"Compliance and Industry-Specific Process Requirements: Challenges and Opportunities for CPM Solutions"

IDC Analyst: Fabio Rizzotto

Abstract

Enterprises are creating opportunities for new approaches to the deployment of business or corporate performance management (BPM/CPM) solutions that can unify finance processes and technologies.

New instruments will be increasingly shaped by industry-specific dynamics driven by the need for greater compliance and process requirements. These drivers are exerting pressure on enterprises, although the intensity varies in relation to sector- specific factors and the impact of regulations on IT systems and finance and control processes, in other words the responsibilities of the CIO and CFO.

For more "vertically packaged" BPM/CPM solutions, it may well be possible to reduce the impact of customization on IT budgets. All CIOs are under pressure to reduce the cost of operating, maintaining, and developing the technological solutions their organizations use.

By demanding a more vertical approach than in the past, the market has set a new challenge for vendors, which must now integrate a vertical dimension in the horizontal principles that guide the development of BPM/CPM solutions. A cross-industry approach that ensures data consistency and quality and the efficiency of finance processes can now be flanked by a new paradigm that brings BPM/CPM solutions closer to vertical businesses' requirements.

Vendors must therefore meld the horizontal and vertical models in their strategies, handling industry-specific needs without abandoning the horizontal unification of the processes and technologies that underpin CPM. The business-enabling potential of BPM/CPM solutions is best served by simultaneously leveraging best practices, industry expertise, and appropriate methodologies.

Tagetik incorporates these vertical and horizontal aspects into its own solution, Tagetik CPM. The unification of cross-industry finance processes in a single operating environment offers the opportunity, albeit one that is not without risk, to respond to target markets with a more vertical approach.