Performance Management Survey Results

From a recent Business Performance Mangagement BPM Benchmarking Survey, which collected comprehensive information on the budgeting, forecasting, and reporting practices of over 800 finance professionals, comes the following findings:

• An astonishing 60% of companies surveyed exhibited limited adoption of business performance management best practices
• Less than 4% showed strong adoption of business performance management best practices

One of the most revealing findings was that the technologies that finance teams are using are woefully out of date. Across all companies, 78% of respondents are still using spreadsheets as their primary budgeting and forecasting tool.

More findings:

• Only 41% are using graphical dashboards or scorecards in their reporting processes.
• Fully 76% have not rebuilt their planning model in over a year
• A shocking 45% that have not rebuilt their planning model in three years or more.

BOTTOMLINE: Out-of-date technologies and processes have a significant negative impact on business performance.

• 49% of top performers used business performance management applications, compared with just 18% of the lower performing companies.
• BPM were more than twice as likely to have highly accurate budgets (20% vs. 9%).

The profile of the top performing companies suggests that simple steps—replacing spreadsheets with BPM applications and embracing best practice processes—can lead to dramatic performance improvements and establish an advantage over their competitors.