'EPM Converts Goals Into Operational KPIs'

In an insightful and detailed interaction with George Varghese, GM-EPM and BI, Oracle India, Biztech2.0 surveys the landscape of EPM in India.

Could you please explain what Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) is?

EPM is all about moving from operational excellence to management excellence. Over the past few years, companies have attained operational excellence through operational applications. The intent is obviously to move to management excellence and that’s what EPM is all about.

What kind of advantages does EPM bring to enterprises?

The first two benefits that EPM brings are reliable information and quick insight to information. Quick time to intelligence i.e. the availability of information on the fingertips enables quick decision-making. The third is transformation of financial processes within an organisation while the fourth is conversion of goals into operational parameters or operational key performance indicators and lastly EPM brings about cost benefits.

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What kind of investments do enterprises have to make to house EPM?

Major investments have already gone into the transactional part of these systems. Most companies have already invested a lot in operational applications. Our advice to companies is to actually extend the operational applications and if they really want to break down operational applications then it would translate into ERP, CRM etc. With this, they are getting into the world of EPM and BI by converting ERP into ERP analytics. So from an investment perspective, enterprises have already got a headway in this area.

Are enterprises looking favourably at EPM solutions?

If you look at the larger enterprises, they are now definitely moving to enterprise BI systems. They are moving into consolidation of systems at the enterprise level. If you look at the smaller organisations, they still continue to look at departmental BI solutions.

What challenges do CIOs face with data assimilation?

One of the main challenges is posed by the huge amount of information floating around, in terms of information available in different silos. It is obvious that all this information needs to be gathered and brought to a certain table and that’s exactly what data integration is all about. The second challenge is to get the expectations right in terms of what is required as information at the managerial level. Once you understand these challenges, getting a report out is relatively easier.

What trends do you see in this space?

There are two kinds of drivers for this industry; I would like to classify them as external drivers and internal drivers. External drivers are defined by factors such as the regulator. Internal drivers include getting information quickly to make the right decisions. If you look at it from an FSI perspective, the external driver is the regulator, who wants reports on time.

BI will evolve to address the above-mentioned requirements. If you look at the telecom sector, there is a need to expand the portfolio and thus there is a trend in wanting to determine what the requirements of those particular customers are.

What are your recommendations to CIOs?

I would urge CIOs to look at a company, which has a BI platform and is able to offer analytical applications on top of the existing applications. A CIO must look at a company, which is able to offer a single EPM solution and which can also link the transactional, financial performance management and operational BI system.

What do you see as the future of EPM in India?

EPM is a growing market. One of the top priorities of CIOs today is BI. If you look at a market like India most of the companies have adopted operational application systems. The next wave is what we call as the EPM wave where companies would want to consolidate the transactional, operational BI and financial performance management systems.

What is Oracle’s India EPM strategy?

The strategy for EPM is enabling companies to have management excellence, which means integrating the decision-making cycle, making information available quickly and enabling companies to actually get what we call as ‘situational analysis’ depending on the type of business they are into. Our EPM strategy continues on these lines firstly.

Secondly, our strategy is focused towards addressing verticals that are data rich (like FSI, Telecom and Retail); however, at the same time going to those companies, which have probably implemented ERP and are looking at extending it as well as wanting to adopt CRM with analytics. This could include HR, finance, and sales and marketing analytics and it is important to extend them to applications with operational analytics.