Guiding Principles for Successful Enterprise Performance Solution System Implementations

Abstract

Enterprise Performance Solution Systems (EPSS) encompass a critical niche capability within the greater spectrum of Business Analytics systems. Significant financial reporting and management theory challenges relate to the design, implementation and successful utilization of these powerful corporate capital planning and analysis systems. Chief among the technical challenges are the metadata and fact data integrations with legacy, data warehouses and ERP repositories. Management theory challenges may be even more significant and relate to conflicts between and within corporate information technology and financial reporting cultures, data governance practices, and understanding oftentimes disparate forecasting and budgeting methodologies within aspects of the organization. Guiding principles are explored in this paper with the objective of mitigating common technical and functional area hurdles which can impact the success of these implementations. Strategies for enhancing the system design process and interactions between operational management end users and system designers are also explored.Keywords: enterprise performance solution system, enterprise performance management, enterprise capital planning, multidimensional, planning systems, business intelligence, business analytics, business process management, change management optimization, ad hoc reporting, enterprise planning Background of the ResearchEnterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are now ubiquitous (Rashid et al, 2002) within large corporate enterprises and government agencies and are now well within the stage of being repackaged for implementation within smaller to medium enterprises (SMEs). In conjunction with the widespread adoption of data warehousing concepts driving towards a holistic data governance practice, the implementation of Enterprise Performance Solution Systems (EPSS) becomes a logical and necessary outgrowth of government and corporate financial management capabilities. An EPSS, also commonly known as an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) system, is defined in this paper as a subset of the universe of Business Intelligence (BI) systems. This system is focused on the monitoring, planning, and managing the performance of an enterprise.With the increasing adoption of EPSS, significant challenges within the organization can arise that impede the successful design, development and adoption of these systems. The major impediment categories can be broken into two segments: organizational management and information management practices. The organizational management challenges and recommended guidelines for mitigation are first addressed in this article, then followed by the information management hurdles and potential remediation solutions. MethodologyThis EPSS field research was undertaken by using a combination of direct observation or survey-based answers in lieu of direct observation. EPSS field research was targeted at American-based multinational for-profit enterprises in the Global 1000 category. These were further n...