Perform

Information in Action

Volume 7 / Issue 2 / 10

The Future of the Scorecard

Performance Management: Past, Present and Future

Letters from the Publisher and Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Future of the Scorecard By Jeff Perkins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Emergency Response. . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 By John Katsoulis and Seema Haji PSEG Leverages Actuate to Reduce Costs and Increase Productivity 25 Public Service Enterprise Group Top-Notch Performance . . . . . . . Promaco Consulting Expanded Opportunity . . . . . . . . Prudential plc A Clearer View. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IBM Rational ClearQuest

Building Sustainable Performance Management Frameworks . . . . 41 By Kaye Kendrick Bridging the Finance-Operational Gap. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 By David F. Giannetto Actuate Excellence Awards. . . Coachs Corner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By Catie Sirie Reading Room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 52 54

In this issue >

The Smart Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Xenos How to Spot a Bad Strategy . By Mark Graham Brown

10 15

28 31 34

The Road to World-Class Commissioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 NHS South of Tyne and Wear

From the Publisher

At Actuate, 2010 started off with some exciting news. TechWebs Intelligent Enterprise Editors Choice Awards were announced, and Actuate was named a 2010 Company to Watch in the Business Intelligence (BI) category, for creating and leading the Eclipse BIRT project and supporting the developer community. The awards look at companies that innovate, even in the tough times weve seen in the past year. Our innovation and ability to continually evolve are things that Actuate take special pride in, and were pleased that the editors at Intelligent Enterprise would recognize that too. While were on the subject of innovation and evolution, weve been doing exactly that recently at Actuate evolving. In fact, with just the first quarter of 2010 behind us, were already a different company than we were in 2009. And the biggest change has certainly been adding a new member to the Actuate family: Xenos, the leader in Online Presentment and Document Storage Reduction. But thats not the only thing weve accomplished so far this year we also did amazing work launching BIRT Performance Scorecard 9, BIRT Mobile for the iPhone and Xenos Accessibility. Now were getting underway with this years Actuate Excellence Awards, which is an exciting opportunity for us to reward the amazing innovations of our own clients. You can read more about those on page 50. And as usual, theres a lot of great information in this issue of Perform. I hope you enjoy it and can apply it to your own lives. Best,

Rich Guth
Rich Guth Vice President & General Manager Open Source Strategy Group

From the Editor

I recently came across an inspiring article about a gentleman in Malawi who was intent on providing electricity to his country one windmill at a time. Hes built three so far, put together with anything he could get his hands on, and hes become a local hero because just one of them generates enough power for a television, the lights in his family home and more incredibly his local villagers can use it to power their cell phones. The storys theme played out in my mind over and over again, reminding me that simple ideas can have a tremendous impact. Each year Actuate recognizes great ideas in our own environment. And although we are not focused on the same goals as that man in Malawi, we also think we have our own group of heroes our customers, who come up with great ideas every day. For 2010 we honor these ideas through our Excellence Awards, with three areas of excellence, outlined on page 50 of this issue of Perform. While the first two categories may seem familiar to you BIRT Implementation Excellence and Scorecard Excellence the third honors the newest member of the Actuate family, Xenos. Xenos is the leader in Online Presentment and Document Storage Reduction and were excited to have them join us. You can read more about Xenos in The Smart Statement on page 10, the first of a three-part series. I hope you enjoy everything weve put together in this issue of Perform, from Jeff Perkins The Future of the Scorecard (page 3) which explores how Performance Management has evolved in his 14 years in the business to Mark Graham Browns How to Spot a Bad Strategy (page 15) and David Giannettos Bridging the Finance-Operations Gap (page 44). Actually, were pretty excited about all of the contributions to this issue of Perform we hope you are too. Best Regards,

The Future of the SCORECARD

By Jeff Perkins Vice President and General Manager Actuate Performance Management Solutions

John Katsoulis
John Katsoulis Perform Editor

eve all worked at that organization.

healthy or not. And then theres you, searching high and low for a piece of information that will better inform how you do your job. But it doesnt exist, at least not definitively. There is no single version of the truth.

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You know the one: the place where you have to go searching everywhere for information, for every single piece of data. But you look in 10 different places and you get 10 different answers. There is no single system of record for key, vital statistics the vital indicators that tell you whether your organization is

When I started in the Performance Measurement and Management business 14 years ago, that organization was most every organization. And that was why we were doing what we were doing, because we were looking to improve on the status quo. We wanted to help people measure to track things like actual versus budget, actual versus benchmark, etc.

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Theres been a vital and dramatic shift in the past years; a shift from a performance measurement culture to a Performance Management culture.

About the Author With a solid background in systems engineering, product management, sales, and sales management, Jeff Perkins oversees the worldwide Performance Management Solutions team at Actuate. After spending eight successful years as Performancesofts Chief Technology Officer, Jeff a 14-year Performance Management Software veteran now works closely with Actuates engineering and product management groups to ensure that all Actuate Integrated Performance Management solutions remain the most innovative and user-friendly on the market.

data more effectively to manage your organization. Companies are also moving away from the traditional report card approach, realizing that when employees feel like they are being judged or graded constantly held up to the scrutiny of their peers they dont always feel secure or happy in their jobs. No wonder many of them werent on board with the early performance measurement initiatives! Today, though, were seeing organizations calling people from far-flung regions of their company because theyve been performing well on a particular metric. Theyre calling them in to help mentor and coach coworkers who are struggling on the same metric, and theyre doing it in a collaborative environment with great respect. Its a more scorecard-oriented approach, where the idea isnt to cast blame but to look instead at why certain metrics are performing below target, something that often has very explainable extenuating circumstances. If you look at the Actuate BIRT Performance Scorecard today, for example, theres room for commentary and annotations, allowing metric owners to capture their knowledge, so that they can explain whats going on behind the numbers. Its a different approach, and it makes each employee along the chain a part of the process, not simply the fall guy if something goes wrong. In other words, its no longer a shame-and-blame system, but instead one of constant collaboration and improvement.

and to allow them to use those statistics and ratios during the course of their jobs, to hopefully do those jobs better. Performance measurement still allows for that today. But its amazing how much something can change in a decade and a half. Back then, performance measurement was still new and finding its footing. To succeed, we saw that visionaries within the organization often someone senior needed to champion the cause; to push it through, sometimes amidst opposition from those who didnt understand it or simply didnt like the idea of being measured. And that often meant that even the best performance measurement program, while started with the greatest intentions, often had some inherent problems: a top-down approach that left those lower on the totem pole feeling alienated by a new system; or a report cardstyle view of measurement that again left many employees feeling nervous and blamed. It was no wonder that some programs failed. Theres been a vital and dramatic shift in the past years, though; a shift from a performance measurement culture to a Performance Management culture. And the chief aim of a Performance Management culture is no longer just about having all of that relevant data in one place although thats important too its also about being able to use that data in a meaningful way, to build your business. To see clearly those areas that need to be worked on and to benefit as much as possible from those things that, as an organization, you do well and from the people who own those thriving metrics and are helping them excel. Its a more collaborative culture, one thats less quick to blame. And its a culture that Actuate fits into nicely, because our approach to measurement and management has always been one where everyone works together towards the same goals.

tall and small, public or private and for all levels of those organizations. Its an attitude that we think meshes nicely with this new evolution of Performance Management culture, but its one that differs from some of our competitors, who vary across the board but dont quite have that same attitude. Some think Performance Management belongs strictly in the financial domain, to be practiced exclusively by the folks that are financially oriented; others see it only as being for the upper-echelon senior management. On that, we disagree. No matter where I stand on the companys totem pole, after all, I may be accountable for a business result or metric. And if I am, its important for me to be able to drill down into the underlying operational detail of that metric, so that I can understand whats really going on behind the scenes. Someone above me isnt going to necessarily need to go into as much detail as I am, so theyll drill down to a much less detailed level; theyre focused on the big picture and dont have the time or need to go down to the most minute level of detail. But in my role on the front lines, I need that information to do my job well. Its why we dont think a company is making full use of a Performance Management system of its potential and possibilities if theyre leaving it as the exclusive domain of upper-tier executives. Thats one competitive differentiator of Actuate, and it translates into what we offer. Our BIRT Performance Scorecard offers different capabilities for different types of users at different levels of an organization. Other differentiators include:

Performance Management vs. Measurement

Weve come a long way, dude. In its infancy days, performance measurement was just that: a way of measuring performance at all levels of an organization and of keeping an eye on what was happening in the company trenches, so to speak. Which is fine, but many Id say most of the metrics being measured then were financial (since the management systems themselves were all based on financial metrics) so most of the time companies only really had a small glimpse at what was happening. And they couldnt react very quickly to any changes, either not when they only looked at those metrics every six months or maybe once a quarter. A very frequent measure then may have been monthly; today, its likely to be daily or even hourly. Thats not the only change weve seen either. Instead of just tracking the data, organizations are now using it, and theyre using it on a daily basis, to manage and move themselves forward. Its no longer just executives taking the drivers seat either; that top-down approach, which never worked well, is gone and in most places weve seen it replaced with an organization-wide approach instead. Metrics outside of finance have been embraced, so there are more subjective measures being adopted including qualitative measures, as well as leading or predictive measures to balance the financiallyskewed outcome measures, which are still important but only show part of the picture. In other words, its an entire shift in culture, from measurement to management. If youre looking at data thats been recorded daily or hourly as opposed to that which might be six months old already youre able to react to it more quickly, to nimbly navigate through any problems that might exist and to use that

Actuates Approach
Actuates approach to Performance Management is this: we think its for everyone, plain and simple. Its for all organizations

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Vol 7. Issue 2 . 2010

[ Figure 1.1: Briefing Books display information from multiple scorecards and allow users to drill down to understand performance trends via color-coded interactive display and user commentary. ]

Time to value. Companies want to know how long it will take before they start getting value from a system. And the Actuate team, over its years in the business, has realized that the only way to be successful is to be able to deliver value quickly. One of our leading sales propositions is our time to value, measured in a small number of weeks rather than in months or years. The simplicity of replicating metrics. Its incredibly simple in the BIRT Scorecard to replicate a metric across multiple organizational units. This is accomplished with minimal effort in BIRT Scorecard because of the dimensionality of the product, which helps in being able to find best practices and to identify areas that are under-performing quite quickly, even on the same metric.

learning mode, trying to figure out how to get the features that a purpose-built application already has; and chances are, as talented as they may be in their own area of focus, they will never be able to build something with the same level of functionality, since their core strengths arent in Performance Management. In the meantime, strategic resources like IT personnel, technical resources and management are distracted and arent focusing on core duties that are key to the companys bottom line. Time is lost as they try to create and later maintain a Performance Management system; theyll never be able to give 100 percent to their own business. A purpose-built product like BIRT Scorecard embodies years of Actuate and customer experience in Performance Management automation; something a homegrown system cannot hope to achieve.

Performance Management: The Top Three Persistent Pain Points

What havent changed all that much, even as the culture of Performance Management and Measurement has progressed significantly, are the pain points our customers come to us with. Actuate sees them day in and day out, and they can stall a Performance Management initiative or stop it from meeting its potential. These are the top three pain points we encounter: 1. You dont have the proper tools. There will always be some companies who try the low-cost approach to measurement. They know Performance Management can be important to their organization, but they figure they can do a good enough job of it by measuring their company performance using personal productivity tools like those in the Microsoft Office suite: Excel, PowerPoint, Access, etc. Those are all perfectly good tools, dont get me wrong, but theyre not designed for Performance Management. A companys Performance Management program can quickly become unmanageable and unmaintainable without a purpose-built package, one thats meant for sharing and has reliability and multi-use capabilities built in. Theres a reason why do-it-yourself initiatives ultimately collapse under their own weight. 2. You cant find the right data. Data, data, data it all comes down to data, and whether you have the right data or not. With the proliferation of multiple enterprise systems, and the proclivity of businesses to merge and acquire, we find that any particular organization and this goes for government as well as the private sector has multiple source systems and multiple data formats. And in order to measure and manage properly, companies need to be able to reliably capture that data and to bring it into a system that is data-source agnostic. Weve found that the ability for a system to sit on top of and to be independent of the data sourcing really future-proofs it from any changes that might happen due to mergers and acquisitions, or from changes to corporate or organizational strategy. 3. You cant get support. The culture around a Performance Management initiative can make it or break it. So take a look at your organization: Is your initiative being used as the stick or the carrot? Is it engaging users at all levels? If you push a Performance Management initiative down from the top tell employees this is what you have to measure it rarely ever succeeds. Instead, collaborative design is the most effective way of getting support; you go out and work with the people who are accountable, who own the metrics, and ask them what they need in order to measure and manage their part of the business. If they truly have ownership and can see how their metric aligns with what the organization is trying to accomplish, then its easier to get that buy-in that is so crucial to success. And the benefits of doing that right are fantastic; it lends to better decision making all round and makes organizations more able to react to changing market conditions.

These are the key differentiators that Actuate brings to the table, and that our customers tell us have been deal breakers in their decision to choose BIRT Scorecard for their Performance Management initiative. On the flip side, some organizations that are technically inclined sometimes decide that they can build their own Performance Management application. Since theyre not in the business of Performance Management themselves, theyre always left in

The Future of the Scorecard

If theres one thing that you can always count on, its change. And if Ive seen Performance Management culture change so dramatically in the last 14 years, I know Im going to see just as much change or even more in the next 14. Predicting exactly where that change is going to happen isnt an exact science, but there are a few things that were already seeing that I think will be crucial in how Performance Management plays out in the years to come:

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Re-engineer your
It wont be long before Performance Management pervasively invades all portions of organizations operations. So it wont be an afterthought anymore: when a company invests in a large administrative system like an ERP system, the metrics portion will be built right in. Thats good news, since it means sourcing data wont be nearly the same problem it has been in the past. There will be mass changes to the visualization of performance information. Its an area where Actuate is strong, and it will become more and more important as society becomes even more computer oriented and gets used to strong, simple and intuitive interfaces. Well see applications we use in our work life mimic those we use at home, influenced by things like social networking and self-serve banking applications, which need zero training and are easy to use. Some of thats already evident in the current BIRT Scorecard, but youll find all applications adopting that kind of design standard going forward. Its the second wave of web-based Rich Information Applications. Finally, mobility will play a greater role in the Performance Management world. People are increasingly mobile offices and desks are becoming a thing of the past so the ability to get performance information regardless of where you are, no matter your mobile device, is becoming increasingly important. Actuates stated objective and goal as we move forward is to maintain state-of-the-art leadership, driven by the blending of a very strong metrics calculation engine that does all of the heavy lifting work, with a strong and easy-to-use visual interface. Well build on that in the future through increased mobilization and collaboration, and through self-serve performance information portals. I cant give anything away as to what were working on now, but look for things to be faster and better in the future, for a system that is able to take on even larger Performance Management applications. There will be a continued focus on being able to link from the strategic or summarized level right down to the operating level. But on the other hand, expect us to take things in a few directions introduce some exciting new elements that youve never even dreamt of. Surprises are definitely in the works. Because our job at Actuate isnt just to react to changes in the Performance Management culture. We create those changes too.

Balanced Scorecard
How Effective is your Strategy?
An effective Balanced Scorecard initiative begins with a welldened strategy - but strategy alone will not deliver all of the benets associated with a properly executed scorecard program. For breakthrough results, organizations must effectively and consistently communicate and explain strategy enterprise-wide. By doing so, you empower employees to do better every day through: enhanced accountability, increased alignment and seamless access to quantitative and qualitative performance information that ultimately delivers evidence-based decision support to all users.

Align your day-to-day activities with your organizational strategy. intuitive color-coding will highlight issues that require attention.

With BIRT Performance Scorecard, your company can seamlessly make the switch from collecting data to communicating strategic information simply by leveraging the data that already exists in your exisiting systems. This provides a sharpened focus for improved executive decisionmaking that ultimately creates winning organizations and with BIRT Performance Scorecards advanced capabilities, you can cascade strategy to deliver personalized, dynamic scorecard reporting to any department, team or individual, while at the same time consolidating all relevant strategic information to gain a more holistic view of organizational performance. Our customers enjoy clear results: communication of strategy throughout the organization, alignment of actions to strategy, and effective strategy implementation. Start with the solution chosen by some of the nations leading organizations including: Bombardier, FAA, US Navy, Inter American Development Bank among many others.

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The Brieng Book explains performance in an easy to understand format. The Executive Dashboard displays relevant measurement information.

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[ Figure 1.2: Strategy maps allow you to create graphical representations specific to your Performance Management initiative. ]

For additional information on how we can help with your Performance Management initiative, please contact us at: 1-800-449-3804, e-mail us at info@actuate.com or visit: www.actuate.com

SMART STATEMENT
Say Good-bye to Paper Statements, Say Hello to Online Presentment
Every year, companies are sending out more and more statements, claims, invoices and bills. Traditionally those statements not anymore. have been nothing but a cost sink. But
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The

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Part One in a Three-Part Series on Xenos, an Actuate Company

Xenos

organization has 100,000 or 10 million customers, they typically send out the same statement to their entire client base, not making any distinction based on demographics or personal customer preferences. At the same time, those same companies may be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on online or mail campaigns to target specific customer groups, trying to retain their customer base by building brand recognition, or upselling or cross-selling to their existing clients. Many customers may not even glance at those campaigns, but those same customers will look at their statements for an average of one to three minutes each month, and often more than once. Add to that an open rate of 95 percent or more and those statements This is the first of a three-part series of articles on Xenos, an Actuate represent the perfect medium for those up-sells and cross-sells company. In this issue, Perform examines Xenos ePresentment, an an opportunity that, more often than not, is overlooked by the online statement presentment offering. Part 2 will focus on Xenos companies sending them. solutions for document storage reduction, while Part 3 examines how Xenos fits into the Actuate world. But thats not the only element of the statement thats ripe for change. First of all, the mail is no longer necessarily the Introduction preferred way of sending or receiving statements. Whether its Every year, companies can produce and send out millions of in an effort to be green, to reduce mailing costs, or to simplify statements, claims, invoices and bills. But could organizations the integration with their own personal electronic bookkeeping be doing more with those statements? Could they be getting requirements, more and more people are requesting to receive better use out of them? And at the same time, could they be their statements online. To stay competitive, companies need to using fewer resources to produce them, while making them offer that option. more customer-focused? Not all online statements are created equal, though. The In other words, are companies wasting a prime opportunity? most common and basic way to create one is to simply take After all, statement generation typically done monthly a traditional printed statement and to transform it into a PDF is the most frequent contact most companies have with document without any changes. But statements that have their customers. But in most cases, organizations ignore the been designed for print dont always translate well into the importance of the experience their customers have with that online world; a PDF that mirrors a printed statement does little information, and how it relates back to the branding and to address the uniqueness of a companys customer database, messaging they wish to convey. The result is that marketing it does little to address customers self-service needs, and it departments are not taking full advantage of those documents. doesnt do much to support companies marketing efforts. has been a major player in the Enterprise Information Management Space for over 25 years, during which time a unique mix of technology and experience has positioned the company as an industry leader. Xenos products and solutions can be found deep within the information architectures of many of the worlds largest companies. With a global customer base of over 375 Tier 1 organizations, Xenos solutions are used to improve business processes, reduce operational costs, enhance customer experience and promote the benefits of Green IT. In February 2010, Xenos became an Actuate company. By dramatically changing the content reflecting specific customer segments while getting their branding across they could be benefiting from the marketing potential of documents that they have to generate and send out anyway.
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Traditionally, statements have been sent through the mail, and its been a one-size-fits-all approach.

these documents have taken any action to reduce the storage footprint.

The Evolution of Online Presentment

Besides the challenge of storage, traditional PDF documents that simply reflect a print statement also come up short in another area: performance. Customers in todays computersavvy world expect to see their online statements when they want them and how they want them. They want those online documents to meet their needs and to be accessible however they choose to look at them. Xenos ePresentment allows for this, breaking up and saving PDF documents into their individual components, to retrieve them as necessary, when necessary; this not only saves storage space but allows for branding and marketing information to be personalized based on customer profiles and to be constantly updated as needed and integrated automatically when clients call up their statements online. With this model, changing customer needs can also be taken into consideration. The growth of social networking and mobile technology usage, for example, means that output must be adapted for much smaller-format devices, including netbooks and smartphones. PDF delivery, then, is no longer simply a customer-centric issue it has evolved to become devicecentric as well.

Traditional PDFs also can increase storage capacity requirements and as a result increase capital and operational costs. A graphically rich document like a PDF file can easily reach 5 MB in size (as opposed to a more traditional textbased document, which ranges between 150 and 500 KB). Thats where Xenos ePresentment comes in. The fully-burdened cost is between $20 and $30 per GB per The Traditional Approach month to sustain digital storage. Multiply that cost over several Traditionally, statements have been sent through the mail, and years and the challenge becomes clear. At the same time, few its been a one-size-fits-all approach. No matter whether an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems used to store

With the aging of the baby boomers, accessibility is also more important than ever. There has been a movement towards creating documents in an accessible PDF format for the visually impaired and aging population. These PDFs are created with tags to allow for the reading aloud of text, graphics and images. But soon, accessibility wont just be a nice to have feature. Rather, as baby boomers the largest segment of the population age, the need for everything from large print to easily accessible documents is rapidly moving to become a regulatory requirement. With this in mind, Xenos has recently announced a new addition to its ePresentment Enterprise Server platform that will generate accessible PDFs for ePresentment. This will go a long way in helping the visually impaired take advantage of client information and at the same time insure that Xenos customers do not fall in breach of regulatory or legal changes on the horizon. Thats not all thats possible, either. Every day, new and more advanced adaptations of online presentment continue to emerge. Xenos ePresentment stays on the forefront, offering capabilities that include: Repurposing content. Some organizations offer content extracts of previously static information in structured data formats such as XML or CSV. These structured data extracts

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are being directly imported into back-office applications in a straight-through processing manner, or manipulated by individual recipients within personal spreadsheets. Content repurposing offers a massive reduction in downstream manual processing, resulting in real cost savings for end consumers. Dynamic content consolidation. With dynamic content consolidation, multiple related pieces of information are merged or linked together to provide an expanded and/or supportive view of a single transaction or holistic customer position. An example would be a personal bank statement, where all relevant check images are appended to the end of the statement or hyperlinked within it and then made available online. This translates into significant saved time for end users who would otherwise have to search for supporting materials. In addition, customers can get a consolidated view of all of their transactions across multiple lines of business, or over expanded periods of time; this can enhance their service experience and make it feel more personal to them. Post processing composition. In post processing composition, previously produced and archived documents are manipulated in real time based on changing customer preferences and advanced analytics. In an online world, customer profiles are constantly updated and what was true at the time of document production may no longer hold true at the time of presentation. Since documents are re-composed, assembled and presented online in real time, each reflects the latest possible customer information and can take advantage of up-to-the-minute analytical trending reports extracted from corporate data warehouses. Online documents also reflect the most current marketing messages and offers that are personally relevant to the consumer to support cross-selling and up-selling. Document decomposition. Some organizations are taking advantage of print stream or PDF document decomposition to present customers with a truly interactive experience. Documents produced in print stream or PDF formats offer a static presentation of information to the end customer. Advanced integrated document solutions (IDS) break down static documents into individual XML files. A style sheet is created and applied to the extracted XML content, resulting in a very interactive customer web experience.

The Power of Xenos ePresentment

As a server-based approach, Xenos ePresentment offers a number of advantages: It eliminates the gaps in existing information architecture and process flows by streamlining information flows and enabling the repurposing of legacy data documents for new applications; It delivers a superior return on information by making that information available where, when and how it is needed at a lower cost; It enables the enterprise to control business information and flow for both structured and unstructured data, making information available where, when and how it is needed within the enterprise to improve operational efficiency and business processes, reduce risk and costs, and increase productivity; It eliminates redundancy in archive and legacy applications and significantly reduces storage costs associated with document and image archives.

self-service model for customer interaction. Online statements can be more than just a print document presented online, though, and companies are realizing the benefits of presenting relevant and accurate information in a format thats adaptable one thats able to keep up with their branding initiatives while meeting their clients personalized needs. Those companies are beginning to understand that statements dont need to be the cost sink theyve previously been, but rather that they represent an opportunity to interact with customers in a variety of ways. Xenos helps bridge the gap between companies documents and their customers, recognizing the true potential of online statements. With a powerful solution like Xenos ePresentment behind the initiative and the right champions within the company driving it through online presentment can bring any companys statements into the present and through to the future, helping to maintain and build their customer-client relations at the same time.

How to Spot a Bad Strategy

By Mark Graham Brown Mark Graham Brown Consulting all been in those planning meetings where we begin by reviewing our companys strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Typically there is a much longer list of strengths than there are weaknesses, but companies seem to be getting more realistic these days and are willing to acknowledge that they are not good at everything. Once the goals or objectives have been established for the next year or two, the real hard work begins in coming up with strategies for success. There are often multiple strategies for a single goal. For example, a client had a goal of going from $400 million to $600 million in sales in the next three years. Industry data indicated that there was

Weve

plenty of demand for their services, so this was a realistic goal. The company ended up with three key strategies for achieving their growth goal: 1. 2. Increase share of business. Get more work from existing customers. Acquisitions. Investigate and purchase smaller competitors or other companies who are in different markets/ geographies. International. Focus on marketing to and acquiring new international accounts in Asia and South America.
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3.

Conclusion
Driven by demand and a desire to continually improve their customer experience, organizations are moving to an online

Coming up with strategies is hard enough. Even more difficult is coming up with realistic and accurate ways of evaluating whether or not the strategies are the right ones. In this article, we will explore some of the practices that tend to work well

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when evaluating strategies, as well as the most common mistakes organizations make when assessing their strategies. Well start out by examining some of the errors and follow up with a review of the best practices Ive seen.

Mistake #1: Failure to Get External Opinions on Strategy

Deciding on strategy is often more an exercise in politics than logic and reason. The executive team may brainstorm a list of possible strategies for achieving the goals, but its funny how the ones that make the shirt list are almost always the ones suggested by the CEO. Once in a while the CEO does not try to control the decision and its a more democratic process, but in these cases it is usually the person who can argue and present his/her case the best who gets to select the strategies. Regardless of how the decision making is done, though, it is always a wise idea to get the council of some outsiders. Perhaps your board can provide advice on picking the right strategy, but sometimes they are even too close to the situation and there is always the political factor operating with board members and executives as well. Most organizations have a handful of consultants or advisors who know their company well and who they can call on for honest advice about whether or not they have picked the right strategies. I would take the time and spend the money to get at least two or three outside opinions on the strategies you have selected before settling on them. This will be money well spent if the outsiders can point out some risks or flaws in your choices. The danger with this approach is doing it when you have already made up your mind and dont want to hear anything that is contrary to the strategies you have already picked. Therefore, it is important to get this external input when the strategies are still in the idea phase, and probably before some big off-site planning meeting. This can provide you with some of the data you present when discussing alternative strategies.

website. They measured the effectiveness of the communication strategy by counting metrics like butts in chairs at briefing meetings, the number of newsletters distributed and web site hits. When they measured the effectiveness of communication the following year, it actually got worse. I tried using Google ad words as a marketing strategy for my consulting and training business; I paid Google $400 to $600 every month to make sure Mark Graham Brown showed up on the first page if someone did a search on performance metrics or Balanced Scorecard. I got close to 1,000 hits per month, which people told me was excellent. I did this for six months before realizing that not one of those website hits translated into dollars in business, or even a good hard lead. The big mistake all of these organizations (including my own) are making is to judge the success of a strategy by measuring milestones, activities, or behaviors associated with the chosen strategy. You can complete all the activities on time and in the right number and still not achieve the goal.

The chances of any strategy being successful do include factors like luck and timing, but experience is probably the most important variable.
#2 Best Practice for Spotting Bad Strategies: Lack of Knowledge/Experience/Success
Its funny how when companies get big they start to think they are good at business, and that any business that comes along they can make successful. This directly contradicts Jim Collins findings that great companies stick to the knitting. In other words, stick to what you are good at. The further you stray from your roots, or what you currently do, the greater your chances for failure. Weve seen this time after time. Anheuser Busch is great at making and selling beer, so they come up with a growth strategy called Eagle Snacks (pretzels and chips). The strategy capitalizes on their core competences of manufacturing food products, distribution, and marketing to consumers. It would seem to be a pretty easy transition, but it wasnt. Eagle Snacks eventually failed and the remnants were sold to Frito Lay. One of the simplest ways of spotting a bad strategy is to compare the strategy with the organizations track record for success. This is what scares most people about a government-run healthcare system. The government is not very good at running anything, except perhaps the military. The Medicare system is already crippled by paperwork and bureaucracy and a strategy of having the government run the entire healthcare business seems doomed to failure. Strategies should be selected based on the likelihood that the organization can make them work. The chances of any strategy being successful do include factors like luck and timing, but experience is probably the most important variable. This is where outsiders are sometimes valuable because they can ask the hard questions like: What makes you think you can pull this off when you have never done anything like this before? Its hard to ask questions like this when you are inside the organization you might be viewed as not being a team player.

for growth, market share and profit are handed down from on high by the executives, board, or parent organization. We usually dont have much say in these, regardless of how stupid they might be. For example, I remember talking with a wellknown Fortune 100 technology firm right after the internet bubble burst in the mid 1990s and they still had a goal of 50 percent sales growth over the previous year! The best and easiest way of spotting a bad strategy is logic and reason. Its hard for outsiders to understand how some big smart organizations can make such stupid decisions sometimes when coming up with strategies. Apparently some of these strategies are decided on without much in the way of a logical analysis. Some organizations rely on the nice diagrams with circles and arrows called strategy maps to think through their strategies. These diagrams are created in flipcharts with a team of experts and they look very scientific, but most are nothing more than a series of broad assumptions drawn on charts with arrows used to indicate causal relationships. For example, the sequence goes something like this: If our end goal is growth in profits, then we need more loyal customers who give us more business. In order to improve loyalty, we need greater customer satisfaction. To achieve greater customer satisfaction, we need high levels of engagement from our employees. To achieve that we need to do a training workshop to teach every employee how they can contribute to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty, and thus profits. Whew! Sounds good right? So the flaw here is that no one is asking for evidence or even a logic test to evaluate each of the assumptions or theories in this strategy map. How, for example, can a training workshop lead to higher levels of engagement from employees? If people are disengaged because they are overworked and mostly have idiots for bosses, no training workshop is going to change that. If customer satisfaction does improve, how do you know that will lead to more loyalty? If loyalty does improve from some of your worst customers, this could result in a decline in profits. The bottom line is that someone needs to evaluate your strategies with a critical eye and Mr. Spock logic to test all of the assumptions that have been made and ask for data/evidence to support them.

Mistake #3: Measuring Strategy with Only Outcome Metrics

This is probably even more common than tracking activities as a way to tell if youve picked the right strategy. For many organizations, the only way to tell if a strategy worked is to look at lagging outcome metrics like revenue, profits, or market share. Its true that often these things are the ultimate goal or reason for the strategy. However, by the time you find out if the strategy worked, it is too late if this is all you measure. This mistake is much more prevalent in business than in the nonprofit or government sector. They tend to be happy with activity or program metrics. The people who run the Say No to Drugs program are happy to track metrics like eyeballs that view their TV commercials or billboards, school programs conducted and buttons distributed. They dont want to be accountable for the fact that drug use has steadily risen as has spending for the Say No to Drugs campaign. Business people want to see outcomes that are usually measured in real dollars. Ive run across many large corporations that measure the success of their strategies by only looking at outcomes that are water under the bridge. In other words, by the time we realize that the new office in Singapore was a bad strategy we have already lost millions of dollars. The success of any strategy is ultimately judged by the outcomes it produces. However, waiting for those outcomes and only measuring success with outcome data often makes it impossible to spot a bad strategy until it is too late.

Mistake #2: Measuring Strategies with Activity Metrics

A pension organization I worked with had a strategy of balancing their investment portfolio to manage risk better. One of their metrics was the number of meetings with investment advisors. Another was the number of research papers written on different investment options. A second client had a strategy of growing sales through innovative new product designs; this was a fashion-oriented business, so it sounded like a great strategy. However, they measured the strategy by counting activities like time spent with customers, trade shows attended, and milestones completed on design projects. A third client had a strategy for improving communication with employees that focused on a newsletter, briefing meetings, and employee

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#3 Best Practice for Spotting Bad Strategies: Better Strategic Metrics

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#1 Best Practice for Spotting Bad Strategies: Logic!

Its amazing to me how little thought and logic go into many strategies Ive seen in big organizations. Often the overall goals

One of the best and most scientific ways of spotting bad strategies is to come up with a suite of metrics or an index metric that drills down to lower-level indicators of success. Heres a great example: A consumer-products company has

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The most important dimension of any approach to spotting bad strategies is speed. Organizations need to quickly detect a bad strategy in the first month or two, change course, and come up with a new one. Waiting until the end of the year to see if any strategy is a success dooms you.

a growth strategy that depends on establishing a tighter partnership with a few key successful retail customers who stock and sell their product. The success of this customer relationship management strategy is measured with a Customer Engagement Index. The index includes a number of hard and soft measures of the strength of the relationship, including factors such as shelf space, use of the consumerproducts company as consultants, turnover of key customer contact personnel on both sides, customer profit margin, customer satisfaction, brand strength, and relationship with competitors. The consumer-products company is able to measure customer engagement on a monthly basis to evaluate the success of the relationship building strategy. Another client had a growth strategy linked to innovative new products. New products sometimes took three to five years from concept to market, so the company developed an Innovation Index that included the following sub-metrics: Employee perceptions and beliefs regarding risk taking and innovation; Ideas/suggestions passing through first, second, and third screens; Milestones met on innovation projects;

Outputs; Outcomes.

The input and process metrics are the leading indicators that help tell you the strategy is a good one, but the ultimate success of a strategy is determined by the outputs and outcomes, which are lagging indicators.

Summary and Conclusions

Business textbooks are filled with all sorts of strategies that were colossal failures: Daimler-Chrysler, Time Warner/AOL mergers, New Coke, diet pills that give you uncontrollable diarrhea, sprayon hair and lots of companies branching out into new products and markets and cultures where they dont know what they are doing (EuroDisney!). The most important dimension of any approach to spotting bad strategies is speed. Organizations need to quickly detect a bad strategy in the first month or two, change course, and come up with a new one. Waiting until the end of the year to see if any strategy is a success dooms you to failure. Ask for outside opinions on your chosen strategies, test their logic, pick strategies that link to your past successes, and measure the progress of each strategy with a suite of leading and lagging indicators.

The Road to World-Class Commissioning

South of Tyne and Wear isnt modest in its ambitions. Despite challenging demographics and intensive demands on its health services, the regional NHS body excels in the provision of information to practicebased commissioners and aspires to achieve World-Class Commissioning status within the next two years. It is often said that, if you want something done quickly and well, ask a busy person. The same seems to be true in the NHS. If you want to see real step change, go and talk to an overstretched PCT whose resources are under pressure. NHS South of Tyne and Wear provides a single management infrastructure serving some 600,000 people across Gateshead

Early Adoption of PBC Software has put NHS South of Tyne and Wear Streets Ahead of Other PCTs in its Journey Towards Commissioning Excellence

Mark Graham Brown has 30 years of experience helping business and government organizations measure and manage performance. His Patents; current clients include the U.S. Navy, Medtronic, Eagle Systems, Inter Industry firsts; American Development Bank, and Nestle Purina. Mark is the author of a number of books on performance measurement, including his Awards, rankings, recognition; most recent: Performance Management Pocket Guide (2010). He Sales and margins from new products. is currently collaborating on a new book with Steve Player called The key to coming up with a good strategic index metric is to Banishing Business Bullshit How to Save Millions and be a Hero at Work that will be published in 2011. Mark has his own consulting make sure it includes the following types of sub-metrics: practice in Manhattan Beach, California. Inputs; Contact the author at mgb1@mindspring.com or via his website at Processes; markgrahambrown.com.

NHS

and South Tyneside Primary Care Trusts, as well as Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust. The statistics for Sunderland alone are striking. The 2004 Index of Multiple Deprivation ranked Sunderland as the 22nd most deprived district (of 354) in the UK. Sunderland has also been found to be part of the worst 10 areas in England for binge drinking, and one in three adults and one in five children aged 10 to 11 are clinically obese. Meanwhile, an already dominant elderly population is set to double by 2025, with increasing numbers having long-term conditions including serious disabilities. (Almost one in four adults suffer from a long-term condition, compared to one in 10 in England as a whole).

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This is its real value getting practices to look at their budgets and review how they are referring patients to secondary care, so that improvements can be made.

system for delivering budgets, rather than multiple emailed spreadsheets, notes Watson. This means that the 117 GP practices in its region now receive fully-costed budgets at healthcare resource group level for all patients. This allows them to get a clearer picture of where resources are being expended, and where areas of pressure are developing, so that these can be addressed efficiently and effectively.

Traffic-Light Alerts
The sophisticated reporting capabilities provided by BIRT Scorecard are so accessible that they are used across the board from executive directors (for performance information) to the staff on the front line (for management and clinical information, to support decision-making). BIRT Scorecard provides a Briefing Book feature, for example, which allows organizations to create and deploy customized views of performance to accommodate specific users needs. Previously, we had a number of disparate systems tackling various aspects of Performance Management, but there was no continuity, and there were many gaps, Watson says. It was also very resourceintensive trying to update them all. Now, everything is centralized, everyone has it, and its very accessible. The software is very intuitive too, so you dont need IT skills to introduce new elements. If new legislation is introduced concerning additional performance areas that need to be measured, you can build new frameworks very quickly, without having to wait for an external software expert to come in, Watson explains.

Scott Watson, Acting Head of Information Management and Business Intelligence

So it is impressive, faced with these not insubstantial challenges, that NHS South of Tyne and Wear is developing an enviable reputation for its approach to information delivery for PBCs.

deploy BIRT Scorecard to an additional 64 practices in a fraction of the time it would have taken other products. Previously, NHS South of Tyne and Wear had a range of disparate systems in place that made it difficult to collate or assess PBC information across the integrated landscape. With the new system, this situation was transformed in a matter of a few weeks. We are still one of the few PCTs to have a single, centralized

Savings
Since deploying the PBC system two years ago, NHS South of Tyne and Wear estimates that it has saved over 1 million by being able to pinpoint excessive outpatient appointments and frequent flyer patients. The ability to identify and quantify the impact these patients have on local health providers has enabled the PCT to utilize alternative community services,ultimately ensuring resources are used appropriately, but most importantly, providing better more appropriate care to patients, Watson says. Having gained an early advantage and made good headway with initial PBC target monitoring, NHS South of Tyne and Wear is now working at encompassing broader community metrics into the system. It wants to be able to measure activities and resource consumption among district nurses and health visitors, as well as capturing more primary-care data from GP systems (such as attendance and prevalence). Our aim is to link primary and secondary health care information, to provide an holistic view of the health of our population, and the effectiveness of our services, Watson explains. Knowledge, after all, is power. Watsons ambitions are fueled by the ease of use of the BIRT Scorecard suite, which he describes as visually very striking. It displays information very flexibly using a hierarchical structure and traffic lights, so you can see how everything interconnects and identify immediately where issues are arising, he says. You can then drill down into more detail to see whats going on.

From Performance Management to PBC

NHS South of Tyne and Wear was in the process of procuring a system for Performance Management when the Department of Health (DoH) introduced its targets for PBC. It chose the BIRT Performance Scorecard suite of Business Intelligence tools from Actuate, which leads the way in Performance Management. Its solutions capture and analyze management information from a range of sources, presenting this to stakeholders in a very accessible, visual way via the web. When the DoH made its move to the Annual Healthcheck in place of star ratings, NHS South of Tyne and Wear decided that Actuate was ideal for the task, thanks to the depth and clarity of its information reporting. Actuate agreed to lend the Trust management some development time, in order to hone the software so that it would measure specific criteria across the full range of commission categories and related budgets.

About NHS South of Tyne and Wear

NHS South of Tyne and Wear covers Gateshead Primary Care Trust (PCT), South Tyneside Primary Care Trust (PCT) and Sunderland Teaching Primary Care Trust (TPCT) and is the name given to the integrated management arrangements which exist across the three PCTs. This means that, whilst each PCT remains a statutory organization in its own right, the day-to-day management of the PCTs has been brought together under a single management team. NHS South of Tyne and Wear covers the same area as Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland Local Authorities and is responsible for spearheading improvements to the health of local people. To do this they must understand the health needs of their local communities and use their resources to fund, improve and develop easily accessible healthcare services in line with those needs. This means working closely with local hospitals, GP practices, pharmacies, dental practitioners and optometrists, as well as their social care partners, to ensure the best possible range of services are available

Speed to Market
The software, first procured in January 2006, went live that April a full eight months before the DoHs strict deadline for universal PBC coverage. The speed of the roll-out owed a great deal to the applications ease of use, and its web-based configuration. Scott Watson, Acting Head of Information Management and Business Intelligence at the Trust explains: Prior to the integration of our management structure, the system was deployed in Sunderland only. Our rollout in Sunderland took place almost overnight, with all 54 GP Practices being able to access BIRT Scorecard within a matter of days. Following integration, the strategic decision was made to use BIRT Scorecard as the vehicle for the delivery of Practice Based Budgets and associated management information across the NHS South of Tyne and Wear patch. Due to the systems easy-to-use architecture, we were able to

Staff Savings, Better Decisions

The software has provided such a boost to productivity that its allowed NHS South of Tyne and Wear to free up resources to other more strategic tasks. But above all, the system lets us push out information and robustly monitor and manage resources, Watson says. This is its real value getting practices to look at their budgets and review how they are referring patients to secondary care, so that improvements can be made. The journey towards World-Class Commissioning status continues, as NHS South of Tyne and Wear works to introduce additional data into BIRT Scorecard. Thanks to the Actuate system, we now have a very good feel of where we are with this. Were now using BIRT Scorecard for all aspects of Performance Management and health commission frameworks, so we have a clear roadmap on which to chart our progress, Watson says.

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EMERGENCY RESPONSE

Rich Information Applications Enable Healthcare Providers to Maintain Healthy Data

By John Katsoulis & Seema Haji Actuate Corporation

By 2030

the United States over-65 population is expected to nearly triple from its 1980 rate, a result of the influential baby boomer

generation reaching their retirement years. And as is natural with any aging population, those baby boomers will face escalating health issues, in turn putting more and more pressure on the healthcare system and continuing to add stress to it for years to come. Thats not the only concern that the healthcare industry faces, either; 16 percent of Americans dont have medical insurance, while another 17 percent of the population has opted out of their health insurance for a multitude of reasons, including an inability to afford the payroll deductions. Meanwhile, as demand increases, costs are escalating, largely because growth in healthcare hasnt been organic. While more customers enter the healthcare system, there are fewer companies out there to offer them the services that they need. Instead, existing companies grow to try to accommodate the increased demand. Skyrocketing costs are making it look like the industry is getting bigger, though, because costs and revenues for those left keep going up. The total number of commercial healthcare plans is decreasing, while high-deductible health plans are decreasing profits. As a result a greater emphasis, by necessity, has been put on costs, savings and efficiencies. Growth, in turn, has changed the quality of the services that are being offered. Mechanisms are needed to spur organic growth in healthcare, as well as to entice the working uninsured and to build more consumer-driven products. As changes continue to reshape the healthcare industry, healthcare providers are finding that they must view themselves differently than in the past and improve their methodology to gather the right data in an efficient way. Hospitals need information that allows them to measure their performance in a wide range of key areas, including regulatory requirements, patient care, healthcare services, outcomes operations, and finance. Rich Information Applications have a massive impact on a healthcare organizations ability to deliver services, create differentiation and enhance market appeal.

Too Much Data, Too Little Time

Hospitals are businesses, and like all businesses they need to make money in other words, revenue must exceed expenses. When they dont, a hospital often cant afford to continue on, which is why the United States is losing an average of 30 hospitals a year. Others risk closing too because of Medicaid under funding. Meanwhile, onethird of the revenue that used to be captured by
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hospitals now goes to non-hospital providers, physicians and ambulatory surgery companies. Occupancy rates are going up but the number of beds is on the decline. Fees are going down but costs are going up. Healthcare data is also getting more difficult to manage with more regulations, complex reimbursement processes and fewer staff. Although patient care continues to be top of mind, utilization management, physician satisfaction and employee satisfaction also need to be measured accurately. An explosion of data has accompanied these factors on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, including: Detailed financial data spitting out from billing and costtracking systems; Average census, admissions, discharges, and length-ofstay information; Turnover rates, vacancies, accident rates, and employee satisfaction tracked by Human Resources; And accreditation, certification, outside performance benchmarks, and patient satisfaction levels, monitored by managers;

Delivering regular and on-demand content to all users from a single unified platform so they can make the right decisions at the right time; Lowering the total cost of ownership with Open Source technology, zero-training environments, lowest setup costs and fastest time to market; Providing physicians, nurses and other staff with the richest, most personalized user experience possible.

BIRT Performance Management

BIRT displays powerful, visually engaging dashboards and scorecards to track healthcare Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as operational efficiencies, billing and claims information and physician performance to convey this information to hospital administrators in an easily consumable format. BIRT dashboards display data about current and past performance and show what needs to be improved either immediately or in the future. Users can drill through into BIRT reports for rootcause and what-if analysis. Users can view or create dashboards from templates, read commentary down to the measure level and view trending information over time and location. Enabling interactive content allows stakeholders to evaluate the results of services provided and the overall effectiveness of processes. With the right view of KPIs, areas for concern can be identified immediately and a hospitals performance and outcomes can be managed effectively. End users can access regular and on-demand content in a variety of presentation styles, including brochure-quality documents, performance scorecards, Briefing Books, Excel files, dashboards and simple data-driven web pages. With limitless data presentation formats and integration possibilities from a single platform, Actuates Rich Information Applicationready platform leads to 100 percent user adoption across the enterprise.

The result is data overload.

BIRT-Based Rich Information Applications and Business Intelligence Tools

An effective healthcare information system must access and integrate real-time data such as efficiencies and utilization, patient and physician information, and employee satisfaction. This information exists in multiple systems. As new mandates are implemented, healthcare providers must expand their use for larger user populations. Dependability and high performance become crucial business requirements at this stage as well. Actuate Healthcare solutions can help healthcare agencies wade through the data overload. They are built on BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) and BIRT Performance Scorecard to deliver a cost-effective powerful solution that can be used by hospitals, medical facilities and healthcare professionals.
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PSEG Leverages Actuate to Reduce Costs and Increase Productivity

The PSEG Challenge
clarity of a one-page statement on monthly actuals, plan and forecast with drilldown Teams throughout PSEG were spending a substantial amount capability offers compelling value to any of time producing reports and compiling analysis, states David business. The larger the organization, the more critical the Shor, Senior Business Process Design Specialist in the PSEG Services Corporation. Not only was this process inefficient, need. but the data was often outdated by the time it reached the The Commercial Operations Group at Public Service Enterprise management reporting team. Group (PSEG), a $12 billion energy and energy services company headquartered in New Jersey, deployed the SAP Business The Actuate Solution Information Warehouse (SAP BW) to provide a data warehouse PSEG selected Actuate to deliver a critical financial management throughout its organization. PSEG found it difficult to use the application for its business units and management team. The reporting functionality within SAP BW to create its key financial company selected Actuate over Business Objects and Cognos performance statement, called the Business Performance Report based on the following reasons: (BPR). The BPR is used by all of PSEG Services Corporations business units and the management reporting team. Therefore, The ability to include revenue, expense and residual data, from multiple information sources, on a single page; PSEG created multiple Excel reports to display the data needed

Conclusion
The healthcare industry in the United States faces great challenges now and in the years to come. A rigorous Performance Management program can keep track of performance trends; without one, results are difficult to ascertain. Increasing regulatory guidelines detailing new critical areas of performance, the demand for performance improvements in clinical outcomes, and increased reporting demands have all contributed to this need for a practical and useful system. The key areas of patient care, healthcare services, operations, outcomes, and finance can be measured with Actuate applications built using Actuate BIRT.

The

for the BPR. This report generation process was manual and took several days after the month-end close to produce.

For healthcare, BIRT tools offer options for creating interactive dashboards, billing and claims scorecards, physicians dashboards, strategy maps and interactive reports, enabling the management and improvement of performance. Actuate Healthcare solutions empower hospitals and medical staff by: Streamlining financial, operational and customer interaction processes with up-to-the-moment information to slash costs and improve patient satisfaction;

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PSEG relies on Actuate for one of the most critical reports in our organization the Business Performance Report. Actuate pulls data from multiple information sources and produces a single version of the truth.
The ability to store annotations at a cell level for each business unit that runs the report, and aggregate those into a single report for management reporting analysis; Flexible output, including Excel.

About PSEG

Industry: Energy & Utilities Challenge: Compiling monthly Excel and SAP BW analysis was time-consuming and inefficient; Financial information was outdated by the time received; Wished to produce an at-a-glance snapshot for business and each unit, with drilldown capability.

David Shor, Senior Business Process Design Specialist, PSEG Services Corporation
Actuate e.Reports is integrated with SAP BW and aggregates data from multiple information cubes into a single presentationquality report with full annotation capabilities. Over the past couple of years, the Actuate Business Performance Report (BPR) has become one of the most critical reports in the PSEG Services Corporation. The BPR is a profit-and-loss statement that compares actual, plan, and forecast data and is used by all business units, as well as the management reporting team. This report presents a clear, one-page picture of PSEGs financial performance, including summaries and forecasts for each business unit. PSEG is also leveraging Actuate e.Spreadsheet and Information Objects to enhance the user experience and to speed

ublic Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) is a publiclytraded (NYSE:PEG), growing energy and energy services company headquartered in New Jersey. The company delivers gas and electric service safely and reliably to areas of New Jersey in which about 70 percent of the population reside. PSEG has assets over $28.6 billion and total revenues of $12.2 billion, with over 10,000 employees. The PSEG Services Corporation was formed in 1999 to provide quality, value-added services to internal clients within the PSEG family of companies. This division employs approximately 927 associates, who in turn provide transactional and professional products and services to 21 business units. hospitals, GP practices, pharmacies, dental practitioners and optometrists, as well as their social care partners to ensure the best possible range of services are available

Solution: e.Reports, e.Spreadsheet and Information Objects for financial management reporting Benefits: Saved the equivalent of 20 workdays per month of a full-time employee through process automation; Tailored reports to specific user needs, empowering users. Improved development efficiency, freeing up IT resources.

PSEG selected Actuate because it met all of our functional requirements and could integrate with the SAP BW infrastructure. We had multiple requirements for our reporting solution, including web based, user friendly and the ability to support multiple hierarchies and queries from a single report. In addition, Actuate was also the only solution that would allow annotations within a report at a cell level a key requirement, says Shor.

development. e.Spreadsheet enables PSEG to source data from both SAP BW and SAP R/3 and combine the data into a single report. Actuate e.Spreadsheet gives PSEG the ability to create dynamic, reoccurring formulas based on different nodes of multiple hierarchies. Links and formulas are based on the server, not in the spreadsheet, so deleting rows and columns will not affect data or formulas.

Tailor reports to user needs Actuate offers a flexible, powerful development environment for precise control. The PSEG development team has not been limited in terms of the kinds of enterprise reports that can be delivered, ensuring that specific end-user needs are met. Improve development efficiency

By partnering with Actuate Professional Services, PSEG With Actuates e.Spreadsheet, PSEG gets the power and completed the e.Reports implementation in two months and customization capabilities of Actuate combined with the the e.Spreadsheet implementation in less than six months. interactive and familiar interface of Excel. Power users are able Benefits of Actuate to develop their own e.Spreadsheet reports, offloading the development from IT staffs. Generate cost savings Prior to Actuate, PSEG relied on a manual, time-consuming process to create the BPR. Actuate has fully automated this process, pulling data from both SAP R/W and SAP BW into to a single report. As a result, PSEG has saved 20 days per month of work because of the Actuate application, and is expected to save more time as additional reports are developed in e.Spreadsheet.

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The PSEG Future

PSEG will continue to leverage Actuate for financial management, as it has helped in reducing operating expenses while increasing user satisfaction. Going forward, PSEG plans to increase the use of Actuate throughout our organization, says Shor.

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[ Figure 6.1: PSEGs Actuate reports aggregate annotations, providing variance and revised forecast explanations as well as the ability to drilldown and expand to lower levels of details. ]

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How Promaco Consulting Uses Years of Experience to Measure and Improve their Clients Performance Capabilities

Top-Notch Performance
ow do you get where you want to go in a fast and focused way? Realize your business goals efficiently and effectively?

Its all about performance, the partners at Promaco Consulting will tell you. Performing well on all levels can make your company shine. Knowing where your performance strengths and weaknesses may be and measuring them along the way to see where you arent up to par can give you a better idea of where you might need to focus your efforts, so that you can work on improving that performance to make your business run better. As a consulting company with 20 years experience and a specialty in Business Performance Management as well as

Corporate Governance, Process and Project Management, and IT Integration Promaco has made it their business to help their clients measure and improve their performance and to realize their business plans and goals. With offices in Antwerp, Belgium and Utrecht, The Netherlands, the team of consultants has worked all over the world with primarily medium- to large-sized companies from a range of industries, including healthcare, waste management, electronics, tobacco, financial and textile. In the last seven years, Promaco has gone even further to try to meet its clients needs, by developing a software application. Called Connect, its a user-friendly data and metadata ETL software and allows for the seamless integration of Actuates BIRT Performance Scorecard Performance Management software with any type and number of data and metadata sources.

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[ Figure 7.1: Using Connect you can seamlessly integrate your BIRT Performance Scorecard with any underlying metadata and data source. Due to Connects capability to define connection procedures using variables for measure, location, comparative and period, one and the same procedure can process data for a wide spread of combinations. ]

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[ Figure 7.2: In Connect, variables can be used in simple click-and-select procedures or in full blown SQL or MDX statements. On execution any variable will be replaced with the name of the object data youre looking for. As a result, the number of connection procedures can be reduced dramatically, saving time in both the initial setup and the maintenance. ]

How Does BIRT Fit In?

Promaco has had a long and fruitful history with Actuate and its team. They use the Actuate suite of performance and reporting tools, as well as their own Connect ETL and Performance Management expertise, for fast and reliable deployments of a user-friendly management information solution that provides a clear connection between a companys strategy, tactics and operations. The consulting firm first started using BIRT Performance Scorecard formerly referred to as Views in 1995 and has since seen their company evolve along with the software solution. Theyve used the application in close to 40 different customer settings, and in the past two years have started using BIRT reporting capabilities as well. With help from Actuates performance and reporting tools, Promaco also now offers a solution for Independent Software Vendors (ISV) that wish to deploy an integrated management information solution on top of their application. The solution can be set up for any ISV vendor in a matter of days and requires as little as one day to be deployed at each new customer site. Its proven to be a successful offering, and Promaco now has 80 percent of the Housing Authorities market in The Netherlands, where they provide a boxed solution to deploy a management information system on top of their transactional systems, using Actuate and Promacos technology and based on a pre-built performance framework for the industry.

Quick Facts about Promacos Connect

A system with 100 measures, 20 locations, three comparatives and 12 monthly periods might yield a total of 72,000 combinations. Using Promacos Connect, and depending on the structure of your source data, this could be reduced to as little as 100 procedure signatures. Connect allows you to use metadata from your existing transactional systems, or to prepare measure and location structures. After connecting to these sources, the system will process the available metadata and automatically create measure and location structures for your Scorecard on the fly.

Expanded Opportunity
stablished in 1848, Prudential plc is an international financial services group with significant operations in Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom. It provides insurance and financial services through its subsidiaries and affiliates throughout the world. In the UK, Prudential UK & Europe is a leading life and pensions provider with approximately seven million customers. PGDS is a distinct company within the Prudential plc group of companies. It is responsible for the delivery of IT infrastructure services for the group.

How Prudential Expanded its File Conversion Capabilities Using Technology from Xenos
Challenges

capabilities to bring even more workflow improvements to its document generation, proofing and COMfiche functions.

A Xenos customer since 2001, Prudential has relied on Xenos to streamline a number of internal processes. Prudential initially implemented Xenos d2e software, the technology behind the transformation-services-for-documents component of Xenos d2e technology enables the transformation and Xenos Enterprise Server. More recently it expanded on Xenos repurposing of high-volume print stream documents into

Prior to adopting Xenos technology, proofing Xerox-formatted documents was a time-consuming process for Prudential IT staff. The proofing process took a lot of time due to the slow turnaround on test prints, says Jane Spittal, IT Technical Specialist with PGDS. In order to check application changes, programmers often had to wait two or three hours for their test outputs to be printed and sent back to them. If further changes were required, it could take several days to test even minor changes to formatted output.

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In considering the new requirements, we had to be satisfied that Xenos could handle outputs from our IBM mainframe as well as the existing Unisys outputs. And we needed to ensure that the system could cope with the extra volumes without adversely affecting turnaround on existing PDFs.
Jane Spittal, IT Technical Specialist, PGDS Prudential

electronic formats. In 2001, Prudential purchased the technology specifically to streamline the document-proofing process. With this transformation services software, Prudential was able to convert print streams to PDF. This enabled staff to check changes right away, reducing the testing cycle from hours and in some cases days to a matter of minutes.

As the regulatory climate changed, Prudential decided in March 2009 to reconsider the management of its COMfiche creation and storage. Historically we had been sending print streams from our mainframes offsite via tape to be converted to microfiche and returned to us for storage, explains John Alcock, Senior IT Technical Specialist, PGDS. According to our policy, we sent tapes out once a week. This ultimately meant a potential From the outset, when volumes were in the region of 1,000 10-day turnaround before we saw the output in microfiche documents per month, Prudential increased the use of Xenos form. Also, there were occasional misfilings and search functions technology every year. A second license was purchased to were cumbersome at times. enable the software to be used for distribution of outputs to business areas, and volumes reached 15,000 documents per In addition to lengthy processing delays and potential errors, month by the end of 2008. Prudential also decided that the risk of losing data during

transport to and from the site was too great. We wanted to eliminate the physical transport of data and adopt an online alternative. In doing so we would be able to achieve a next-day turnaround, Alcock adds.

By adding processing power to the Xenos technology, it easily handled the file sizes and volumes, and we have had no problems in terms of loading and searching. Now all files are available and easy to locate and users are benefiting from the search capabilities in PDF.
John Alcock, Senior IT Technical Specialist, PGDS Prudential
easily handled the file sizes and volumes, and we have had no problems in terms of loading and searching. Now all files are available and easy to locate; and users are benefiting from the search capabilities in PDF.

Solution
According to Spittal, taking on the additional print streams would more than double the volumes of what was being handled by the existing Xenos transformation technology. As she points out, while they initially considered a number of vendors, Xenos had been chosen because of the fidelity of the print stream conversion. In considering the new requirements, we had to be satisfied that Xenos could handle outputs from our IBM mainframe as well as the existing Unisys outputs. And we needed to ensure that the system could cope with the extra volumes without adversely affecting turnaround on existing PDFs. After considering a software upgrade, the decision was made instead to add CPUs to increase processing power, as well as acquire a test license for the COMfiche data requirements. Prudential was aware that the conversion was a considerable effort, since it entailed a number of changes in mainframe functions. It was a big project that involved many people on both the IT and business sides, says Alcock. We did look at different versions of software to implement, but ultimately decided it would be better to augment the processing power instead. We already knew the capabilities of the Xenos solution, so we felt this would allow us to implement the transition with minimal disruption. We were worried, however, that the large file sizes up to 650 MB is some cases might tax the system.

About the Technology

Xenos d2e is the underlying technology within Xenos Enterprise Servers Transformation Services for Documents. Xenos Enterprise Server (ES) transforms, indexes and repurposes information into other formats for print and presentation. It integrates with existing applications through a variety of input and output services, allowing organizations to add value to their document-centric business processes and applications without changing their infrastructure. With its Java-based, multithreaded architecture, Xenos ES is designed to process millions of high-volume print documents each with sub-second performance.

Summary
To date, the Xenos platform handles 30,000 documents a month on average, half of which are used for online viewing for internal and external users. As users become more familiar with the technology, Spittal says that Prudential will continue to build on its capabilities to improve processes in other areas. Originally we started with document proofing. The next stage was distributing internal reports to business users in their offices, then the COMfiche conversion. There is still more we can do with the new system. We are all very happy with the change.

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Prudential plc is a company incorporated with its principal place of The worries were laid to rest fairly quickly in the process. The business in England. Prudential plc is not affiliated in any manner fiche conversion exercise was very successful, Alcock adds. with Prudential Financial, Inc, a company whose principal place of By adding processing power to the Xenos technology, it business is in the United States of America.

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By Virgil Dodson, BIRT Evangelist, Actuate Corporation; Karishma Haji, Product Marketing Manager, Actuate Corporation; and Sean Wilbur, Rational Unleash the Labs, IBM Corporation

Introduction
development management is the ability to track source code as it goes through the various stages of development from requirements gathering, testing, to release. Software requirements, plans and technical changes in a project, combined with the eminent interdependent and repetitive nature of the software development process, can make management chaotic for project managers and increase software quality risks. Reporting is a business attribute of project administration for software development. Metrics, summaries, and contextual reports provide views and insight into the status of a project and help bring projects to successful completion. IBM Rational ClearQuest, a comprehensive flexible change management system suitable for multiple process management, provides change tracking, process automation, reporting, traceability, and control of the software development lifecycle. Software development teams use Rational ClearQuest to successfully manage change in their development environments and throughout the software development cycle. Version 7.1 of Rational ClearQuest provides a new, flexible reporting mechanism based on a data-pull reporting model, adding significant flexibility over the traditional data-push model, so that individual team members can gain real-time visibility into development activities. Data is pulled from Rational ClearQuest via the supplied ClearQuest ODA JDBC driver and presented in the standard reports shipped with ClearQuest 7.1 that are based on the Open Source Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT), a project of the Eclipse Foundation. BIRT is an Open Source reporting system for web applications, especially those based on Java and J2EE. Actuate founded and co-leads the BIRT project, while IBM is also an active participant, with representation on the Project Management Committee and a number of developers contributing code. The BIRT project brings Rich Information Application capabilities as well as interactivity to the web-based reporting of structured data. As a result, it is the Open Source Business Intelligence offering with the most momentum, with more than 6.5 million downloads through 2008. BIRT consists of a comprehensive report development environment, reporting engine and powerful skill-specific tools for creating rich, interactive reports for client and web applications in a variety of formats. Rational has implemented these technologies as the basis of the new built-in reporting solution within Rational ClearQuest 7.1, along with a set of standard BIRT reports that present the most commonly needed data. BIRT provides the foundation for the new web-based reporting in Rational ClearQuest 7.1 and will help meet the core, on-demand reporting requirements of ClearQuest users. This new architecture also provides the basis for more advanced reporting capabilities that will allow users to maximize the value of the data captured in ClearQuest. These advanced capabilities span a range of reporting needs, including customization and user personalization of reports, web-based report development by any ClearQuest user, and report scheduling, archiving and distribution.
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A Clearer View
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Maximizing the Value of the New BIRT Reporting in IBM Rational ClearQuest

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The New Reporting Paradigm and Feature-Rich BIRT Reporting in ClearQuest

Rational ClearQuest Version 7.1 provides a new paradigm for reporting using a data-pull reporting model, adding significant flexibility over the traditional data-push model, and enabling real-time reporting. Prior versions used a datapush model to run reports, which precluded reporting on multiple data sources and multiple result sets. With the new data-pull paradigm and built-in BIRT reporting technology, ClearQuest users have significantly more flexibility, with the ability to create real-time reports that use multiple data sources and multiple data sets, and the ability to store and manage reports by using an enterprise reporting server. The reporting solution built into Rational ClearQuest includes the Open Source BIRT Designer, BIRT Engine and BIRT Viewer from the Eclipse project. The BIRT Designer provides ClearQuest customers with the ability to create report designs as a part of ClearQuest, without the need to purchase a separate report designer, while the BIRT Engine and BIRT Viewer provide on-demand reporting capabilities.

Eclipse. The BIRT Designer guarantees stable source code as it is based on an Open Source initiative and has been tested by a wide variety of users on different infrastructures and platforms. The report designer provides an intuitive, easy-to-use, dragand-drop environment for representing structured data within a layout similar to a web page. Developers can use the designer quickly and effectively to create complex markups including dashboards, drillable charts and charts that can change colors based on values, where each cell pulls in information from the internal implementation of ClearQuest. The BIRT report designer provides advanced capabilities through reusable components such as libraries and templates and programmatic control over the individual elements in a report through Java and JavaScript. Components can be frequently used data queries, visualization items, calculations or stored connections. These reusable report components can be used as is or enhanced to meet new requirements, enabling users to quickly change reports as business requirements mature. The BIRT Designer connects to ClearQuest through a JDBC driver called the ClearQuest ODA, based on the Open Source Eclipse Open Data Access (ODA) project. The ClearQuest ODA driver was developed by Rational and is key to the real-time reporting capabilities. The ClearQuest ODA provides local and web connections exposing the underlying ClearQuest queries a user may have access to. In addition, the security mechanisms

Designing ClearQuest Reports with the BIRT Designer

The BIRT Designer is bundled as a plug-in for the ClearQuest client and is a perspective within the ClearQuest Client for

[ Figure 9.2: Designing reports with the BIRT Report Designer provided with Rational ClearQuest. ]

built into ClearQuest are honored by the reporting capabilities exposed by the ODA driver for BIRT. Security mechanisms support the ClearQuest Folder Access Control Lists (ACL) as well as ClearQuest Security Context, allowing only users with the correct permissions to access, read and write to records. The ClearQuest ODA driver also facilitates access to multiple ClearQuest data sources, as well as to multiple ClearQuest queries. Users can leverage BIRT capabilities to access multiple data sources which can be implemented via multiple ClearQuest queries. Similarly BIRT capabilities can be used to access multiple ClearQuest and non-ClearQuest databases such as Rational RequisitePro to pull information into a common BIRT report. This is particularly useful for managers who want to map the software requirements to the defects across individual or multiple projects

On-demand report generation provided by ClearQuest Web Management is supported by the ability to pass run-time parameters through BIRT. Parameters flow from the BIRT environment into the ClearQuest query, tailoring the report to the powerful query dynamic filters inside of ClearQuest. ClearQuest Web Management UI allows users to upload and share report designs, organize them into folders, export reports into other formats, save report executions and email hyperlinks securely. Rational ClearQuest ships with a library and a range of BIRT report sample designs that allows users to quickly start designing and deploying reports, reducing time to market and enabling customers to get an immediate return on investment. The BIRT report sample designs are starting points and define the overall report layout, structure, look, and data available to the report developer. Project Managers can use these intuitive designs to quickly and easily create and distribute reports. Additionally, a new web application, the Report Server for ClearQuest, is included as an optional subcomponent when you install ClearQuest Web. The Report Server for ClearQuest supports management and running of reports on-demand by using the ClearQuest ODA Driver. Report management services include basic management of user accounts, access control for reports, and folder

On-Demand ClearQuest Reports Using the BIRT Engine and BIRT Viewer
The ClearQuest Web report management user interface utilizes the BIRT Engine and BIRT Viewer to deliver the report execution and viewing environment to users. The reporting engine executes a report and generates the output within the context of an application. Output formats supported include HTML, Adobe PDF, Word DOC, Excel XLS, PostScript, and PowerPoint PPT output as well as custom formats.

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[ Figure 9.1: Launching the BIRT Designer from the ClearQuest client. ]

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management. Report services include running reports, printing reports, creating report snapshots, and exporting reports to PDF format or Microsoft Word documents. You can access the Report Server for ClearQuest from the Rational ClearQuest Client, Rational ClearQuest Client for Eclipse, or Rational ClearQuest Web Client, or directly from a web browser. Security for report viewing, generation, and management is provided by user authentication through the ClearQuest database.

iServer Express. A light-weight report server designed to deploy, manage, schedule, archive, secure, run and distribute BIRT reports. iServer Enterprise. The most powerful enterprise report server in the market, with all the functionality of iServer Express but designed for large-scale distribution. BIRT Interactive Viewer. An end-user interactivity tool that helps users create personalized views of information by enhancing the interactivity of existing reports. BIRT Report Studio. A web-based report authoring tool that enables business and end users to create reports quickly and effectively.

quickly, easily and securely; it is especially useful for small- to medium-sized software development teams. It offers timeand event-based scheduling; automated email distribution of reports; the ability to version and archive reports; and a web UI to run, view and share reports. With iServer Express, end users can schedule reports; specify report parameters; and request that report results be emailed to them in the format of their choice. The iServer technology also offers a unique security capability called Page Level Security (PLS) which can restrict access to individual pages of a report based on the users permissions. Page Level Security can be used with ClearQuest to restrict user access by using the credentials stored in the security system. iServer Enterprise shares all the functionality of iServer Express, but on an enterprise-class scale, and is useful for large, distributed global software development teams. It is a scalable, best-of-breed server for generating, managing and securely delivering reporting and analytic content to an organization and integrates information from any data source and application to serve both internal and external users. It is able to run in clustered environments, support hundreds of thousands of users and concurrently provide multiple applications with scheduling and security. The iServer technology is a powerful way to manage and distribute the BIRT reports that come with, or are newly developed for, Rational ClearQuest. Reports can be scheduled to run on a daily, weekly, or other regular basis, with the ability to archive as many reports as needed, thereby providing a convenient store of hierarchical information. Additionally, business rules can be set up such that reports are distributed to certain users when predetermined conditions occur. In the agile development world, the ability to access a range of reports is important for analyzing trends and responding as quickly as needed. In an interactive team meeting, for example, you can efficiently access a range of archived reports, conduct ad-hoc manipulation of the reports, save the changes, and distribute the new view of the report, using features of iServer Express and iServer Enterprise from Actuate.

of desktop software, or training. In a zero-training environment, end users of ClearQuest BIRT reports can personalize the view of a report to meet their individual preferences and needs by defining headers, labels and page breaks; changing data alignment, font or case; adding or deleting data displayed; sorting data and applying functions to data; modifying existing charts; and by applying conditional logic to their formatting choice. With BIRT Interactive Viewer, a single report design can serve the needs of multiple users, as a ClearQuest user can create their own view of a report. For example, a project manager can filter an existing report to view Level 1 bugs without having to create a new report. The same report can serve the needs of the quality manager, who may want to view the Level 1 bugs, along with the name of the development resource assigned to fix the bug. Once the report is modified, the project or quality manager can save the modified report view so that their changes do not have to be applied every time the report is run. All of the interactivity is provided in a secure, controlled environment and is executed on the client side. Performance improvements are tremendous as only data in the original report is modified and none of the underlying queries are re-executed. The BIRT Interactive Viewer provides project managers, quality managers and development teams using ClearQuest with the ability to analyze the data in an existing report in a flexible yet controlled environment.

Extending the Value of ClearQuest BIRT Reporting

While ClearQuest BIRT reporting architecture meets the ondemand reporting requirements of a user, the BIRT product line from Actuate addresses the more unique reporting needs that different applications may have. This adds additional powerful capabilities delivered via skill-specific environments to the ClearQuest reporting introduced in Version 7.1. Rational ClearQuest users requiring additional capabilities such as report scheduling, archiving, and end user interactivity can easily leverage Actuates products as Open Source BIRT is the foundation across both. The BIRT product line from Actuate meets specialized reporting needs and includes the following products:

The BIRT product line from Actuate extends the functionality of the built-in reporting features, by supporting flexible and enterprise-level access to real-time capabilities that include report scheduling and archiving, end-user interactivity, ad-hoc reporting and more.

Scheduling, Archiving and Distributing ClearQuest Reports Using iServer Technology

iServer Express from Actuate is a report server that ClearQuest users can use to run, deploy and share ClearQuest reports

Creating ClearQuest Reports Over the Web with BIRT Report Studio
BIRT Report Studio is a web-based report development tool for managers and non-programmers to access the data they need and create BIRT reports. It does not require any experience working with Rational ClearQuest or an Eclipse-based client. BIRT Report Studio from Actuate extends the out-of-the-box BIRT reporting offering that comes with ClearQuest by allowing project managers and developers to design reports in a dragand-drop environment from within a web browser. BIRT Report Studio allows users to work with pre-defined templates, out-of-the box themes, or themes previously created by developers. The tool is AJAX-based and built on the BIRT Report Engine; it can be accessed from within the web browser without requiring any software installation. With BIRT Report Studio users can: Create charts and graphs; add, rearrange, reformat, show and hide data; and change report rows, columns and format cells. Add columns, calculations, aggregations, conditional formats, filters, parameters, charts, tables or pre-built report objects.

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Personalizing ClearQuest Reports with the BIRT Interactive VIewer

BIRT Interactive Viewer is a web-based report modification tool that provides additional interactivity to any BIRT report, including those supplied with ClearQuest. BIRT Interactive Viewer is a browser-based AJAX report viewer which is easy to deploy as it does not require the use of plug-ins, installation

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[ Figure 9.3: Managing reports through the iServer Express with report versioning and archiving capabilities. ]

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[ Figure 9.4: Managing reports via the iServer Express from Actuate, with report scheduling and archiving capabilities. ]

[ Figure 9.5: Summary of Defects report viewed via the Interactive Viewer, a web-based report modification tool. ]

Building Sustainable Performance Management Frameworks

By Kaye Kendrick Kaye Kendrick and Associates hat is a sustainable performance framework? A sustainable Performance Management framework exists when an organization has vision, spirit, management structure and quality systems that consistently demonstrate value to their customers. There are three overall areas critical to the success of an organization: leadership, management, and process. Leadership. Are the reasons why the organization exists understood by management, staff and customers? Do they provide spirit and inspiration? Management. What are the services being delivered to make the organization a success? To what extent are they

Sort, group and organize data; format columns and fonts; and validate the design of the report as they are building it.

Conclusion
Rational ClearQuest provides a powerful new reporting paradigm and capabilities for real-time reporting and charting, based on technology from the Eclipse BIRT project. BIRT technology in ClearQuest supports flexible and enterprise-level access to real-time reporting and metrics. While the built-in ClearQuest BIRT reporting meets the on-demand reporting requirements of a user, the BIRT product line from Actuate addresses the more specialized reporting needs that different applications may have. This adds additional powerful business and end-user capabilities to the ClearQuest BIRT reporting capabilities introduced and provided in version 7.1.

Anyone who is involved in the software development and release process, yet not familiar with Rational ClearQuest, can create ad-hoc ClearQuest BIRT reports by dragging and dropping data with BIRT Report Studio. Once saved, reports can be shared with other users as they can be viewed with any BIRT Designer or viewer without requiring the installation of a ClearQuest client. This helps with faster decision-making, as its a self-service method of creating reports and reduces the burden on administrators.

accomplishing these results, and do they have the ability to continue accomplishing these results? Process. Are the services being delivered at the necessary level of quality and efficiency to consistently provide desired results to its customers?

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These critical success factors can be supported with a sustainable performance framework established within an organization. A sustainable performance framework ensures clearly communicated desired results throughout the organization. It identifies the services, activities and projects being undertaken. It illustrates the relationships between the services, activities and projects, and the organizations desired results throughout the organization. It provides for performance measurement and costing of programs

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To maintain its existence, an organization must use its money successfully. A Performance Management framework fosters communication and informed decision making. It enables adjustment to management structure and process to meet customer needs.
5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Validate the logic of the relationships; Elaborate the concepts in the framework; Analyze the elaboration results;

and activities. It surpasses the dynamics of organizational structure and staff turnover, enabling succession planning and mitigating the effects of organizational change. It engages all staff in recognizing the reason for the organizations existence and engaging in the spirit of the organization. It recognizes that process is dependent upon people. To maintain its existence, an organization must use its money successfully. A Performance Management framework fosters communication and informed decision making. It enables adjustment to management structure and process when necessary to meet customer needs. The framework is critical to the development of cost-effective information technology development and reporting.

If a new mission or goal is desired, some organizations may wish to start from scratch. The advantage of using existing documents, however, is that the organization can take advantage of work already accomplished.

brainstorming session begins to elicit performance measures needed to convey the story of an organizations results. The brainstorming session begins by asking for more information about the highest desired result. The answers that result will be the genesis of additional desired results, as well as performance measures, thus giving the framework more substance. Substance is necessary to identify programs and sub-programs. The next step is to analyze the brainstormed list. Through this analysis, the framework will be augmented, and performance measures will emerge. First, determine whether each concept is 1) a desired result, or 2) a performance measure. If the brainstormed item is a desired result, the next step is to determine whether the item already exists in the framework, or if a new desired result should be identified. If the item exists as a desired result in the current framework, the wording may not be exactly the same the brainstormed answer might paraphrase or restate the desired result but the meaning should be the same. The third step in the elaboration process is to insert the newly-generated performance measures into the framework. Each performance measure will relate to a desired result, and may relate to more than one. In that case, the performance measure is placed by the lowest level result to which it relates. Its relationship to the higher-level boxes is conveyed by the lines in the framework. Therefore, at the higher levels, more than one measure is generally associated with a desired result. It then becomes apparent that all lower-level boxes have measures that can serve as indicators for the higherlevel box. This is especially important if the higher-level box can only be measured by customer feedback (a qualitative, rather than quantitative measurement approach). When the elaboration process has resulted in a revised framework, the framework should then be clustered. Clustered is the term used for identifying interrelated groupings of desired results with distinctive services. These

Cluster the concepts to determine programs; Adopt the performance measures;

clusters visually appear to be independent, much like grape clusters hanging from a single vine. The purpose of the clustering is to identify and establish sets of measures, which could be viewed collectively to draw conclusions about the services. A clustered area should be given a topic name, so that the measures for the boxes in the cluster are analyzed with respect to each other. A cluster that occurs at the public purpose level is referred to as a program. The public purpose is at the top of the cluster, and all supporting desired results are independent of other clusters. Sub-clusters that occur below the public purpose are referred to as sub-programs. There may be more than one desired result at the top level of a cluster, but usually they will converge at a strategic-level desired result. The sets of measures identified for the desired result topics are graphed using three to five years of actual trend data. If three to five years of trend data is not available, mock graphs are used as placeholders until data is available. The graphs should include a note specifying the expected date of data delivery. Reliable data requires complete, accurate, and consistent data. The following attributes help ensure complete, accurate and consistent data: A safe environment in which to report data. It is important that everyone recognizes that desired results might not be met due to circumstances beyond the control of managers and staff. Managers must not be afraid to report adverse data results occurring outside their control. Support and assistance should be provided if this circumstance occurs. Well-developed and documented data collection methodology. The data management strategy requires an organization to develop written data collection and reporting methodology, retrieval and storage procedures, and review and validation requirements. It is intended that managers be given sufficient time to obtain, validate and analyze data before being required to report actual results.

10. Collect and analyze the data; 11. Report the data. Performance Management training is important. Training should be provided for users of the performance framework, with more in-depth training for developers of the performance framework. Developers need four to six months of experience in performance framework development to be certified. The following framework components need to be recognized to build a performance framework: Desired Results. The purpose for which an organization exists and the expectations of service delivery (e.g., Healthy Community, Safe Community, Decreased Incidents of Disease, Decreased Number of Traffic Incidents). Services. Describe what an organization is in the business of doing (e.g., Health Services, Law Enforcement Services). Projects. Describe what an organization does to implement a new service, delete a service or enhance a service (e.g., Technology Enhancements, Graffiti Task Forces).

Development
The development of a framework involves strategic planning, program logic modeling, performance measurement development, process system development, performance reporting and the collection of reliable data, and resource allocation. A fully-functional, comprehensive framework should be expected to take five to seven years. This length of time is necessary for the collection of reliable trend data and analysis. However, benefits from the process are recognized quickly. The linking of budget should not occur until the system is fully developed, although resource allocation decisions are aided quickly. Incentives should be provided for quality, accurate performance reporting and analysis throughout the organization. The focus for the incentives should be on the reporting and enhancements to management and process made to ensure the organizations success, as opposed to the actual performance results. This helps eliminate fear of reporting adverse results. Developing a sustainable performance framework involves the following steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. Prepare for framework development; Understand components of the framework; List desired results and services; Establish relationships within the framework;

If a new mission or goal is desired, some organizations may wish to start from scratch, rather than use existing documents. The advantage to using existing documents, however, is that the organization can take advantage of work already accomplished, and not feel they have to start over. Its also important to elaborate the framework. Elaboration is a process that involves brainstorming by the framework building team. This process will determine whether the frameworkbuilding and validation phases are complete. The frameworkbuilding and validation phases are complete when the

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here has long been a gap between finance and operations. Traditionally the budget has been used to bridge this gap, seeking to ensure that these two disparate groups are in agreement at least over what the ultimate outcome of the revenue minus expense equation will be. Yet each year numerous organizations go out of business despite extensive and often painful budget planning processes. Many more organizations see their financial results only vaguely related to budgeted expectations. How and why does this occur, and how can it be prevented? The answers lie in an organizations ability to step beyond the purely financial processes, numbers and information that make up a budget. The right information can link finance and operations, dragging them step-by-step closer to one consistent view of organizational performance, so

Bridging the FinanceOperations Gap

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Using Information to Improve Financial Performance

By David F. Giannetto CEO The Telos Group

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that jointly they can more effectively affect it. This will allow the budget to achieve its original goal the reduction of overall organizational risk by better defining and creating the ability to better affect future performance.

Cultures Create Perspectives

At the heart of the problem lies the disparate view of organizational performance that finance and operations professionals have. Finance lives in the world of numbers, ratios, and projections. Their schooling and professional experience have all prepared them to analyze data and create a picture of organizational performance without ever leaving their Excel spreadsheets. What they see is often a sanitized view that obscures the relationship between operational performance and finance results. As a result, many finance departments have established cultures that reinforce this, making financial analysis the goal, production of financial statements the critical task, and closing the budget cycle on time the ultimate mark of success. We must keep in mind that these are not the goals of the organization. These are tasks, albeit critical ones, that should assist in the achievement of the true ultimate goals: the generation of revenue and the minimization of expense. In other words, profit. In stark contrast to the finance prospective lies the view of performance that budget owners, operational managers, have. For them, the budget process is often little more than a

necessary evil. It is a cumbersome time-consuming process that detracts from their ability to manage the overwhelming number of tasks their subordinates must perform each day. To them, these are the critical tasks, what they view as their primary role, and the action items that will ultimately determine success or failure. The operator typically has a better understanding of the relationship between operational effectiveness and efficiency and the financial results they process than does finance, or even executives. This well-grounded perspective comes from these managers living within the world of operations every day. Within the supply chain the ability to hit an expense goal might evaporate with the breakdown of a single over-the-road line haul. At these moments their focus is on spending overtime (and blowing their budget) to avoid disappointing key customers, missing critical shipping deadlines, or even causing massive system-wide failures. Traditional financial budgets dont take into account these decision points, they dont reveal these critical trade-offs, and they dont adequately reflect the challenges an operational manager faces each day when seeking to meet the budget he or she committed to. Yet despite the disparate views, finances bottom line remains the bottom line, and the only bottom line that matters. The profitability equation (revenue minus expense) cannot be changed, and therefore the important goal becomes ensuring that the agreed-upon budget is a realistic reflection of what performance can reasonably be expected.

Adding Realism

Business Decision Support 101

In a recent interview David Giannetto gave the following advice on Business Decision Support 101: The first step in the analysis process is to understand what question is actually being asked. Many analysts, especially financial analysts, struggle with this because they do not understand business well enough to translate a business users question into manageable segments. The trick is to listen for and use the word by. When they say tell me why sales for last period for the new product group selling through the new big box retail relationship wasnt what we expected before I get fired, the analyst should rephrase it as: if I show you actual versus budget for sales by period, by product SKU, by sales channel focusing on the retail segment, will that get you what you need? Now the analyst knows they need to focus on actual versus budget for four information groupings: revenue, period/time, product and channel. It doesnt answer the why, which is what they really want, but it gives the analyst some place to start when trying to provide meaningful information. The why answer will require additional granularity of information, typically adding purchasing invoice information to the four groupings to reveal when the deal started going bad.

(In truth they are inherently conservative. Most people are conservative in their estimation when failure has significant There is often debate over whether top-down or bottomconsequences.) up budgeting leads to a more realistic budget. In practical application there is little difference between the two. The first The executive group then applies their expected performance, step in the budget process is for finance (or accounting) to which will typically increase performance and which many extract the data necessary to roll actual numbers into the next would argue is inherently optimistic. In the end, the executive budget cycle or period. Finance must add a baseline projection groups perspective will win, because they are in charge. As for operational managers to use, and that baseline projection a result, operations will believe they have committed to a comes from the executive group. It is typically delivered in a budget that is unrealistic (executives will call them stretch goals). simple statement that directs finance to use five, 10 or 15 Since the budget process is controlled by finance, operations percent as the expected growth projection. The initial bar managers will often appeal to them for assistance in making the has been set, and executives are not going to set those goals budget a greater reflection of reality. Yet the finance department significantly lower than they expect. They have influenced is poorly equipped to provide the aid they seek because they the overall budget by establishing the percentage they feel is have only financial information, and that is not what is needed. acceptable, making the process inherently top-down. But, what The real issue isnt which groups goals are optimistic and which is acceptable is not always what is realistic or even possible. are conservative, it is that the two groups, just like finance and Bottom-up budgeting seeks to overcome this by starting operations, have such different views of performance. All the at the lowest level of granularity and rolling up to summate groups work day in and day out within the same organization. overall performance. If the organization has the technology They all see the same strategic goals and execution plans, and information structure in place to accommodate this, then and although their perspectives and specific knowledge this process can create significantly more realistic budgets. are different, there should not be radically different views on But bottom-up goals then go back up to reach the executive what outcome is likely. Fortunately, bridging the gap between group where these goals are viewed as inherently conservative. finance and operations can be accomplished in conjunction

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When an organization creates its budget structure for the first time within a BP&F application, it is created from scratch. The structure they use becomes their information model.

with bridging the gap between operations and the executive group. The missing glue is having the right information, and information begins its life as data. Data stored in critical technology applications throughout the enterprise.

It is easy to see the value of an information model, yet creating it can be difficult, as its hard for some to see beyond their own cultural bias and the way it has always been done.

and BP&F applications to link finance and operational information together, bridging this gap. At the top level this performance-oriented technology provides executives with one integrated view of organizational performance that visually displays the cause-and-effect relationship and provides one consistent fact-based view of performance. It is an overlay that unifies disparate views of the organization. The information delivered here can be the foundation for both making the budget more realistic and bridging organizational gaps, if it is properly structured or modeled.

The Data Pool

Within every organization there is a chain of events that must occur to yield revenue. (This is also true in not-for-profits, only revenue is called funding, donations or grants.) At a high level this chain encompasses making customers aware of your product or service, touching or educating them, qualifying them, making an offer and gaining acceptance. The goods or services are produced and delivered and the support functions, such as accounting, collect and process the revenue. All along this chain of events expenses are generated. Finance collects and analyzes this information and provides insight into past performance. This chain of events forms the basic cause-and-effect relationship between operational performance and financial results. This chain of events is managed by operations, which would also include the sales group, and is supported by enabling technology. Operations technology processes transactions and provides transaction-based reports, and will often be integrated into the organizations general ledger application. Financial analysis is done within a budget, planning and forecasting application (BP&F) that is rarely integrated with the general ledger or transactional applications. Data extracts and transformations connect the general ledger to the BP&F environment where dynamic and extensive financial reporting is possible. When managers need answers, they go to the data contained within these applications to find them. Finance goes to their world; operations goes to theirs. Executives are typically fed information from both groups, and the information they receive is therefore often disparate, providing conflicting answers and undermining the budget process. Performanceoriented reporting technology sits on top of the operational

adopting an information model that is more than simply the general ledger structure, and by breaking data out into groups, management can use comparative to answer better questions. And, these questions can go outside of the normal financial numbers typically used in a budget, such as: How many proposals did we have to issue last year to create the revenue we generated? How many events did we do in order to find customers that had opportunities? What has the average cost per opportunity? Is the expenditure of overtime event driven, cyclical or does it vary based upon the competency of each supervisor? Are we getting what we expected for the variable compensation paid out?

touch potential customers, which will in turn create greater cost. Are executives willing to accept that cost in order to generate greater revenue? Wishful thinking is removed; performance goals are based upon reality. As the year then rolls ahead the information model remains in place. It reveals whether or not the assumptions used to create the budget are or are not holding true. And management is aware of them while they still have time to do something about it. It is easy to see the value of an information model, yet creating it can be difficult, as its hard for some to see beyond their own cultural bias and the way it has always been done. They must set aside how they traditionally view their organization to see how it truly operates or even how it should be operating. They must break the analysis of their performance down into smaller more meaningful groups, and they must standardize how disparate portions of the organizations discuss performance. This process will take some time, especially if the organization has never been through it before. But the process itself is meaningful. Throughout the process management, organizations will be discussing how performance should be measured, what information is most critical, what questions about their business are most important and how they should set goals. Creating this type of discussion was supposed to be the most meaningful part of the budget process. It was supposed to be a discussion that finance, operations and executives had together improving the budget process and bridging the finance-operations gap.

Information Modeling
When an organization creates its budget structure for the first time within a BP&F application, it is created from scratch. The structure they use becomes their information model. It structures information used throughout the organization into logical groupings, with a unique but consistent hierarchy for each information group that mirrors the way decisions are made. Groupings would be things such as: organizational units, business processes, sales channels and customers. As a whole, the information model gives consistent answers to the majority of enterprise-level business questions that are asked, regardless of the department asking the question. It also gives the organization much greater flexibility when answering questions because answers are found by using any combination of individual groups (a single point within a hierarchy for each group). This is the foundation of modern analytics and is often referred to as a multi-dimensional model, and is referred to when discussing Online Analytical Processing (OLAP). However, this is an approach not a technology, and is an approach to structuring information that should be used regardless of the technology being employed. Typically finance adopts the structure of their general ledger because this is where the majority of data will come from and because it is easiest. But, the structure of the general ledger does not always reflect the way the organization makes decisions. By

It is important to note that these answers can be found by management, but they are painful to generate, and are often misleading and disparate when tied together with other information. The information model serves as the central point to which all other things are attached. And because it is a set structure, it can answer these questions quickly and repeatedly, providing one fact-based answer. These answers then become the starting point against which executives, finance and operations can form a more realistic budget. In organizations using this approach, the conversations become more productive and help achieve the true purpose of the budget. Executives still set goals and operations still manages towards them. But they can both see the cause-effect relationship and have a discussion centered upon reality. And that is the part of the budget process that is most valuable. If a budget owner believes the revenue goal is too high they can explain why. Perhaps there are not enough events scheduled, attendance at these events has been reduced, or new competitors have entered the market that will reduce the win ratio. Inversely the manager can use this information to say that the increase in revenue will require more events that

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David F. Giannetto is the CEO of The Telos Group, one of todays leading performance-oriented management and technology consulting firms, co-author of The Performance Power Grid, The Proven Method to Create and Sustain Organizational Performance, and an MBA Professor at Rutgers University. He can be reached at DGiannetto@TelosConsulting.com or by visiting TelosConsulting.com.

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The Actuate Excellence Awards

The Actuate Excellence Awards Program was created to recognize innovation and impressive return on investment among Actuate customers and BIRT users. Our customers consistently set new standards of excellence in their industries, and the Excellence Awards identify and honor those companies and individuals.
For more information on how to apply, email awards@actuate.com.

BIRT Implementation Excellence

The BIRT Implementation Award for Excellence is presented to Actuate OEM, end-user customers or BIRT users meeting high standards for excellence utilizing BIRT or the Actuate platform. Qualified candidates will have delivered highly innovative, original or groundbreaking applications, or have demonstrated significant return on investment. Examples include (but are not limited to) applications that reach a large user base, provide users with new and valuable information, or use leading-edge RIA and BIRT technology for user interactivity and visualization.

Scorecard Excellence
The Scorecard Award for Excellence is for enterprises that achieve breakthrough results in the financial, customer, operational and people perspectives of their business. The key to achieving these results lies in total visibility of all business units and related underlying data. This category is open to any Actuate customer currently using BIRT Performance Scorecard, that demonstrates excellence in BIRT adoption by providing examples of how the BIRT platform is leveraged to support current Performance Management efforts.

Xenos Excellence
Organizations are faced with providing solutions for both the line-of-business level and increasingly at an enterprise scale for several key challenges in response to market trends. One key challenge is the ability to have information available where, when and how it is needed. This category is open to any Actuate customer who demonstrates excellence using Xenos Enterprise Servers solutions to migrate, archive, load, reduce storage costs, present online, or deliver 1:1 customer communications. Extra points will be awarded to customers who demonstrate a thorough adoption of Xenos Enterprise Server solutions by including examples and details of their implementation, as well as some of the significant benefits that were realized, such as enhancements to the customer experience and reduction in storage costs .

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> Coachs Corner

> Coachs Corner

includes BIRT Scorecard Exchange, a new Performance Management community site where the end users can extend their business inquiries, quests for best practices and other general Performance Management knowledge to all BIRT Scorecard customers. This has created a powerful community and truly extends the power of knowledge within the organization. Ideally, this core team includes members from various departments to take advantage of the cross-functional knowledge that each member can bring. Having resources from various areas within the business allows for different levels of influence and different core capabilities. Talents and expertise from all resources can be leveraged and maximized in this approach. The Performance Management team can also be in charge of all of the education and training associated with the initiative. This in itself is an ongoing responsibility and the continuous training of the end-user community will help to ensure the long-term success of the program. At the beginning of the process, the education program should include demonstrating to employees the impact that their individual performance has on other areas of the company and as the program progresses can move to continuous Performance Management education and sharing best practices between various groups. The Performance Management team should be responsible for all strategic planning, analysis and measurement for the organization. This centralized effort means that all of the decisions surrounding the program are made by one core team and that the objectives, goals and measures can all be tied back to the organizations strategy in a consistent way. A focus on knowledge management, handled by a core team of Performance Management experts within the organization will go a long way in ensuring the longevity of your initiative. This type of model can be very successful and can withstand resource and organizational changes. With a little planning in choosing and organizing the core team members and determining the roles and responsibilities of the group, the organization will benefit greatly. Improved decision-making, continuous education and a constant infusion of energy to the Performance Management program will be among the many benefits your organization will gain by deploying this type of model. Keep in mind that a champion is still very important to add to the credibility of your initiative, but is only one of the key success factors in the knowledge management model.

Performance Management

Taking a Team Approach to Success

Performance Management program becomes just one part of their job responsibilities. Regardless of the main person involved in the program, there are definite risks associated with a small number of people taking on the responsibility of Performance Management within the organization. With only one person leading the way, it is difficult to gain traction and momentum in the initiative. All of the hard work that the one resource does can go unnoticed and the chance that the culture embraces the program and the business process changes is highly unlikely. Additionally, if the champion leaves or takes on a new role within the organization, the momentum, knowledge and enthusiasm can go as well. By Catie Sirie Professional Services Manager Actuate Corporation At the beginning of an engagement with a customer, we are often asked what the most critical factor is in a successful Performance Management program. Where a few years ago, I would have stressed the importance of having a strong champion leading the way, my recommendations have changed slightly and now include more of a team approach to success. During the initial stages of an implementation, most organizations have the champion included in the planning process, as well as the one or two resources that have been identified to act as the system administrator. The champion is included to provide the history of Performance Management within the organization and to provide the overall goals and vision of the program moving forward. The system administrators typically take on the remaining responsibilities and are in charge of tasks such as coordinating various meetings with the departments for measure identification, building the actual database into the system, and organizing training. During the projects rollout, these responsibilities are a full-time commitment and involve managing many moving parts towards a common goal. Although the champion remains involved, they typically fade into the backdrop of the initiative leaving the system administrator to take on all of the accountability of the programs success. Further, once the system has been rolled out to the initial user audience, the system administrator is reassigned to other priorities and the The scenario of having a small number of people involved in this type of program is unfortunately common and although it can work in some smaller organizations, a successful program that has longevity has a very different model. In that more successful scenario, its still just as important to have a champion, but at the same time more of a culture shift is involved, where the organization focuses on managing their Performance Management knowledge as an asset and includes a much larger group as the core team responsible for the initiative. This central team of champions shares the responsibilities of Performance Management over the long term and is in charge of managing all of the business processes that support the program and the knowledge surrounding the initiative. The organizations scorecard often includes many links to other systems, additional resource material and best practice websites that are good sources of knowledge. This information is critical to the end users of the system and organizing it and sharing it wisely with the group is something that requires constant attention and updating. The core team should be responsible for updating this information and truly turning it into an asset within the organization. The SHARE feature within Actuates BIRT Performance Scorecard is a great way to organize links and share information in an easy-to-use way. Web pages that are included within SHARE will also be opened directly in the SHARE feature making a seamless transition between BIRT Performance Scorecard and web page resources. This feature is a valuable way to share best practices and lessons learned between different end user groups and to create a streamlined process for answering their business questions. The latest feature within SHARE also

STOP

Manually compiling your KPI forecasts.

Automating reliable KPI forecasts based on your data. Automating reliable KPI forecasts based on your data. Automating reliable KPI forecasts based on your data.
INFO
Scorecard KPI Forecast extends the capabilities of any BIRT Performance Scorecard deployment by allowing users to quickly and easily generate accurate forecasts using the historical performance data of any measure thats already in your system. To learn more visit: www.birt-exchange.com/be/marketplace
Vol 7. Issue 2 . 2010

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> Reading Room

> Reading Room

Pocket Guide to Performance Management

By Mark Graham Brown

The Intelligent Company

Five Steps to Success with Evidence-Based Management
By Bernard Marr

t just 72 pages, this book is exactly what it promises to be: a short and succinct pocket guide but one filled to the brim with useful and important information and resources geared for the Performance Management professional, all from someone well-versed and respected in the field. Pocket Guide to Performance Management, by Mark Graham Brown, is a reference guide to Performance Management, starting with a dictionary of common terms on planning, measuring and managing performance, then moving on to more detailed advice for those initiating or maintaining a Performance Management initiative. The second half delves into tips and techniques for reviewing performance, diagnosing problems, deciding on an action plan and evaluating links between measures and strategies. And its all there in a way thats easy to maneuver through while youre setting up your own Performance Management initiative a handy guide to have around when you need a little bit of advice from a Performance Management expert.

hat are the five steps managers can take to improve their business intelligence and to manage with success? To find out, youll have to read Bernard Marrs The Intelligent Company, a new and practical guide for managers who might need a reality check in order to start managing their companies more effectively and to gain the competitive advantage. The Intelligent Company offers managers a step-by-step approach to analyzing their business and improving performance. Its easy to follow, with approachable examples, giving managers the reality check they might need to move themselves and the companies they manage forward in a practical, evidence-based way.

Practical Data Analysis and Reporting with BIRT

By John Ward

BIRT For Beginners

By Paul Bappoo

ith Practical Data Analysis and Reporting with BIRT, author John Ward a consultant for Innovent Solutions, specializing in BIRT has written a guide to the BIRT Report Designer, which allows users to design reports in the BIRT document format. Anyone looking to become more familiar with BIRT and its capabilities will find this book useful. It starts at the beginning, with tips on installing and setting up the BIRT environment, then moves on to creating structured reports, adding visual report elements, and filtering down data to the information you need. Youll find out how to create cross-tab reports, create a shared development environment using libraries, and use style sheets and themes in report designs. Basically, its a primer to BIRT Report Designer, but one designed with results in mind. Ward wants to get his readers using BIRT as quickly as possible, by providing practical advice along with common examples and case studies.

ritten by Paul Bappoo founder of the BIRT User Group UK BIRT For Beginners is exactly that: a tool for beginner BIRT users, with walkthrough tutorials of the main features of Eclipse BIRT Designer, Actuate BIRT Designer, iServer Express, Interactive BIRT Viewer, Actuate BIRT Studio and BIRT Spreadsheet Designer. Those tutorials include a look into everything from installation to data selection, as well as formatting reports and fully graphical Flash charting. With the help of this book, youll be creating your own BIRT reports in only a couple of hours. That means you dont need to spend days learning the author promises youll be getting tangible results a lot quicker than that. And when you buy the book, you also get access to a readers section of the BIRT For Beginners website (at www.birtreporting.com/BIRT-for-Beginners), which offers extra tools for the new BIRT user.

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Vol 7. Issue 2 . 2010

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This Isnt Rocket Science

Facts: e g a r o t S ument Online Doc

ice is 5MB o v In F D P ge The avera ices e 200 invo r o t s l il w h 1GB 30 / mont $ 0 2 $ s a uch e costs as m g a r o t s f o ent 1GB ds a statem e e n h c a e ers 00 custom ,0 0 0 1 e v a nth You h n each mo u r is h c t a sab many time w o h in e line. Includ etained on r is n io t a rm ng this info lo w o h in Factor

You dont need to be a genius to understand this math.

Even a moderately sized company with 100,000 customers can be hit hard with escalating document storage costs. Its not uncommon for us to hear from organizations that are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for online document storage. The good news is Xenos can help by slashing the size of each batch, AND your costs, by as much as 90% which translates into tremendous savings for your company.

Perform Magazine // Information in Action

Visit: www.actuate.com/xenos | Call: 1 (800) 814-5018 (toll free) or 56 1 (905) 763-5096 | Email: xenosinfo@actuate.com

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