Annual Business Performance Management Software Buyers Guide

View this year's Business Performance Management Software Buyers Guide .

This year's buyers guide reflects changes we have observed in the performance management space in the past 12 months. Based on market feedback, vendors began to introduce a fresh set of features and technologies that heralded a new performance management era. This next stage of BPM growth, which we have labeled BPM 2.0, focuses on new areas while building on the original core BPM fields. BPM 2.0 is focused on greater breadth and depth of performance analysis; wider reach through easier use and distribution; and a sharper focus on looking forward.

The capabilities tracked in this buyer's guide are divided into two sections: the Core section and the BPM 2.0 Ready section. In the Core area we identify vendors that provide budgeting, planning, and forecasting; financial consolidation; and dashboards. We also identify vendors that provide the raw capabilities that power BPM, such as extract, transform and load (ETL); report and query; and metadata management. Typically, these vendors also offer business intelligence (BI) tools. We give a bullet only to those that actually develop and market these capabilities in a stand-alone product.

The BPM 2.0 Ready section looks at BPM 2.0 technologies, applications and operational analytics. Most of the technologies that we consider supportive of BPM 2.0 either facilitate analysis of greater volumes and types of data or enable wider BPM distribution. The BPM 2.0 Ready applications are focused on more in-depth performance analysis or more successful forecasting. The operational analytics section includes the types of analysis that companies are now doing in sales, IT, marketing and employee performance. Vendors get a bullet for providing a platform that performs this analysis and/or for offering domain-specific applications.

The Profile section tracks the vendor's global presence, reference base and offering of industry-specific packaged solutions.