Corporate Performance Management: An Introduction

The majority of my career has been spent analyzing business processes and managing projects in the area of corporate performance management.  Corporate performance management (CPM), also called business performance management, is the monitoring and analysis of a company’s performance goals.  These performance goals are measured using various metrics and indicators, which allow companies to compare actual performance against pre-selected performance goals. 

CPM encompasses the areas of: strategic planning, budgeting/forecasting, financial reporting, profitability analysis and key performance indicator (KPI) monitoring.  The CPM process is often supported by technology, enabling organizations to better track, measure and report on performance. 

Corporate performance management is a step-by-step process, which includes:

1. Defining the goals of a company or business unit (strategic planning)
2. Attaching KPI's and metrics that will be used to measure those goals (benchmarking) 
3. Gathering the relevant data for those KPI's and metrics (benchmarking)
4. Consolidating and reporting on that data (financial reporting)
5. Comparing and contrasting the actual performance vs. performance goals (the budgeting process)
6. Making operational and strategic decisions in light of that information (The Balanced Scorecard)

Project Management and Business Analysis: An Introduction

What is project management?

Before I discuss the specific discipline of project management, we must first define a 'project'.  A project is a temporary endeavor, having a defined beginning and end, undertaken to meet specific goals and objectives.  Examples of projects include: the building of the Hoover Dam, NASA's Apollo missions, and the implementation of a new information technology system at your company.

The temporary nature of a project stands in contrast to the usual business operations of a company. Normal business operations are repetitive and permanent, and are used to produce the ongoing products and/or services of the company. The management of a project typically requires a different skill set than that of operations, since each discipline is unique. As such, project management is the discipline of planning, organizing, securing and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of a project goals and objectives. The primary challenge of project management is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while honoring the preconceived project constraints.

Typical constraints are scope, time, and budget...

• Scope is the work that needs to be accomplished to deliver a product or service with the specified features and functions.
• Time is the amount of days, weeks or months required to deliver a product or service with the specified features and functions.
• Budget is the amount of all planned expenses (and revenue) required to deliver a product or service with the specified features and functions.

The project manager is a professional in the field of project management. He/she is the person tasked with the planning, execution and delivery of the project scope, within the agreed upon timeframe and budget.

What is business analysis?

Business analysis is the discipline of identifying the business needs of a company and determining the solutions to those business needs. It involves understanding how organizations function to accomplish their goals and objectives.  Business analysis is used to help identify and solve a business problem, or take advantage of a new opportunity. The ultimate result can manifest itself in a company making changes to how it does business; from implementing a new systems development component, to the modification of a business process, to an organizational structure change. The person who carries out the task of business analysis is called a business analyst.

Business analysis is very much intertwined with that of projects and project management. Business Analysts are regularly tasked with providing the project manager the needs and wants of the customer. They work as liaisons among stakeholders in order recommend solutions that enable the organization to achieve its goals. Therefore, the scope of the project is usually determined by the work performed by the business analyst. He/she must identify what the customer expects, and provide that information to the project manager, who can then plan his/her project according to those wants and needs.

In future posts I will delve into more detail on the nature of projects, the role of project managers & business analysts and the various approaches and techniques used in both disciplines.