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Financial World - Lifting the lid on the future
John N Porritt from Aureus
As well as measuring financial performance, CPM can be used to measure the performance of other business functions, such as customer relationship management and HR. Since implementing Business Objects' software to measure its performance in mortgage and investment processing, West Bromwich Building Society has extended its use of Dashboard Manager to assess its performance in dealing with customers.
It also plans to apply Dashboard Manager to its budgeting process and the HR department. "So it will not just be financial performance that we measure, but the entire performance of the business," explains systems development manager David Eggleston. According to CPM software provider Atlantic Global, more than 20 per cent of a manager's time in a typical company is spent developing and populating spreadsheets to manage staff performance. It recently worked with insurer Norwich Union to help improve its planning and resource infrastructure following a merger. Since implementing Atlantic Global's Corporate Vision tool, Norwich Union has seen a reduction in its planning cycle from three months to one month.
Companies often begin CPM projects by measuring the performance of financial data, for example, whether loan sales are hitting target, because it can provide quick and effective insight into company performance. But to extend savings further, organizations need to look at all their business processes to find out where their costs lie and how the company is performing as a whole.