|
Score One for Microsoft |
Previously, Elevations Credit Union faced a towering challenge: It couldn't get a consistent view of what was happening across its various lines of business, such as lending or deposits. The seven-branch Boulder, Colo.-based credit union had developed a manual scorecard, but it couldn't crunch the numbers fast enough to allow managers to affect operations.
An automated scorecard became the obvious answer.
John McCartney, the vice president of information technologies at Elevations Credit Union, checked out many scorecard-type applications before going with Microsoft Business Scorecard Manager. The decision driver: Microsoft already had a significant presence at the company. "I am real big on integrated products," McCartney says.
Many midmarket companies like Elevations Credit Union, which has 76,000 members and assets of nearly $700 million, run their businesses on Microsoft software. When it comes to business performance management (BPM) software, such as scorecards, it's not surprising that many medium-sized companies stick with the Redmond giant.
Elevations Credit Union uses Windows, and it had just upgraded from Microsoft SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005. That meant it could use the latter's reporting services and dump its existing Crystal Reports application. Business Scorecard Manager was a simple plug-in with SQL Server and integrated with Active Directory, so McCartney knew he had permissions and security built in. A local IT services company, Managed Business Solutions, implemented Scorecard Manager.
Still, McCartney almost chose another scorecard offering, but the drawbacks were typical for a midmarket company strapped with limited financial and staff resources. "This other product was stand-alone, and I was going to have to manage a stand-alone security environment," McCartney says. "I just didn't want to have to do that. Also, candidly, the other solution was twice as expensive."
But scorecards alone couldn't solve the credit union's problems. McCartney had to get all executives involved and figure out a way of looking at key business drivers, which in Elevations Credit Union's case were loan and deposit growth. "Our largest challenge was to get our leadership team together and get them to agree upon how they wanted the data to look, what they wanted represented, and how often they wanted it told," McCartney says.
For instance, there were two different ways to look at deposits. After some discussion, the team finally agreed that it wanted to base numbers on how deposits were posted on the general ledger rather than what was seen on a daily basis. The general consensus was that given the view of the business that managers wanted, the general ledger was more accurate.
-- J.S.
|
BPM and the Midmarket
Success stories from companies like Morton Grove, which has some 150 employees, are bringing BPM -- traditionally an enterprise-class product -- to the midmarket. Just ask John McCartney, vice president of information technologies at Boulder, Colo.-based Elevations Credit Union with 76,000 members and nearly $700 million in assets.
When Elevations Credit Union ran a promotion trying to interest members in new certificates of deposit, Microsoft's Business Scorecard Manager showed management almost immediately that the CDs were a hit; consumers were depositing new money with the credit union.
With this information, the credit union was able to change its marketing and extend its promotional offer. "Previously, if we wanted that [new deposit] information, it would have been a two-week request -- way after the fact -- and we wouldn't have been able to change the way we were marketing that new product," McCartney says. (For more on Elevations Credit Union's BPM journey, see "Score One for Microsoft," above.)
As with most business software, BPM first targeted the deep pockets and complex, disparate organizations of the Global 2000. By contrast, smaller companies could get away with Excel spreadsheets to track business performance.
Today fast-growing midmarket firms are at a tipping point. As budgeting and planning become ever more complicated, equally complex financial reporting requirements come into play. Some organizations have or are subsidiaries, while global operations can make measuring business performance tricky. Most midmarket companies have financial systems but need something that hovers over all systems and reports on business performance quicker, better and in a compliant way. They need faster budgeting and planning and the ability to consolidate numbers from different systems or units. In an acronym, they need BPM. (Business performance management shouldn't be confused with business process management. For more on the distinction, see "The 'Other' BPM.")
|
 |
|
|
