Oracle has launched the first Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Index, in which businesses in Europe and North America are assessed on their ability to unite management processes and information systems to form a consolidated view of the business.
On a scale of 0 to 10, these organizations attained an overall score of 5.13
The results of the study indicate a generally modest level of achievement, with much work remaining to be done in developing an accurate and up-to-the-minute enterprise-wide picture of current performance.
The Oracle EPM Index is prominently featured on EMP TV a new, innovative, internet TV portal dedicated to Enterprise Performance Management and powered by Oracle.
The research for the EPM Index was conducted by Quocirca, an analyst group, and asked 800 business decision makers in Europe and North America to rank their organizations on the processes and accuracy of information governing six distinct areas: the stakeholder environment, market model, business model, business plan, business operations and business results.
While organizations are moderately well-placed for each area (with the exception of stakeholder engagement) fewer than a quarter (22 per cent) feel that an integrated approach to the processes is necessary and more than a quarter (27 per cent) think that each process can be regarded in isolation.
Of the six areas researched, the stakeholder environment scores were the lowest. This indicates that the involvement of stakeholders in the performance of the organization is not being optimized. A high number of “don’t know” responses in this section indicates that many organizations were not even considering the needs of the stakeholders in their planning processes or value chains.
There is a high inverse correlation between a country’s Index score and its regulatory environment: on the whole, the higher the Index, the lighter the regulatory touch.
The public sector and healthcare sectors, as the most highly regulated verticals, have the lowest overall EPM Index scores.
This inverse correlation demonstrates that businesses in countries and industries with demanding requirements for governance, transparency and accuracy of information are more aware of the challenges in linking disparate systems and processes to provide an accurate picture of performance.
Most organizations are slow to respond to changes in market and business environments with just 13 per cent of respondents believing themselves to be well placed in this regard. The UK is markedly the most responsive in using processes to deal with critical events.
Use of Business Intelligence (BI) has a significant bearing on EPM achievement. Respondents who see BI as being an "important" or "major" tool for their organization have index scores of 5.3, whereas those who see it as being an expensive means of visualising data scored 5, and those who see it as a tool for historical reporting only scored 4.9.
A pervasive common data model is rare in business. While over half of respondents have a model or repository for some sets of data, only 1 per cent of organizations had a common data model across all sets.
Alain Blanc, senior vice president, Oracle EMEA EPM/BI, Western Europe Applications, said: “The Oracle EPM Index Research shows that organizations in Europe and North America have, as yet, achieved modestly in their quest for Management Excellence, by which we mean going beyond the attainment of operational excellence and making an organization smarter, more agile and better aligned. We hope that we will see greater achievement as we repeat this research in the future.”
