Getting a single version of the facts.

• Author: Cowan, Tom
• Position: Forecasting - Business performance management software organizes business information

Effectively managing a company's business performance hinges on getting the straight and accurate story behind the numbers that represent past results, current plans and future forecasts.

Easier said than done. For such forecasting, historically, corporations have relied primarily on data in Microsoft[R] Excel spreadsheets or in a similar database-driven structured format. Yet, recent analyst reports have shed new light on the importance of unstructured data -- originating externally or from employee desktops -- claiming that an astounding 85 percent of corporate knowledge is buried in unstructured documents. This revelation unveils a critical element to gaining a complete understanding of organizational performance.

For most organizations, unstructured operational data is scattered across multiple technology systems or trapped on desktops in PowerPoint[R] or Microsoft[R] Word documents, email attachments or even Web site links. Without strategic, real-time access to a unified, single version of the facts, gaining a true picture of an organization's health and overall performance can prove disturbingly elusive, if not impossible.

Imperative of Change

Today's corporate decision-makers are feeling tremendous pressure to move swiftly in a fast-changing market while maintaining high standards of accuracy, transparency and accountability to their employees, stakeholders and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The recent rash of accounting and corporate scandals, coupled with the dot-com collapse, has created growing skepticism about corporate performance reports, and a demand for the story behind the summary-level numbers. The advent of stricter rules, making corporate decision-makers personally accountable for the legitimacy of their performance results, has public companies braced for even greater federal regulators' scrutiny.

Simultaneously, as companies expand operations through acquisitions and mul-tinational initiatives, the ability to communicate swiftly and globally has become an increasingly significant competitive ad-vantage. Managers in different parts of the world must be able to base decisions upon a single, real-time set of corporate performance indicators.

For instance, SPL WorldGroup, a provider of customer management solutions, faced the challenge of compiling and disseminating financial information across 175 budget units transacting in seven different currencies and 14 worldwide offices. While transactional business...