Managing your financial challenges with Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)

Remember when you were a kid and you were scared of ghosts and monsters or the boogeyman hiding in the closet?  It’s funny … As we grow up, most of us lose our childhood fears, but all of us will certainly acquire new ones.  Our mature fears tend to fall well within the bounds of realism and deviate from the realm of the impossible (although some grown men and women might still be afraid of Casper for all we know).

What scares us most often is that which CAN happen, that which IS possible – for instance, the loss of a loved one, loneliness, disappointment, inadequateness or the more tangible phobias such as heights or small spaces or having to live with the huge tarantula that shows up every few days for but an instant, only to disappear just as quickly, thus causing you to watch your every step.

As much as the above fears are apparent, there is one that is consistent with most of us, if not all of us – the fear of losing or not having money!  According to British scientists, losing money or experiencing an economic loss (i.e. financial pain) has the same neurological roots to physical pain.

From a business or corporate or enterprise perspective, this “pain” is aggregated through the encompassment of fears of its employees.  As an employer, how do you curb these fears?  Well, the answer is fairly simple – you give them the assurance of a safe and secure future at your enterprise just as a parent would assure their child a pleasant night’s sleep by tucking them in or leaving the light on until they’ve fallen asleep.

In order to be in a position to offer these assurances however, your enterprise needs to make a profit.  This is the bottom line to every business.  The biggest profits are realized when every process, every individual, every team, and every department are working together toward that uniform goal.  Managing this synergy can be a cumbersome task for any employer … but not anymore!  Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) systems are here to help keep those business demons hidden in the closet for good!

EPM systems are a specific tier of the Business Intelligence (BI) toolset.  Managers can now assess the performance of every component of their enterprise by understanding and analyzing where they’ve come from and where they currently stand (i.e. using the historical and current data of the business).  Once this is done, a link can be formed between these operational activities and a business strategy that increases future profits.  This is the goal of Performance Management – it gives you insight into the future so that you can cure your employees’ and consequently your enterprise’s fears of the present.  Go ahead and turn your business’ lights on by investing in an EPM tool – knowing is always better than not knowing!

“I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today” – William Allen White

For more information on Oracle Hyperion Enterprise Performance Management products, see http://www.intellient.co.za/live/content.php?Item_ID=1142