing securities. We expect this tagging would enhance the liquidity of these markets by resolving much of the uncertainty hanging over their securities. In the longer term, XBRL tagging of all ABSs would improve the liquidity and enhance the resiliency of these markets.

Analyst Note -- Improving IT Spending Effectiveness
A common complaint of IT departments is that they struggle to maintain their relevance in the face of budgets that allow them to do little more than fund daily operations and basic maintenance – what often is referred to as “keep the lights on.” Our research finds an important but overlooked connection between this issue and the charge-back process that most companies use to assign the cost of operating their IT departments. This process fails in two respects. It does a poor job of connecting line-of-business actions to IT department costs, and it assigns expenses in ways that provide little or no incentive for line-of-business executives to eliminate wasteful IT spending. To remedy this situation, IT organizations must be able to track and manage their expenses more intelligently, in ways that connect the dots between business-unit requirements and their expenses. They also must develop charge-back methods that use these more precise systems. This is an issue that Ventana Research believes is best handled by a joint effort of IT and Finance.

Analyst Note -- Financial Performance Management Research Agenda for 2008
Ventana Research defines financial performance management (FPM) as the process of addressing the often overlapping issues that affect how well finance organizations support the activities and strategic objectives of their company and manage their own operations. FPM deals with the full cycle of the finance department’s functions, including corporate and strategic finance, planning, forecasting, analysis, closing and reporting. It involves a combination of people, processes, information and technology. Ventana Research sees information technology as a particular focus of FPM because we find that most finance organizations are not using these assets as fully as they could. In particular, they often focus only on efficiency and neglect opportunities to use IT to enhance their effectiveness, which can make more difference in their overall results. We believe that finance organizations can and should play more of a strategic role in managing the performance of their companies. Most people participating in our research say that Finance must do more than serve as the “bean counter.” Beyond executing the finance and accounting functions, Finance can define control metrics and handle performance reporting. It also administers the planning, budgeting and review process. Yet this leadership opportunity often goes unfulfilled. We find that while a majority of people in Finance say their department plays a leadership role in their company, most others outside the department disagree. In 2008 our research will examine the ways finance organizations can enhance their effectiveness by improving the business execution through better alignment of people, process, information and technology.

Analyst Note -- Spending Wisely
Midsize companies today have more options for automating finance activities than ever before. The continually declining costs of computing power have made IT systems once designed exclusively for Global 2000 corporations affordable for them. What once required a dedicated IT staff to manage and maintain can now be handled by a bookkeeper. Increasingly, these sorts of capabilities require no up-front investment in hardware and software but can be procured as a monthly service. When it comes to buying things or handling travel and entertainment expenses, Ventana Research recommends that midsize companies look into software that automates the management of purchases. It can reduce time spent on manual tasks, increase visibility of cash flow and improve control of spending.

Analyst Note -- Make Planning More Strategic
Ventana Research recently completed extensive benchmark research on how companies plan and budget. Planning and budgeting are fundamental to performance management. Ideally, they are how companies harmonize the sometimes conflicting objectives of departments and business initiatives and align operations with strategy. In our view, planning and budgeting ought to be a structured dialogue about the future – structured in the sense that there are concrete, measurable goals (revenues, market share, units produced and so on) and definable constraints (spending and investment). Planning and budgeting also create baseline objectives against which performance can be assessed at the company, business unit and individual levels. While our benchmark research shows that some companies have achieved an advanced state of planning and budgeting maturity, more are lagging. We urge CFOs and controllers to take a fresh look at their process, with the goal of making it more relevant to managing the business and supporting performance improvement efforts.

Analyst Note -- Spending the Right Time on Planning and Budgeting
Planning and budgeting processes consume a significant portion of a finance department’s time. Yet as revealed by Ventana Research’s recent benchmark research on planning and budgeting, it may not be spending that time optimally. Participants from fewer than half of all participating companies said they spend the right amount of time on planning and budgeting. The most common complaint is that the company spends too much time, and this is certainly the case for larger companies. However, we also found that those from midsize organizations were as likely to say they spend too little time on it as too much.

Analyst Note -- Quality Time for Planning and Budgeting
Ventana Research recently completed benchmark research on planning and budgeting that examined how companies plan, budget and review. Our benchmarking research not only measures efficiency (“doing things right”), as all benchmarks do, it also assesses effectiveness (“doing the right things”). We found that planning and budgeting consume a significant portion of the finance department’s time as well as that of others directly involved in the process. Consequently, it is not surprising that much of the discussion about reforming budgeting and planning revolves around reducing the time spent on these activities. However, our research showed that people are in fact more concerned with making the process more effective, not more efficient. They are more interested in gaining better insight into their performance, achieving greater forecasting accuracy and improving the alignment of strategy and budgets across and within business units, than they are in merely shortening the process. Ventana Research believes these are the main objectives companies should address when they try to improve the process.

Analyst Note -- Integrate Sales Forecasting and Demand Planning
Accurate and timely sales forecasting and demand planning (SFDP) are important to the success of a company. Doing these activities excellently rather than doing them adequately can make a significant difference in a company’s competitiveness and market position. We recently completed benchmark research on how companies perform SFDP. The research was designed to uncover and highlight the most important mistakes companies make, the capabilities they lack and the obstacles executives encounter as they seek to improve their sales forecasting and demand planning efforts. Although many companies do one or the other well, not enough excel at both – and fewer still combine the two into one core business function. It is this integration of the two forward-looking functions that differentiates truly innovative companies from the rest of the pack. Moreover, we found numerous areas where companies limit their own effectiveness.

Analyst Note -- Make Sales Forecasting and Demand Planning More Effective
Ventana Research asserts that having accurate, timely and well-integrated forecasts and plans is more important to the success of any company than often is understood. The difference between doing forecasting and planning excellently and just doing it well enough may seem small but can have a significant impact on the company’s overall effectiveness, particularly when it comes to competitiveness and market share. Our research shows that only a minority of organizations have achieved a high level of maturity in this area. Our recently completed benchmark research on this topic was designed to find the most important mistakes companies typically make, the capabilities they lack and the obstacles executives encounter as they seek to improve sales forecasting and demand planning. Our assessments focus on the four dimensions of business that companies must address to improve performance: people, process, information and technology. When it comes to the “people” aspect of their efforts, we found three specific areas where companies fall short. First, only a handful of companies achieve sufficient accuracy in sales forecasting and demand planning. Second, too few of them collaborate adequately across business silos in their planning functions and therefore limit the effectiveness of the process. Third, a majority of corporations fall short in linking their strategic objectives with their planning activities.

Analyst Note -- Planning for Price Volatility
A good deal of budgeting is based on naïve extrapolation (the expression on Wall Street is “the trend is your friend”). As a quick and dirty method, it can be an accurate predictor of the future – until it isn’t. There has been extreme volatility in most commodity and currency markets over the past 18 months. Managing any company that has significant exposure (direct or indirect) to these costs has been a challenge, especially when it comes to budgeting and planning. Ventana Research finds that most companies fall short of their potential when it comes to handling their forward-looking activities. Chief among these is planning and budgeting, since the annual budget is essentially a static document that organizations work around to accommodate change. The current volatile environment demonstrates the value of driver-based planning and, especially for companies with multiple lines of manufactured product, the need to integrate planning across these business lines. The goal in doing this integration is being able to assess the impact of the inevitable trade-offs in order to ensure these decisions are optimized for the entire company.

Analyst Note -- Operational BI Drives Demand for Timely Data
Our benchmark research study “Operational Business Intelligence” found that more mature organizations see operational BI as reducing the amount of time front-line workers and operational managers must spend hunting for information, leaving them more time for activities that benefit the business. With each step up in maturity, organizations want not only to make it easier to find information but also to increase the frequency with which the data that users access is updated, in some cases to rates approaching real time. Ventana Research believes having timely data is critical to achieving the top two business benefits of operational BI deployment: improving efficiency and improving customer service.

Analyst Note -- Operational BI Deployment Demands Data Integration
In our recent benchmark research on Operational Business Intelligence, we found that operational workers require more diverse data sources than analysts who use traditional BI tools; these operational sources include desktop spreadsheets and flat files. In fact, when we compared these findings with those from earlier benchmark research (“Business Intelligence for Operational Performance,” done in 2005), we found that operational data stores (ODSs), data warehouses and data marts are no longer the dominant sources of data; spreadsheets and even flat files now are more common. Some organizations may conclude from these findings that they need to expand the range of data sources integrated into their enterprise data warehouse or ODSs to manage access more effectively. Others may choose to provide data access directly to those sources or use enterprise information integration software systems for federated access. But no matter what the information integration and access strategy, it is clear that for daily decisions, operational workers need to view relevant information wherever it resides.

Analyst Note -- ERP’s Overlooked Value
Does an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system have a positive, measurable impact on a company’s performance? Our benchmark research shows that a majority of people think not. We believe this finding reflects a misperception promoted more than a decade ago when several research firms published studies showing little improvement of efficiency within a year or two of implementing new ERP systems. In our judgment, these studies were flawed; to the contrary, a well-known benchmarking firm’s data shows that the cost of operating a finance organization (measured as a percent of revenues) was cut in half during the 1990s as companies increasingly adopted integrated financial systems. We also find that these negative attitudes work against enhancing the value of ERP systems because executives fail to recognize the value they already have created and therefore are unwilling to make investments to extend their utility. To address this issue, Ventana Research recommends companies create an ERP steering committee that proposes changes to enhance the value of the ERP system and oversees their implementation.

Analyst Note -- The Pricing Is Right
After many years of achieving above-average profitability, corporations in the United States and elsewhere face an increasing cost/price squeeze (a phrase that was common in the stagflation-ridden 1970s). In response, they need to find ways to manage profitability more effectively. This is a cornerstone of financial performance management, and Ventana Research thinks that CFOs should drive initiatives that will enhance the bottom line. To do that, however, they will have to go beyond traditional “bean counter” approaches. Today, in addition to uncovering and eliminating unnecessary costs, profitability management involves optimizing (not simply maximizing) revenue. Cost-cutting is something that finance organizations are reasonably good at, but they rarely view revenue optimization as their mandate. Ventana Research asserts that finance organizations must lead the charge to enable operating units to fatten margins because these optimization initiatives typically cut across business units and because senior finance executives can bring to the process a corporate-wide view. Revenue optimization is an area CFOs must focus on now, rather than waiting until things settle down, because investments in processes and systems are likely to pay off continuously – in bad times and in good.

Analyst Note -- Enhancing the Value of ERP
Our research shows that most companies don’t use to the fullest the capabilities of their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to automate cross-functional processes and to capture data that can be useful in managing performance. Not doing the former impedes efficiency, especially in administrative functions that add little value, while ignoring the latter blunts effectiveness and prevents organizations from achieving better results. Why do companies neglect to draw more value from their ERP systems? Our research indicates that it is because Finance and the lines of business have ceded the management of these systems to their IT departments, which confines its efforts to system maintenance, not enhancements that would add to the business value of the system.

Research Findings -- Total Compensation Management: Establishing the Cornerstone for Workforce Performance Management
Compensation management is a key activity for supporting workforce performance and talent management processes. Determining and providing the right compensation for each person, whether it’s base or merit pay or variable pay and incentives, is critical to being able to attract and retain productive members of the workforce, employees and contractors alike. Today, the activities and systems that support compensation for executives, variable pay and rewards for those in sales, field service and call centers and stock and other incentive programs are diverse and complicated. As organizations consider advanced practices such as pay for performance and talent management, many are finding they need a comprehensive, more strategic approach to compensation. As a result, what we call total compensation management is gaining interest from organizations that seek to streamline their compensation processes and fully use the information they have to ensure optimal performance from their workforce investments. Ventana Research believes an investment in total compensation management is a strategic step toward improving workforce performance, and our new benchmark research confirms this. Our research examined best practices in compensation management, evaluated the maturity of compensation management deployments and explored where organizations need education to improve their processes and systems.

Sales Performance Management: Improving the Performance of Sales Organizations to Maximize Strategic Value
This research examined strategic directions in sales performance management, evaluated the maturity of sales performance management deployments, identified best practices, and explored where organizations need education to improve their processes and systems.

Research Findings -- Requirements for 21st Century Spreadsheets: Uses and misuses of a critical business technology
What’s one way to destroy a finance department’s productivity? Get rid of spreadsheets. Or one way to immediately improve the finance department’s productivity? Get rid of spreadsheets. This is the conundrum finance groups face. Desktop spreadsheets are inexpensive and versatile, and millions of people work with them every day. They’re a handy way to do ad-hoc analysis and reports, prototyping and other common tasks. In a corporate setting, however, the disadvantages and dangers of spreadsheets outweigh these conveniences. They are error-prone; you need only do a Web search on “spreadsheet error” to get a feel for the pervasiveness of this problem. People also frequently have to combine spreadsheets, a task most find arduous. And spreadsheets are difficult to audit and clumsy to work with in collaborative, repetitive business processes such as budgeting, sales and operational planning and compensation management, to name just three.

Research Findings -- Operational Business Intelligence: Assessing market trends and the use of BI in operations
Organizations today have good reasons to extend business intelligence (BI) systems to their operational employees. Ventana Research believes that deploying BI for operations can produce significant competitive advantages. The benchmark research discussed in this report substantiates the view that operational BI is an important tool for performance management; companies that adopt it can expect to become more effective in key areas of operations. The research also finds a high level of awareness about this issue: 66 percent of participants in our research study said it is very important for their organizations to make BI technology accessible to all relevant functions in operations, while an additional 30 percent called it somewhat important.

Analyst Note: Actuate Targets Developer Interest in Open Source BI
Open source software continues to gain momentum in various areas of business computing. As open source software becomes more trusted for applications, this will be reflected in the business intelligence (BI) tools market as developers add reporting, data access and analysis to their applications. Open Source BI projects such as the Eclipse Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT) Project, JasperForge and the Pentaho BI Project, are maturing. Our benchmarking research has shown that companies have strong interest in open source BI software. The expressions of interest included large deployments of more than 1,000 users, which suggests that organizations will be developing, testing and deploying the software for operational BI settings in which front-line workers use information for daily decision-making. Such deployments can be expensive; thus, not surprisingly, our research has found that cost is a primary factor driving interest in open source BI. Actuate, the primary supporter of BIRT, is trying to use its experience and reputation in traditional BI and enterprise reporting to establish a leadership position in open source BI.

Analyst Note: XBRL Tracks the Double Bottom Line
Most people who have heard of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) associate it with regulatory submissions. While in the United States public companies have the option of filing XBRL-tagged results with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it is used more intensively elsewhere. For example, it is mandatory for companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (among others), and banks now routinely use XBRL to file financial reports with the Bank of Japan and the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), among many others. XBRL has the potential to be even more useful than this, particularly since the “extensible” aspect of it means that any organization can create its own taxonomy to collect any kind of information. One organization that is pulling in both standard accounting information and other performance metrics is the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX). Its example demonstrates the power of XBRL to facilitate the collection of both financial and nonfinancial data that is used to track and assess organizational performance. It’s time for organizations to realize that XBRL is not just about statutory accounting.

Analyst Note: QPR Orchestrates Performance Management
Applying performance management throughout a company can spur continuous improvement, but it is a task that requires commitment and a collaborative approach. QPR Software has been providing software solutions for performance management for more than a decade. Evolving from a background in scorecarding and process management, QPR has matured into a vendor of operational performance management software. Companies deploy its products to take a disciplined approach to sales, marketing and service with the goal of improving top-line growth. Ventana Research advises organizations to adopt the strategic rigor of performance management, deploying tools as needed in operations and elsewhere, to increase their financial and operational effectiveness.

Analyst Note: Cognos Antes Up Big for Applix
Cognos will acquire Applix in a transaction expected to be completed by the end of this year. Ventana Research thinks the addition will enable Cognos to strengthen its product line in financial performance management (FPM). We think the company will be in a position to offer finance professionals a “finance appliance” that marries Cognos’ finance applications with Applix’s TM1, a memory-resident, multidimensional database. This combination could give finance users a dedicated server capable of quickly performing analytic, optimization and reporting tasks related to planning, budgeting, consolidation and closing, and enable operations-related analysis in the areas of pricing optimization and customer profitability.

Analyst Note: Deep in the Heart of Taxes
Increasingly, companies are looking at speeding their accounting close as part of a broader initiative to improve the execution of the entire close-to-report cycle. One reason for managing the closing cycle more effectively is to have additional time to calculate the tax provision, particularly since FIN 48 (which took effect earlier this year) has complicated the process for many corporations. Our recent research shows that executing the closing process faster and more effectively gives a company more time to prepare accurate tax books that best manage their tax exposure. Conversely, we found that a large majority of companies use spreadsheets and manually rekeyed data to perform important tax calculations. This wastes time and is prone to error. We assert that, at the very least, companies need to have a central data repository for tax information if they hope to manage their tax exposure in today's demanding environment of accountability.

Analyst Note: Composite's CIS 4.5 Offers Broader Virtualization
Seeking to broaden its identity beyond being a niche player in data warehousing, on June 25th Composite Software introduced release 4.5 of Composite Information Server (CIS). Since its founding five years ago, the company has been known for enterprise information integration (EII) technology, which enable organizations to access data from heterogeneous sources without the extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) steps typically necessary for data warehousing or to complement them. Using query optimization, caching and metadata capabilities, CIS acts as a middle tier that combines data and presents the results to users as relational views or supplies other visualizations and abstractions required by front-end applications and dashboards. The new release updates CIS to support service-oriented architecture (SOA) and emerging data services.

Analyst Note -- A Shot of eXpresso for Spreadsheets: SaaS application is designed for collaboration
Tools to make spreadsheets more useful continue to appear. Desktop spreadsheets were designed to be individual productivity tools for ad-hoc analysis, and they work well when used this way. However, most companies also use them for a variety of collaborative, repetitive corporate functions, and in this role their disadvantages appear and quickly multiply. People may be so used to dealing with the difficulties that spreadsheets pose that they are oblivious to the time and money they are wasting by misusing the technology and also may overlook the process limitations desktop spreadsheets impose. Smart DB Corporation’s eXpresso offers a means by which people can collaborate using spreadsheets that eliminates most of the headaches and at a price that most companies (even small ones) will find affordable.

Research Findings -- Workforce Analytics and Business Intelligence: Understanding and Improving Workforce Performance
Ventana Research undertook this research study to evaluate the current state of automation and examine practices regarding the use of analytics and business intelligence (BI) in workforce performance management. The study examines tools used today, the areas of workforce performance in which they are used and their effectiveness.

Research Findings -- Supply Chain Business Intelligence: Adoption, Use and Practices
This research study explores the adoption and use of business intelligence technology, assessing how executives in the various functions of manufacturing and supply chain operations view it and the role it is playing, or should play, in their organizations. Ventana Research undertook this study to evaluate the market, to determine organizations’ maturity and to identify trends and priorities in their adoption.

Research Findings -- Product Information Management: Business and Technology Trends
The results of this research show that companies are looking to improve their product information management to resolve issues at two levels: analytic and operational. At the analytic level, the top priority, as indicated by 45 percent of respondents, was to support a business intelligence initiative. At the operational level, the top priority, again selected by 45 percent of respondents, was to improve customer support. This focus on the customer indicates that two top business priorities are to create consistent product data and to ensure operational effectiveness.

Research Findings -- Master Data Management: A Key Tool for Managing Business Information Initiatives
This research reveals what Ventana Research believes to be several significant trends in MDM. Overall, we found a growing awareness of and interest in master data management. More than 80 percent of respondents reported that they were aware of the meaning of the term “master data management,” and 18 to 25 percent said they were actively investigating the possible benefits for their business unit or enterprise. Along similar lines, some 15 to 22 percent of organizations have already initiated MDM projects at either the business unit or enterprise level.

Research Findings -- Information Management: Actions, Intentions, Perceptions and Trends in Information
Ventana Research undertook this primary research study of information management in order to evaluate the current situation at the intersection of business user needs, IT department concerns and the current state of information management technology. This report is the result of a careful examination of key areas of information management and the technologies that support it.

Research Findings -- The Fast, Clean Close: Processes and systems for best execution
Applied properly, information technology can reduce closing times. For example, our research shows that companies using dedicated consolidation software close their books faster than do companies closing with ERP applications or spreadsheet software. Two-thirds of companies that use consolidation software close their monthly books in six business days or less, and more than half close their quarterly books in six days or less; both are higher percentages than for those that use their ERP systems and those that rely on desktop spreadsheets. Eliminating manual steps in the closing process can shorten closing times and reduce errors as well. Automating the flow of data from one system to the next used to be difficult, but it is simpler and far more cost-effective today.

Research Findings -- Customer Information Management: Business and Technology Trends
The primary objective of this research was to determine where companies stand in the adoption of CIM. A total of 195 qualified professionals participated in the research by describing their current and planned uses of customer-centric information technology. The respondents were invited from the Ventana Research Performance Management Community and our media partners Business Intelligence Review, Business Intelligence.com and DM Review. These respondents work mostly for companies that are based in North America, span all major industrial groups and are of all sizes. The response pool was almost evenly split between those working on the business side and in IT, which allowed us to compare differences in these two groups’ perceptions and interests.

Research Findings -- Service-Oriented Architecture for Business Intelligence: Trends, Needs and Practices
This research reveals several significant trends in SOA for BI. We found, for example, that SOA is in the early adoption phase with large companies (those having annual revenue in excess of US$500 million), which account for 59 percent of the organizations expecting to adopt SOA infrastructures within 12 months. The most common use of SOA, reported by 27 percent of companies, will be a basic one: to create Web services wrappers around legacy interfaces to facilitate point-to-point integration between IT systems. Furthermore, only 26 percent of respondents reported that their companies have a defined strategy for SOA that includes a reference model specifying how services should be accessed and interact with each other and a governance process to ensure that services conform to the reference model; without these precautions, however, companies are at risk of creating BI services that may be incompatible with each other.

Research Findings -- Business Intelligence and Search: Combining technologies to foster better business decisions
Ventana Research undertook this primary research study to investigate how companies are combining business intelligence software and search technology to improve their performance management efforts. This report will help companies understand what role search technology will play in accessing BI data and delivering new functionality that expands the business value of BI. Our research on business intelligence and search can show organizations how to align the two technologies with their people and processes to achieve corporate goals and objectives.

Research Findings -- Finance Innovation in Midsize Companies: Executive Summary
Ventana Research believes the finance organizations in midsize companies should play a more strategic role. Finance can be an important force in regaining lost agility and enabling a company to make better use of its people and other resources. This research looks into several aspects of innovation in finance departments of midsize companies.

Analyst Notes: Keep Sales and Operations Planning Simple
Research shows that best-performing companies create aggregate plans and review them monthly.

Analyst Notes: Getting More from Scorecards and Dashboards
Research reveals shortfalls in timeliness, accuracy and adequacy of information.

Analyst Notes: Scoping Out the Emerging Spreadsheet Management Market
Ventana Research forecasts rapid growth in demand through 2011.

Analyst Notes: It's a Materiality World
The compliance pendulum swings to sustain competitiveness in capital markets.

Analyst Notes: When ERP Is Not the Right Choice
ERP can do more for your company – but it doesn’t do everything.

Analyst Notes: Selecting PerformancePoint or FRx
Microsoft offers business analytics for different sizes of organizations.

Analyst Notes: SEC Helps XBRL Take Off
Agency will fund projects that encourage adoption.

Analyst Notes: Program Management Facilitates Performance Management
Tracking activities associated with initiatives can improve performance.

Analyst Notes: New Analytics for Cartesis 10
Additional facilities increase capabilities of suite.

Analyst Notes: Longview Buys a SODA
Platform facilitates automation of processes for finance and performance management.

Analyst Notes: Leaders and Laggards in ERP
Not many companies use their systems as effectively as they could.

Analyst Notes: LAFing Matters May Not Be Funny
Some companies don’t seem ready for shorter filing deadlines.

Analyst Notes: Joint Close for Hyperion and Movaris
Companies announce strategic marketing arrangement.

Analyst Notes: Finance Must Play a Role in Sales and Operations Planning
Research shows top companies regularly merge financial outlook with sales and operational plans.

Analyst Notes: Accounting Should Change with the Times
Smart companies will divide statutory and management accounting into parallel processes.

Analyst Notes: Cutting SOX Compliance Costs
Companies must accelerate transition to a sustainable process.

Analyst Notes: Taming Sarbanes-Oxley
Ventana Research believes that public companies are the winners in the latest set of reforms regarding interpretation and enforcement of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and that the compliance pendulum is swinging away from stringent controls.

Analyst Notes: Spreadsheets Enter the 21st Century (Part Two)
XBRL tagging will become indispensable.

Analyst Notes: Spreadsheets Enter the 21st Century
New capabilities will address critical shortcomings.

Analyst Notes: Roadblocks to Greater ERP Success
Misperceptions may be keeping your company from a greater ROI.

Analyst Notes: Business Objects Gets ABCs
Acquiring ALG Software will aid approach to Finance

Analyst Notes: A Virtuous Cycle of Value
It pays off to make IT spending more effective.

Analyst Notes: Get More from Your ERP Investment
It's time to take ERP to the next level of performance

Analyst Notes: XBRL or Master Data Management
Sometimes the choice is clear; sometimes not.

Analyst Notes: Performance Scorecards Ignore Supply Chain
Research shows corporate scorecards deployed only to Finance and Sales

Analyst Notes: Plan While You Can
Seize the opportunity to adopt driver-based planning

Analyst Notes: Auditing the Big Picture
PCAOB shifts focus to top-down SOX audits

Analyst Notes: Planning and Budgeting Remains Immature
Few companies have tied it to performance management

Analyst Notes: Diagnosing An MDM Malaise
How to tell if you have problems with master data

Research Findings: Ventana Research ERP Innovation Executive Summary
Ventana Research performed this research for a fee to examine ERP innovation. This document is based on Ventana's research and analysis of a quantitative survey administered via the Web to qualified respondents. Qualification was based on involvement with the use, deployment and maintenance of ERP systems.

Analyst Notes: Applix Steps Up for Operational Performance Management
New technology and analytics expand platform and tools

Analyst Notes: Financial Performance Management Leadership Topics for the CFO
Ventana's annual list of performance management leadership topics, updated for 2006.

Analyst Notes -- Coming Soon: Your Next ERP System
Companies face crucial choices in enterprise software and not just enterprise applications

Analyst Notes: Making the Audit Pay
Regulatory compliance effectiveness often brings operating efficiency

Analyst Notes: What Is Location Intelligence?
Improve processes and performance through contextual information about location

Analyst Notes: The Danger of XBRL
New standard could become a back door for regulating the chart of accounts

Analyst Notes: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Companies reluctant to adopt XBRL in SEC pilot program

Analyst Notes: How Low Can You Go?
Sarbanes-Oxley compliance costs declining

Analyst Notes: Business Performance Management 2006 Research Agenda
Aligning people, processes and technology can improve results

Analyst Notes -- S&OP: A New Approach to the Single Enterprise View
S&OP integrates fragmented plans to improve operational performance

Analyst Notes: To Deal or Not Deal with Spreadsheets
The best approach is not to deal with them at all

Analyst Notes: The Value of Visibility
Process and context determine its worth

Analyst Notes: Is SOX Working?
Home Depot will be the test case

Analyst Notes: Cartesis Adds Planning and Budgeting to Suite
Company releases ES Planning and ES Information Delivery

Analyst Notes: Financial Performance Management Research Agenda for 2006
There are many ways to enhance Finance's effectiveness

Analyst Notes: ERP Research Agenda for 2006
Innovation is the focus in the coming year

Analyst Notes: Small Businesses May Get 404 Exemption
Proposed rules would eliminate internal controls audits

Analyst Notes: SEC Lightens Reporting Burden
But companies still should expedite the process as much as possible

Analyst Notes: OFR -- Never Mind
Chancellor of the Exchequer abruptly cancels reporting requirements

Analyst Notes: Measuring the Accuracy of Planning and Budgeting
Consider what, when and how to measure

Analyst Notes: What Sarbanes-Oxley Won't Do
Refco confirms SOX can't prevent high-level fraud

Analyst Notes: Is ERP a Commodity?
Teamwork and innovation can keep it from being so

Analyst Notes: CFOs Face Major IT Challenges
The problem with IT is usually not the technology

Analyst Notes: Adding Value to ERP
What is the opportunity cost of doing nothing?

Analyst Notes: Consolidating the Chart of Accounts
Applying Master Data Management to a long-standing problem

Analyst Notes: Identifying Process Challenges in Finance IT
Our CFO workshop found a range of common issues

Analyst Notes: OFR, Reporting and Business Intelligence
Don't invest in IT just to satisfy regulations

Analyst Notes: The Return of Sales and Operations Planning
Companies use S&OP to respond to uncertainties and manage performance

Analyst Notes: Benefiting from Making Strategy Mandatory
Using the company requirement for fuller disclosure as a catalyst

Analyst Notes: Operational Business Intelligence
Research Study Predicts Growing Use of BI in Operations and Finance

Analyst Notes: The Current State of Sarbanes-Oxley 404
Less Administrivia, But New Issues Await in Act II

Analyst Notes -- IT Portfolio Assessment: Getting Ready for Tough Decisions
Transforming IT Portfolios to Improve Value

Analyst Notes: Change of Tone at the Top?
SEC Chief Change Leads to SOX Section 404 Speculation

Analyst Notes: A Faster Close
Companies Want To Accelerate Their Closing Process

Analyst Notes: Streamlining the Close
Addressing the Issues that Slow the Closing Process

Analyst Notes -- XBRL: Drag to Tag?
What's Holding XBRL Back?

Analyst Notes: Workforce Performance Management - Efficiency and Effectiveness
Automating and Improving Processes and Performance

Research Findings: Taking Performance to the Next Level (Full Report)
Based on the Ventana Research Financial Reporting and Consolidation Study

Research Findings: Taking Performance to the Next Level (Executive Summary)
Summary of Key Findings on the State of Financial Performance Management

Analyst Notes: Rethinking (and Re-Doing) Financial Consolidation and Reporting
New Regulations Change the Economics for Financial Systems

Analyst Notes: Planning For a Downturn
Now is the Time to Change Your Budgeting Process

Analyst Notes: Innovation Performance Management
Effective Management of the Generation, Conversion and Realization of Innovation

Analyst Notes: Financial Performance Management Research Agenda
Process, Planning, Profitability and Effectiveness are the Focus for 2005

Analyst Notes: Financial Performance Management Defined
Improving Finance Effectiveness/Efficiency Boosts Business Performance

Analyst Notes: Financial Performance Management and Profitability
Finding Better Ways to Fatten the Bottom Line

Analyst Notes: ERP Rest in Peace
Commoditization of ERP Transitions Focus to Performance Management

Analyst Notes: Building a Competitive Intelligence Group
Using XBRL-Tagged Data for Competitive Advantage

Analyst Notes: Build a Business and IT Foundation for BI
Align People, Processes and Systems for Business Intelligence

Analyst Notes: Transparency Has a Time Element
Is SOX Pushing Out Company Reporting Dates?

Analyst Notes: Managing Incentives and Rewards for Financial Compliance
Disparity of Processes and Internal Systems Are Financial and Operational Risk Points

Analyst Notes: Fixing Sarbanes-Oxley
FRONTlines Forum Looks to Future of Compliance

Analyst Notes: Performance Management Imperatives for 2005
Aligning Business and IT to Improve Performance for a Competitive Advantage

Analyst Notes: Refreshing Financial Reporting and Consolidation
Findings from Research Finds Room for Improvement

Analyst Notes: A New Magnitude (Ventana Research Assessment)
Cartesis Releases Its Latest Consolidation/Reporting Software

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