FEI tech survey: performance management, where is the return?

• Author: Boltin, Gerald
• Position: Technology

Paul Saffo, director of The Institute of the Future, has been quoted as saying, "It takes 30 years for a technology to become an overnight success." Indeed, it took Apple Inc.'s Co-founder, Chairman and CEO Steve Jobs two decades to become an "overnight" billionaire.

It's apparently a similar story when applied to analytical information and the data that underlies it, as many companies wait for success with their initiatives.

For the past 10 years, CSC Consulting Inc. has partnered with Financial Executives Research Foundation, known as FERF, and its Committee on Finance & IT (CRT), to ask FEI members a number of questions about the value they are getting from their technology investments.

There were more than 600 responses to the 2008 survey, Technology Issues for Financial Executives, which was conducted between December 2007 and March of this year.

Overall, survey respondents say they're spending more and are uncertain whether they are deriving the value they expect. Indeed, the research has yielded a consistent set of responses over the past several years (see table on page 61 for specific results for 2007 and 2008). These include:

* The top need for most businesses, as viewed by the CFO, is better management reporting, analytical and decision-support information;

* Many companies are making relatively large annual expenditures to improve their analytical information environments; and

* Few members report making substantial progress year over year.

With a clear need and continuing large investments, why isn't more progress being made? There isn't a single dominating factor creating this paradox, but rather a confluence of interrelated factors that have contributed to the lack of results. They include:

Increasing analytical information needs: Companies have an ever-increasing need for richer and more sophisticated analyses. As competitors raise the knowledge bar each year, continuing investments are required to maintain information parity and achieve differentiation.

Lack of clarity/communication: In many companies, the delivered analytical environment did not live up to expectations. While lack of communication is often cited as a reason for issues between business and technology at the core business-process level, lack of communication has potentially far greater implications at the management-reporting, analytical and decision-support levels.

Often the overall information technology governance framework is relatively weak, and...