"The features that were attractive to the finance team, including our CFO, included the ability to model what-if scenarios and structural changes to business lines and their processes, which allows us to take advantage of process improvement and associated cost-reduction opportunities. The solution allows us to model not only existing business lines, but to model what-if scenarios involving new products, new delivery channels, or changes to existing processes."
David Scott, financial planning manager at WesCorp who is responsible for managing the strategic implementation project on the enterprisewide deployment of Hyperion Business Modeling, a component in Hyperion's Business Performance Management Suite


"We particularly like the fact that Hyperion's products have an operational as well as a financial bias. This is all too often ignored by other vendors. This combination makes Hyperion a dominant force within the market. It is thus exceptionally well placed to take advantage of the move towards Business Performance Management. The quality of its products suggests that it will be a leader in this emerging market." 
Philip Howard, senior analyst, Bloor Research

Hyperion and CPM
"Until now, the general ledger had no understanding of the purchasing system. The notion of an integrated flow of information across the organization did not exist. Goal-setting, planning, budgeting, performance-monitoring, and other activities often took place in a near-vacuum. CPM, unites these related methods and metrics in order to consolidate and analyze financial and operational data, thus providing insight into key business drivers.
Nazhin Zarghamee, chief marketing officer at Hyperion Solutions Corp.

There are any number of ways to consolidate accounting and other finance systems, of course, but Erickson opted for an emerging concept known as "corporate performance management" or "business performance management" or "enterprise performance management." Essentially, CPM puts a set of integrated software modules to the task of aligning an organization's strategy with the tactics taken by its discrete parts and then measuring that alignment or lack thereof. But whereas balanced scorecards quantify a range of financial and nonfinancial data points, CPM measures those items in the context of business-strategy execution and management. 

"It's part quantitative and part qualitative."
Mike Schroeck, partner in charge of the global integrated analytics practice at IBM Business Consulting Services.

Targus Group International Inc. was unable to tell whether its business strategy was being properly executed. The Anaheim, California-based designer and marketer of mobile computing accessories was growing fast, but it could not objectively measure how it was performing.

"I didn't know if we were really doing as well as things looked." 
John McAlpine, CFO, Targus Group International Inc