Business Performance Management & OSSM - Part # 1

Recently I was having a discussion with one of my colleague on the Oracle BI & EPM Technology Stack and apparently found that if anyone has not followed the Oracle BI & EPM journey with the acquisitions of Oracle for last 2-3 years, it might be confusing to them on the components and some of the tools might replicate the same functionality in multiple toolsets.

Though my intention is not to clarify the entire Oracle BI & EPM stack but am trying to break a tip of iceberg conceptually as well as technology stack perspective - Oracle Scorecard & Strategy Management (OSSM) - an Enterprise Performance Management tool.

Before getting into the OSSM as such, it is important that we need to understand the basics of the theory associated with this tool.

What is Enterprise Performance Management?

Enterprise Performance Management is a broader term covering the business methodologies, metrics, processes (such as Planning, Budgeting, Consolidation etc.,) and systems used to drive the overall performance of an enterprise.

To be in simple terms, for an enterprise to be successful, there are 3 main activities,

1. Identify the Right Goals & Objectives to achieve
2. Consolidation of relevant information to organization's progress against these goals
3. Improve Performance and initiate appropriate process improvements for achieving these goals

Synonyms of Enterprise Performance Management includes Business Performance Management & Corporate Performance Management.

EPM enables an enterprise to model and change its business processes to meet the specific needs of the business quickly and more cost-effectively by linking the respective strategies into execution.

EPM has been strongly influenced by the Balanced Scorecard Framework.

Balanced Scorecard Framework

In early 1990s, Dr. Robert S. Kaplan & David Norton developed a management approach called "Balanced Scorecard Framework" that defines a set of measures linked to the vision and strategy against the following four Perspectives,

• Financial
• Customers
• Internal Business Processes
• Learning & Growth

Balanced Scorecard Framework - Transalation Vision & Strategy - Four Perspectives

In the above diagram, the Customer perspective is also being referred as "Stakeholder" within the framework.

 

An Enterprise Strategy is summarized in a Strategy Map, which is a visual representation of what the execution team determines to drive their strategy which is usually a series of objectives that shall lead to accomplish the goals of the above 4 perspectives that are defined within the Strategy.

Scorecard Components

The above scorecard components are tightly linked together.  Strategic goals link down to objectives, objectives link down to measurements, and measurements link to targets. 

 

In the next section(s) of the blog shall cover the following aspects,

• Sample of Strategy Map
• Constructing a Strategy Map
• Role of OSSM within Oracle BI - EPM Stack
• OSSM Concepts with a sample

Till then.. please wait.. I appreciate your patience though I shall try my level best not to take another 1 month for me to complete those sections J