Enabling Alignment for Operational Performance Management

VentanaMonitor™

Managing a company’s operations in such a way that it takes the right actions in relation to organizational objectives and initiatives is part of the foundation for driving alignment in performance management. Pilot Software now offers a new version of PilotWorks 2005 Winter Edition to further enable operational performance management to adapt to an organization’s management process and review. Ventana Research recommends that organizations interested in managing operational performance of initiatives and objectives that are linked to the business strategy should consider Pilot Software.

Assessment
Pilot Software, a long standing solution provider in enabling performance management, has brought to market PilotWorks 2005 Winter Edition. This new release introduces innovative capabilities for managing the performance of your strategy, objectives, initiatives and targets. These critical components of a Performance Management process are now brought into an application that can be easily adopted and deployed.

Previously, methods for automating the synchronization of management processes, and managing people across departments in order to achieve performance targets, have been quite difficult. To address the complexity of people and objectives, Pilot Software has brought forward a new capability called Pathways. It’s designed to manage multiple operational initiatives across organizational areas at different time cycles.

The essence of Pathways is to support multiple initiatives and to provide the ability to visualize people and objectives through automating this process for performance improvement. To ensure prioritization of initiatives within a finite set of resources, Pilot Software enables you to build and understand dependencies, and to set urgency schedules for individuals working toward performance targets. We believe these advancements, from an application perspective, are critical for enabling alignment within performance management.

To improve individual productivity, Pilot Software has introduced a user-based workspace that can also be grouped into roles or departments to provide a personalized experience. For further context and focus, it offers the ability to dynamically filter any area, like objectives and strategy. These features, along with many more, are focused on enabling business users to be productive in managing performance across operations and within their role and responsibility. Ventana Research believes that Pilot Software takes the enabling of alignment in performance management to the next level.

Market Impact
Enabling management to focus on operational performance has allowed Pilot Software to grow their business very efficiently. Leveraging a simplified application for managing initiatives in a scorecard framework provides critical methods for managing initiatives to results. This strong focus on supporting the task of alignment through communication and collaboration, and a simplified path for adoption to deployment, has given Pilot Software a competitive advantage over ERP providers Oracle and SAP and BI providers who are just specializing in dashboard solutions.

Recommendation
Organizations that find themselves spending time manually coordinating operational activities and adjustments to performance targets should automate their operational performance management efforts. The importance of synchronizing efforts and understanding cause and effect can help drive alignment much more rapidly. The drive to support performancemanagement for business and operations has elevated the requirements for new applications like PilotWorks. Ventana Research believes these kinds of solutions for automating and improving performance management should be examined.

Mark Smith is CEO and Senior Vice President of Research at Ventana Research.

Ventana Research is the preeminent research and advisory services firm helping our clients maximize stakeholder value with Performance Management throughout their organizations. Putting research in a business and IT context we provide insight and education on the best practices, methodologies and technologies that enable our clients to leverage assets to understand, optimize, and align strategies and processes to meet their goals and objectives.