Connected Planning, 2nd Edition

APPENDIX: AN EPM MATURITY MODEL

Maturity models are useful tools to help you understand what your capabilities are now and where you want them to be in the future. They are not “the truth” about how things should be; they are useful models to help engage your stakeholders in a debate about your aspirations and a roadmap for improving your competence in a given area.

There are several good maturity models related to EPM and business intelligence (BI); for example, those from Gartner, The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI), and others. Typically they go from an ad hoc or lagging level of maturity to world class. It's useful to peg your organization's current state and to discuss your aspirations. Not all companies want to be world class since there's a cost associated with that.

The EPM Done Right maturity model is based on the management operating system described in this book. At a very high level you could say that the journey to EPM maturity starts with the four corners (Planning, Reporting, Analytics, and Modeling). Once those are relatively mature, the next stage in the journey is the middle: bringing together the four corners and sharing common data, metadata, master data, rules, and so on. And the last leg of the journey would be the arrows, or connections, among each of the cornerstones. This is when EPM becomes an overall management tool and continuous learning process in the organization. Of course, your journey won't be that sequential nor will it be neat and tidy—there ...