Modern business intelligence software and corporate management software integrate processes such as strategy planning, budgeting, people management, key performance indicators monitoring, data warehousing, forecasting, financial planning, reporting, project management, scorecards, dashboards, and so on.
Businesses that do not attempt to get ahead of the game eventually find themselves floundering by the wayside. In today's socio-economic environment, good performance of organizations is even more critical for a global recovering economy. A good balance sheet, showing profitability of a company, has its limitation. It does not reflect the true performance of a company.
The overall performance of a company is tied to its goals and objectives. It is a measure of hundreds of factors that contribute to it. What are your strategies? How is each factor performing? What are your key performance indicators? How much business have you got? How much tax do you need to pay? What is your profitability? How much have you grown? What are your forecasts? What are the risks? What are your plans to mitigate them? What do you need to change or improve? Answers to all these questions together reflect an organization's performance.
Good corporate performance management systems track and measure both operational performance and financial performance. Nowadays, organizations use business intelligence and corporate performance management tools to help them plan and execute strategies. These software programs not only help collect, track, and monitor data, they also help analyze the metrics that contribute to performance. This significantly informs and improves the decision making process. It also provides greater focus to everyone involved in the organization's performance.
With regards to choosing BI platforms, Gartner's BI Platforms User Survey, 2011, finds "Vendors of data discovery tools and large independent vendors tended to do best in the survey, though a few small vendors also excelled." It cautioned clients against indiscriminately buying their BI platforms from mega vendors. Microsoft, which scored above average in most categories measured by the survey, was the sole exception. The survey further recommended that clients should select their BI platform based on their needs and the ability of a vendor to satisfy their customers in key areas of buying and implementing a BI platform.
Microsoft Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management (Microsoft BI & CPM) is Microsoft's BI offering. Microsoft holds the added advantage of having its own operating systems, database engines, and office software. This allows its technology platform to leverage its development environment to offer a broad range of simple to complex business intelligence solutions. Cheaper licensing costs of the Microsoft SQL server and lower administrative costs are other advantages. Microsoft SQL servers systems are scalable and relatively easy to customize. They are capable of handling high volumes of data, which is suitable even for moderately-sized enterprises. Users can build data warehousing and business intelligence systems using only the Microsoft software. Yet Microsoft BI & CPM offers the flexibility of replacing any component of its data warehousing and business intelligence systems framework with third-party products. This helps organizations make cost-effective choices, which include other considerations such as operational cost and the cost of ongoing support and training.
