How to Plan a Network for Corporate Performance Management

Most senior executives can remember a time when performance management meant reviewing a thick stack of financials once a month, then heading down to sales or the shop floor for some hard-nosed problem solving. Those days are gone forever. Today’s corporate performance issues crop up:

Faced with challenges like these, lightning-fast competitive assaults and new regulatory demands, companies are arming themselves with CPM (Corporate Performance Management) solutions—whole-company quantitative management systems that combine the rigor of financial analytics, the precision of operational dashboards and the scope and speed of electronic networks.

CPM links departments and locations throughout planning, execution and assessment cycles to keep strategies aligned and put business intelligence and decision-making capabilities where the business needs them.

Yet be warned, these CPM systems can tax the capabilities of networks designed for a simpler time. By definition, these solutions span the organization from the shop floor and IT server farm to the most distant mobile worker. The scope, scale and sensitivity of the information they manage places new demands on networks for:

None of these challenges should stop, or even delay, implementation of a company’s planned CPM initiatives, because the alternatives are worse.

Poorly informed business processes raise costs and risks, alienate employees and customers, and stifle innovation and competitiveness. Instead, managers implementing or considering CPM solutions for their company should include network planning and a thorough review of network security as early in the cycle as possible. Networks designed to the stringent requirements of CPM provide a single view of enterprise status and direction to every location and stakeholder, and build a solid foundation for IT and business excellence.

Just as no CPM solution is right for every business, no network infrastructure is right for every solution. But with early, careful attention to network requirements, companies can build a high-performance network infrastructure that avoids many predictable CPM project crises and delays, as well as executive and end-user disappointment in project deliverables. The following elements from the world of Network Planning have the greatest impact on the success of CPM initiatives:

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