Enterprise Performance Management: an eye on performance

During 2015 and 2016, three surveys were jointly commissioned by ACCA and KPMG to assess how the Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) capability within the finance function is providing the business with the appropriate people, processes and technology to:

• Support Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting
• Deliver effective and efficient Performance Reporting
• Improve business decisions through insightful Profitability and Cost Analysis.

Three reports were published, each taking one of the topics above. Enterprise Performance Management: an eye on performance summarises the themes and findings from the three surveys and creates an EPM wide point of view.

The findings from our three surveys highlighted that organisations are facing challenges across all the areas we reviewed:

• Organisation structure eg are accountabilities and reports aligned to performance management?
• Operating model eg is business partnering effectively embedded to engage finance professionals in supporting strategic insight?
• Quality of data eg how can organisations tackle big data when they struggle with local data
• Use of technology eg why do organisations fail to realise return on investment for tech projects

To effectively tackle the issues identified in each, the report recommends a clearly defined Performance Management Framework must be put in place to enable the processes to be clearly defined, integrated and linked to the delivery of value. On top of this organisations need to focus on critical enablers to realise the potential value of EPM.