Wednesday, May 30, 2007

BI vs. Performance Management - Ground Hog Day


The circular debate of business intelligence Vs. performance management is noted by Jonathan Becher in his blog. He has incorporated a handy reference chart on the differences in case anyone is still not clear. Of note is that he did not incorporate the industry standard wheel diagram used by most vendors and analysts. He also makes an interesting and important distinction that performance management includes the requirement to "motivate" in front of monitoring, management and measurement. This is important and often does not get the attention it deserves. Performance is tied to motivation - as in take home pay. Not on a better looking dashboard or more financial analytics wrapped in BI.

1 comment:

Darren said...

Frankly, I think that this is all vendor and analyst mental masturbation. I don't think customers who are meant to be using these tools, platforms, technologies (sorry Guy and Pat, I know the wheel is all about people and processes!) really care about the industry terms. The real issue is that that so much of BI / PM bloatware ends up being simply shelfware that even when successfully implemented and used by a handful of people can't be easily customized, let alone migrated from one version to the next. This is why the SaaS model, multitenancy, search, and other innovative approaches to BI/PM (not to mention what most individuals primarily use - Excel)represents such an opportunity for this market. The traditional vendors and analysts can keep the terminology debate raging, but there's a more important shift happening here that ultimately will be a much more important transformation. Okay, I admit to being slightly biased to all things on demand. Stay tuned...