Strategic Business Management

17

A CALL TO ACTION-BUILDING A BUSINESS CASE

In this book you have probably detected a common theme—start integrating now, and don’t postpone it. Most enterprise performance management (EPM) advocates are growing tired of nagging organisations to adopt EPM and are now wagging our finger at them to get them going. Why are we so passionate about this topic? One explanation is because advocates have observed organisations that have integrated EPM components enjoy tangible and sizeable benefits. On the flip side, we have witnessed organisations who continue to defer integrating suffer adverse consequences.

THE OBSESSION WITH ROI JUSTIFICATIONS

Of course, many of you are insisting, ‘Name names who have failed. Tell me the return on investment (ROI) on EPM.’ To introduce my answers, let’s start with pondering the question ‘How many of the original Standard and Poors (S&P) 500 list originally created in 1957 are on that list today?’ The answer is 74, which is just 15%. Of those 74, only 12 have outperformed the S&P index average.¹ My belief is when it comes to considering whether to implement and integrate the various component methodologies that constitute the EPM framework, there actually are two choices. Do it or don’t do it. Many organisations neglect the fact that the choice to not act, which means to continue with the status quo and perpetuate making decisions the way they currently are, is also a decision.

What about this need to prove that it is worth it to act by calculating ...