Frank Buytendijk Blog

Google Knol (a “knol” is a unit of knowledge in Google’s terms) is a bit like Wikipedia. You can post articles, but the difference is it is clear who the author is. My colleague Mark Conway and I recently posted an article on the definition of EPM. You can check his article out here.

The article discusses the various definitions of EPM, what components an EPM system consists of, an overview of EPM methodologies, suggested reading, etc. Here’s a paragraph from the article, to give you an idea:

The term Performance Management is not very well defined. Different disciplines have a different understanding. For instance, in the field of HR it means managing employee performance 1 and in IT networks performance management means optimizing the performance of IT systems and networks2. When performance management refers to organizational development, many different terms are used, amongst which Corporate Performance Management 3, Business Performance Management, Strategic Performance Management4 or Integrated Performance Management 5. Performance management is closely connected to the term performance measurement. They are sometimes mistaken for each other. In careful usage, Performance Management is the larger domain and includes Performance Measurement. Here we use the term Enterprise Performance Management (EPM). Some try to define the differences between these terms. In an article in BPM Magazine (12/08), David Giannetto, the author of “The Performance Power Grid” and a professor at Rutgers University made the distinction: “BPM is usually considered to be an approach that solves operational problems through better information, whereas CPM is often used to refer to the solution of problems that revolve around financial information. Meanwhile, EPM tends to be seen as the unification of operational and financial information to solve problems with a holistic approach.”

frank

In Western management, we are obsessed with analysis. KPIs are designed to analyze deviation from the plan, we create graphs to analyze trends, and drill-down in a tree of information to analyze the root-cause of certain unexpected results.

But what about the opposite of analysis, called synthesis? Where analysis helps with straightforward problems taking them apart until you understand all elements (per definition an in-the-box activity), synthesis helps connecting different elements and create something new (an out-of-the-box approach). This is particular helpful when the business problems we deal with are not that straightforward and clean anymore, like dilemmas often are.

Sure, we all find this important, but think this is "creative" and "unstructured". But the process of synthesis is equally structured, and there are techniques that help dealing with dilemmas.

This is the topic of my new book, that I am currently writing. Taking business intelligence into an entirely new direction. Please take the survey at www.frankbuytendijk.com, and share anonymously how you think your company is dealing with its strategic dilemmas. As a "thank you" you can download a paper that was recently accepted by the Academy of Management, and was also accepted by the Performance Management Association (PMA) earlier this year. And if you contact me directly, I'd be delighted to share with you the thinking that led to the survey. But I wouldn't want to bias you responses too soon.

So please take the survey first, at www.frankbuytendijk.com !

Best regards, frank