In the previous Industry Insight in this series, I showed how some of the world's leading institutions had failed to apply the most elementary tenets of corporate governance, and as a consequence, everywhere around us markets are in decline.
I looked at how companies had ignored simple and basic rules of discipline, bringing to an end, in one case, a company founded in the time of Abraham Lincoln.
As far as can be discerned, there were two key factors at play here:
* Companies and regulatory bodies genuinely didn't know what was going on, typically because they didn't have systems in place; or they had systems but didn't see or ignored the evidence before their eyes.
* They wilfully overrode the insights and recommendations arising from their corporate management and reporting systems, this despite the many millions invested in business intelligence and enterprise performance management (EPM) systems and suites.
The solution, I submit, is to introduce an organisational culture, which embraces EPM and embeds it in process. This step is of vital importance as there must be no way to bypass the new way of working.
Nothing new
In reality this is not a new way of working, as it has been around for the better part of a decade. However, adherence to it would be new. In a standardised, EPM-enforced way of working, we would see management from top executives down to line managers all working all from the same, uncontested version of the truth.
And supporting the EPM system would be an approach that sees the organisation recognise its data assets and thereby identify and ring-fence risk.
In a standardised, EPM-enforced way of working, we would see management from top executives down to line managers all working all from the same, uncontested version of the truth.
Adrian van der Merwe is MD of 8th Man Consulting.
The current economic meltdown worldwide is to a large extent a failure to identify, cope with and attenuate risk. How else could organisations as diverse as insurers, government-backed mortgage originators, and the government of Iceland and the council of Kent, all have been looking the other way as they failed to note and resolve the toxic nature of the supposed assets they were buying into?
With a data, risk and holistic EPM strategy in place, not one of these organisations would have been exposed to the threat and meltdown that have knocked the stuffing out of them and world markets.
Here, then, is a three-step approach to help fix the current crisis and prevent a recurrence:
One: Implement a master data management strategy. Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II and the Patriot Act, to mention just three, all explicitly depend on reliable control of master or reference data. The only way to do this is through an integrated master data management strategy, which lives and informs all corporate strategy.
Two: Adopt a systemic approach to risk. The downside of risk is always a systemic, so the solution must also be systemic. By recognising risk throughout the organisation, you have a far better chance of not missing the warning signals such as those that have been flashing worldwide since last December.
Three: Implement and observe and live by the dictates of EPM. An organisation that does this will find a direct correlation between planning, budgeting, reporting, financial consolidation, analysis, the activities and future requirements of HR, and the balanced scorecard. Is capital inadequate for current obligations? You'll know about it the moment it happens. Certain threshold sales are in line with forecasts? No problem: we can take corrective action while it still matters. Need to know what next year's actions are? Let the current budget and the requirements and realities on the ground determine the 12- to 18-month plan. Need to see how individual employees are performing? Sure: analyse the balanced scorecard and remedial action will suggest itself.
And best of all, as the data that informs the EPM cycle is drawn from the organisation's production systems, there is no reason to doubt that there is only one version of the truth.
EPM is no silver bullet, but it does confer on any organisation the opportunity to do better business and be around for the long haul.
Make no mistake: had Lehman Bros implemented EPM and observed its findings, it would have been around today still.
* Adrian van der Merwe is MD of 8th Man Consulting.
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