Vol7-Issue2.pdf

8/12/2019 Vol7-Issue2.pdf

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Information in Action

Perform

In this issue >

Letters from the Publisher andEditor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

The Future of the ScorecardBy Jeff Perkins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The Smart Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Xenos

How to Spot a Bad Strategy . . 15By Mark Graham Brown

The Road to World-ClassCommissioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

NHS South of Tyne and Wear

Emergency Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22By John Katsoulis and Seema Haji

PSEG Leverages Actuate to ReduceCosts and Increase Productivity 25Public Service Enterprise Group

Top-Notch Performance . . . . . . . . 28Promaco Consulting

Expanded Opportunity . . . . . . . . . 31Prudential plc

A Clearer View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

IBM Rational ClearQuest

Building Sustainable PerformanceManagement Frameworks . . . . 41By Kaye Kendrick

Bridging the Finance-OperationalGap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44By David F. Giannetto

Actuate Excellence Awards . . . . 50

Coachs Corner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52By Catie Sirie

Reading Room . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Volume 7 / Issue 2 / 10

The Future of theScorecardPerformance Management:Past, Presentand Future


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The Future of theSCORECARD

I recently came across an inspiring article about a gentleman in Malawi who was intent on providingelectricity to his country one windmill at a time. Hes built three so far, put together with anything hecould get his hands on, and hes become a local hero because just one of them generates enough powerfor a television, the lights in his family home and more incredibly his local villagers can use it to powertheir cell phones.

The storys theme played out in my mind over and over again, reminding me that simple ideas can have atremendous impact. Each year Actuate recognizes great ideas in our own environment. And although weare not focused on the same goals as that man in Malawi, we also think we have our own group of heroes our customers, who come up with great ideas every day.

For 2010 we honor these ideas through our Excellence Awards, with three areas of excellence, outlinedon page 50 of this issue of Perform. While the rst two categories may seem familiar to you BIRT Implementation Excellenceand Scorecard Excellence the third honors the newest member of the Actuate family, Xenos. Xenos is the leader in OnlinePresentment and Document Storage Reduction and were excited to have them join us. You can read more about Xenos in TheSmart Statementon page 10, the rst of a three-part series.

I hope you enjoy everything weve put together in this issue of Perform, from Jeff Perkins The Future of the Scorecard(page 3) which explores how Performance Management has evolved in his 14 years in the business to Mark Graham Browns How to Spota Bad Strategy (page 15) and David Giannettos Bridging the Finance-Operations Gap(page 44). Actually, were pretty excitedabout all of the contributions to this issue of Perform we hope you are too.

Best Regards,

John Katsoulis

John KatsoulisPerform Editor

From the Editor

At Actuate, 2010 started off with some exciting news. TechWebs Intelligent Enterprise Editors ChoiceAwards were announced, and Actuate was named a 2010 Company to Watchin the Business Intelligence(BI) category, for creating and leading the Eclipse BIRT project and supporting the developer community. The awards look at companies that innovate, even in the tough times weve seen in the past year. Ourinnovation and ability to continually evolve are things that Actuate take special pride in, and were pleasedthat the editors at Intelligent Enterprise would recognize that too.

While were on the subject of innovation and evolution, weve been doing exactly that recently at Actuate evolving. In fact, with just the rst quarter of 2010 behind us, were already a different company than wewere in 2009. And the biggest change has certainly been adding a new member to the Actuate family:Xenos, the leader in Online Presentment and Document Storage Reduction. But thats not the only thing

weve accomplished so far this year we also did amazing work launching BIRT Performance Scorecard 9, BIRT Mobile for theiPhone and Xenos Accessibility.

Now were getting underway with this years Actuate Excellence Awards, which is an exciting opportunity for us to reward theamazing innovations of our own clients. You can read more about those on page 50. And as usual, theres a lot of great informationin this issue of Perform. I hope you enjoy it and can apply it to your own lives.

Best,

Rich Guth Rich GuthVice President & General Manager Open S ource Strategy Group

From the Publisher

By Jeff PerkinsVice President and General ManagerActuate Performance Management Solutions

Weve all worked at that organization.

You know the one: the place where you haveto go searching everywhere for i nformation,for every single piece of data. But you look in10 different places and you get 10 different

answers. There is no single system of record for key, vital statistics the vital indicators that tell you whether your organization is

healthy or not. And then theres you, searching high and lowfor a piece of information that will better inform how you dyour job. But it doesnt exist, at least not denitively. Therno single version of the truth.

When I started in the Performance Measurement anManagement business 14 years ago, that organization wmost every organization. And that was why we were doinwhat we were doing, because we were looking to improve onthe status quo. We wanted to help people measure to trackthings like actual versus budget, actual versus benchmark, et


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About the Author

With a solid background in systems engineering, productmanagement, sales, and sales management, Jeff Perkinsoversees the worldwide Performance ManagementSolutions team at Actuate. After spending eight successful years as Performancesofts Chief Technology Officer, Jeff a 14-year Performance Management Software veteran now works closely with Actuates engineering and productmanagement groups to ensure that all Actuate IntegratedPerformance Management solutions remain the mostinnovative and user-friendly on the market.

and to allow them to use those statistics and ratios duringthe course of their jobs, to hopefully do those jobs better.Performance measurement still allows for that today.

But its amazing how much something can change in a d ecadeand a half. Back then, performance measurement was still newand nding its footing. To succeed, we saw that visionarieswithin the organization often someone senior needed tochampion the cause; to push it through, sometimes amidstopposition from those who didnt understand it or simplydidnt like the idea of being measured. And that often meantthat even the best performance measurement program, whilestarted with the greatest intentions, often had some inherentproblems: a top-down approach that left those lower on thetotem pole feeling alienated by a new system; or a report card-style view of measurement that again left many employeesfeeling nervous and blamed. It was no wonder that someprograms failed.

Theres been a vital and dramatic shift in the past years,though; a shift from a performance measurement cultureto a Performance Management culture. And the chief aim ofa Performance Management culture is no longer just abouthaving all of that relevant data in one place although thats

important too its also about being able to use that data ina meaningful way, to build your business. To see clearly thoseareas that need to be worked on and to benet as much aspossible from those things that, as an organization, you dowell and from the people who own those thriving metricsand are helping them excel. Its a more collaborative culture,one thats less quick to blame. And its a culture that Actuatets into nicely, because our approach to measurement andmanagement has always been one where everyone workstogether towards the same goals.

Performance Management vs. Measurement

Weve come a long way, dude.

In its infancy days, performance measurement was just that: away of measuring performance at all levels of an organizationand of keeping an e ye on what was happening in the companytrenches, so to speak. Which is ne, but many Id say most of the metrics being measured then were nancial (since themanagement systems themselves were all based on nancialmetrics) so most of the time companies only really had a smallglimpse at what was happening. And they couldnt react veryquickly to any changes, either not when they only lookedat those metrics every six months or maybe once a quarter. Avery frequent measure then may have been monthly; today, itslikely to be daily or even hourly.

Thats not the only change weve seen either. Instead of justtracking the data, organizations are now using it, and theyreusing it on a daily basis, to manage and move themselvesforward. Its no longer just executives taking the drivers seateither; that top-down approach, which never worked well,is gone and in most places weve seen it replaced with anorganization-wide approach instead. Metrics outside of nancehave been embraced, so there are more subjective measuresbeing adopted including qualitative measures, as well asleading or predictive measures to balance the nancially-skewed outcome measures, which are still important but onlyshow part of the picture.

In other words, its an entire shift in culture, from measurementto management. If youre looking at data thats been recordeddaily or hourly as opposed to that which might be six monthsold already youre able to react to it more quickly, to nimblynavigate through any problems that might exist and to use that

data more effectively to manage your organization. Companiesare also moving away from the traditional report card approach,realizing that when employees feel like they are being judgedor graded constantly held up to the scrutiny of their peers they dont always feel secure or happy in their jobs. No wondermany of them werent on board with the early performancemeasurement initiatives!

Today, though, were seeing organizations calling people fromfar-ung regions of their company because theyve beenperforming well on a particular metric. Theyre calling themin to help mentor and coach coworkers who are strugglingon the same metric, and theyre doing it in a collaborativeenvironment with great respect. Its a more scorecard-orientedapproach, where the idea isnt to cast blame but to look insteadat why certain metrics are performing below target, somethingthat often has very explainable extenuating circumstances.If you look at the Actuate BIRT Performance Scorecard today,for example, theres room for commentary and annotations,allowing metric owners to capture their knowledge, so that theycan explain whats going on behind the numbers. Its a differentapproach, and it makes each employee along the chain a partof the process, not simply the fall guy if something goes wrong.In other words, its no longer a shame-and-blame system, butinstead one of constant collaboration and improvement.

Actuates ApproachActuates approach to Performance Management is this: wethink its for everyone, plain and simple. Its for all organizations

tall and small, public or private and for all levels of thoorganizations. Its an attitude that we think meshes nicely withis new evolution of Performance Management culture, buits one that differs from some of our competitors, who vaacross the board but dont quite have that same attitude.Some think Performance Management belongs strictly ithe nancial domain, to be practiced exclusively by the folkthat are nancially oriented; others see it only as being for thupper-echelon senior management. On that, we disagree.

No matter where I stand on the companys totem pole, afteall, I may be accountable for a business result or metric. Anif I am, its important for me to be able to drill down into tunderlying operational detail of that metric, so that I caunderstand whats really going on behind the scenes. Someoneabove me isnt going to necessarily need to go into as mucdetail as I am, so theyll drill down to a much less detailed levtheyre focused on the big picture and dont have the timeor need to go down to the most minute level of detail. But imy role on the front lines, I need that information to do m job well. Its why we dont think a company is making full uof a Performance Management system of its potential anpossibilities if theyre leaving it as the exclusive domainupper-tier executives.

Thats one competitive differentiator of Actuate, and it translainto what we offer. Our BIRT Performance Scorecard offdifferent capabilities for different types of users at differlevels of an organization. Other differentiators include:

[ Figure 1.1: Brieng Books display information from multiple scorecards and allow users to drill down to understandperformance trends via color-coded interactive display and user commentary. ]


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It wont be long before Performance Managementpervasively invades all portions of organizationsoperations. So it wont be an afterthought anymore: whena company invests in a large administrative system like anERP system, the metrics portion will be built right in. Thatsgood news, since it means sourcing data wont be nearlythe same problem it has been i n the past.

There will be mass changes to the visualization ofperformance information. Its an area where Actuate isstrong, and it will become more and more important associety becomes even more computer oriented and getsused to strong, simple and intuitive interfaces. Well seeapplications we use in ou r work life mimic those we useat home, inuenced by things like social networking andself-serve banking applications, which need zero trainingand are easy to use. Some of thats already evident in thecurrent BIRT Scorecard, but youll nd all applicationsadopting that kind of design standard going forward.Its the second wave of web-based Rich InformationApplications.

Finally, mobility will play a greater role in the PerformanceManagement world. People are increasingly mobile

offices and desks are becoming a thing of the past sothe ability to get performance information regardless ofwhere you are, no matter your mobile device, is becomingincreasingly important.

Actuates stated objective and goal as we move forward is tomaintain state-of-the-art leadership, driven by the blending of avery strong metrics calculation engine that does all of the heavylifting work, with a strong and easy-to-use visual interface. Wellbuild on that in the future through increased mobilization andcollaboration, and through self-serve performance i nformationportals. I cant give anything away as to what were working onnow, but look for things to be faster and better in the future,for a system that is able to take on even larger PerformanceManagement applications. There will be a continued focus onbeing able to link from the strategic or summarized level rightdown to the operating level.

But on the other hand, expect us to take things in a fewdirections introduce some exciting new elements thatyouve never even dreamt of. Surprises are denitely in theworks. Because our job at Actuate isnt just to react to changesin the Performance Management culture. We create thosechanges too.

[ Figure 1.2: Strategy maps allow you to create graphical representations specic to your Performance Management initiative. ]

Re-engineer your

How Effective is your StrateAn effective Balanced Scorecard initiative beginsdened strategy - but strategy alone will not dethe benets associated with a properly executed sprogram. For breakthrough results, organizatieffectively and consistently communicate astrategy enterprise-wide. By doing so, you

employees to do better every day through: accountability, increased alignment and seamleto quantitative and qualitative performance ithat ultimately delivers evidence-based decisioto all users.

With BIRT Performance Scorecard, your comseamlessly make the switch from collectincommunicating strategic information simply by the data that already exists in your exisiting systprovides a sharpened focus for improved executivemaking that ultimately creates winning organizawith BIRT Performance Scorecards advanced cayou can cascade strategy to deliver personalizedscorecard reporting to any department, team or inwhile at the same time consolidating all relevaninformation to gain a more holistic view of orgperformance.

Our customers enjoy clear results: communstrategy throughout the organization, alignmentto strategy, and effective strategy implementatwith the solution chosen by some of the nationorganizations including: Bombardier, FAA, USAmerican Development Bank among many othe

For additional information on how we can help with your Performance Management initiative,please contact us at: 1-800-449-3804, e-mail us at [email protected] or visit: www.actuate.com

Balanced Scorecard

The Brieng Book explains performance in an easy to understand format.

The Executive Dashboard displays relevant measurement information.

Align your day-to-day activities with your organizational strategy.

intuitive color-coding will highlight issues that require attention.
http://www.agile-consulting.com/http://www.agile-consulting.com/http://www.agile-consulting.com/


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The SMARTSTATEMENTSay Good-bye to PaperStatements,Say Hello to OnlinePresentment

Part One in a Three-Part Series on Xenos, an Actuate Company

Every year, companies ar

sending out more and more

statements, claims, invoice

and bills. Traditionally thos

statements have been

nothing but a cost sink. Bu

not anymore.


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Xenoshas been a major player inthe Enterprise InformationManagement Space for over25 years, during which time a unique mix of technology andexperience has positioned the company as an industry leader. Xenos products and solutions can be found deep within the informationarchitectures of many of the worlds largest companies. Witha global customer base of over 375 Tier 1 organizations, Xenossolutions are used to improve business processes, reduce operational

costs, enhance customer experience and promote the benets ofGreen IT. In February 2010, Xenos became an Actuate company.

This is the rst of a three-part series of articles on Xenos, an Actuatecompany. In this issue,Perform examines Xenos ePresentment, anonline statement presentment offering. Part 2 will focus on Xenossolutions for document storage reduction, while Part 3 examineshow Xenos ts into the Actuate world.

Introduction

Every year, companies can produce and send out millions ofstatements, claims, invoices and bills. But could organizationsbe doing more with those statements? Could they be gettingbetter use out of them? And at the same time, could they beusing fewer resources to produce them, while making themmore customer-focused?

In other words, are companies wasting a prime opportunity?

After all, statement generation typically done monthly is the most frequent contact most companies have withtheir customers. But in most cases, organizations ignore theimportance of the experience their customers have with thatinformation, and how it relates back to the branding andmessaging they wish to convey. The result is that marketing

departments are not taking f ull advantage of those documents.By dramatically changing the content reecting speciccustomer segments while getting their branding across theycould be beneting from the marketing potential of documentsthat they have to generate and s end out anyway.

Thats where Xenos ePresentment comes in.

The Traditional Approach

Traditionally, statements have been sent through the mail, andits been a one-size-ts-all approach. No matter whether an

organization has 100,000 or 10 million customers, they typicallysend out the same statement to their entire client base, notmaking any distinction based on demographics or personalcustomer preferences. At the same time, those same companiesmay be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on onlineor mail campaigns to target specic customer groups, trying toretain their customer base by building brand recognition, or up-selling or cross-selling to their existing clients. Many customersmay not even glance at those campaigns, but those same

customers will look at their statements for an average of one tothree minutes each month, and often more than once. Add tothat an open rate of 95 percent or more and those statementsrepresent the perfect medium for those up-sells and cross-sells an opportunity that, more often than not, is overlooked by thecompanies sending them.

But thats not the only element of the statement thats ripefor change. First of all, the mail is no longer necessarily thepreferred way of sending or receiving statements. Whether itsin an effort to be green, to reduce mailing costs, or to simplifythe integration with their own personal electronic bookkeepingrequirements, more and more people are requesting to receivetheir statements online. To stay competitive, companies need tooffer that option.

Not all online statements are created equal, though. Themost common and basic way to create one is to simply takea traditional printed statement and to transform it into a PDFdocument without any changes. But statements that havebeen designed for print dont always translate well into theonline world; a PDF that mirrors a printed statement does littleto address the uniqueness of a companys customer database,it does little to address customers self-service needs, and it

doesnt do much to support companiesmarketing efforts. Traditional PDFs also can increase storage capacityrequirements and as a result increase capital and operationalcosts. A graphically rich document like a PDF le can easilyreach 5 MB in size (as opposed to a more traditional text-based document, which ranges between 150 and 500 KB). The fully-burdened cost is between $20 and $3 0 per GB permonth to sustain digital storage. Multiply that cost over severalyears and the challenge becomes clear. At the same time, fewEnterprise Content Management (ECM) systems used to store

these documents have taken any action to reduce the storagefootprint.

The Evolution of Online Presentment

Besides the challenge of storage, traditional PDF documentsthat simply reect a print statement also come up short inanother area: performance. Customers in todays computer-savvy world expect to see their online statements when theywant them and how they want them. They want those onlinedocuments to meet their needs and to be accessible howeverthey choose to look at them. Xenos ePresentment allows for this,breaking up and saving PDF documents into their individualcomponents, to retrieve them as necessary, when necessary;this not only saves storage space but allows for branding and

marketing information to be personalized based on customerproles and to be constantly updated as needed and integratedautomatically when clients call up their statements online.

With this model, changing customer needs can also be takeninto consideration. The growth of social networking and mobiletechnology usage, for example, means that output must beadapted for much smaller-format devices, including netbooksand smartphones. PDF delivery, then, is no longer simply acustomer-centric issue it has evolved to become device-centric as well.

With the aging of the baby boomers, accessibility is also moimportant than ever. There has been a movement towardscreating documents in an accessible PDF format for the visuaimpaired and aging population. These PDFs are created wittags to allow for the reading aloud of text, graphics animages. But soon, accessibility wont just be a nice to hafeature. Rather, as baby boomers the largest segment of thpopulation age, the need for everything from large print toeasily accessible documents is rapidly moving to become regulatory requirement. With this in mind, Xenos has recenannounced a new addition to its ePresentment Enterprise Serveplatform that will generate accessible PDFs for ePresentmen This will go a long way i n helping the visually impaired tadvantage of client information and at the same time insur

that Xenos customers do not fall in breach of regulatory legal changes on the horizon.

Thats not all thats possible, either. Every day, new and moadvanced adaptations of online presentment continue toemerge. Xenos ePresentment stays on the forefront, offerincapabilities that include:

Repurposing content. Some organizations offer conteextracts of previously static information in structured daformats such as XML or CSV. These structured data extr


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How to Spot a Bad StrategyBy Mark Graham BrownMark Graham Brown Consulting

Weveall been in those planningmeetings where we beginby reviewing our companys

strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Typicallythere is a much longer list of strengths than there areweaknesses, but companies seem to be getting more realisticthese days and are willing to acknowledge that they are notgood at everything. Once the goals or objectives have beenestablished for the next year or two, the real hard work beginsin coming up with strategies for success. There are oftenmultiple strategies for a single goal. For example, a client hada goal of going from $400 million to $600 million in sales inthe next three years. Industry data indicated that there was

plenty of demand for their services, so this was a realistic go The company ended up with three key strategies for achievintheir growth goal:

1. Increase share of business. Get more work from existcustomers.

2. Acquisitions. Investigate and purchase smaller competitoor other companies who are in different marketgeographies.

3. International. Focus on marketing to and acquiring neinternational accounts in Asia and South America.

Coming up with strategies is hard enough. Even more difficuis coming up with realistic and accurate ways of evaluatinwhether or not the strategies are the right ones. In this articlwe will explore some of the practices that tend to work we

are being directly imported into back-office applicationsin a straight-through processing manner, or manipulatedby individual recipients within personal spreadsheets.Content repurposing offers a massive reduction indownstream manual processing, resulting in real costsavings for end consumers.

Dynamic content consolidation. With dynamic contentconsolidation, multiple related pieces of informationare merged or linked together to provide an expandedand/or supportive view of a single transaction or holisticcustomer position. An example would be a personal bankstatement, where all relevant check images are appendedto the end of the statement or hyperlinked within it andthen made available online. This translates i nto signicantsaved time for end users who would otherwise have tosearch for supporting materials. In addition, customers canget a consolidated view of all of their transactions acrossmultiple lines of business, or over expanded periods oftime; this can enhance their service experience and makeit feel more personal to them.

Post processing composition. In post processingcomposition, previously produced and archiveddocuments are manipulated in real time based onchanging customer preferences and advanced analytics. Inan online world, customer proles are constantly updatedand what was true at the time of document productionmay no longer hold true at the time of presentation.Since documents are re-composed, assembled andpresented online in real time, each reects the latestpossible customer information and can take advantageof up-to-the-minute analytical trending reports extractedfrom corporate data warehouses. Online documents alsoreect the most current marketing messages and offersthat are personally relevant to the consumer to supportcross-selling and up-selling.

Document decomposition. Some organizations aretaking advantage of print stream or PDF documentdecomposition to present customers with a trulyinteractive experience. Documents produced in printstream or PDF formats offer a static presentation ofinformation to the end customer. Advanced integrateddocument solutions (IDS) break down static documentsinto individual XML les. A style sheet is created andapplied to the extracted XML content, resulting in a veryinteractive customer web experience.

Conclusion

Driven by demand and a desire to continually improve theircustomer experience, organizations are moving to an online

The Power of XenosePresentment

As a server-based approach, Xenos ePresentmentoffers a number of advantages:

It eliminates the gaps in existinginformation architecture and process owsby streamlining information ows andenabling the repurposing of legacy datadocuments for new applications;

It delivers a s uperior return on informationby making that information available where,when and how it is needed at a lower cost;

It enables the enterprise to control businessinformation and ow for both structuredand unstructured data, making informationavailable where, when and how it is neededwithin the enterprise to improve operationalefficiency and business processes, reducerisk and costs, and increase productivity;

It eliminates redundancy in archive andlegacy applications and signicantlyreduces storage costs associated withdocument and image archives.

self-service model for customer interaction. Online statementscan be more than just a print document presented online,though, and companies are realizing the benets of presentingrelevant and accurate information in a format thats adaptable one thats able to keep up with their branding initiatives whilemeeting their clientspersonalized needs. Those companies arebeginning to understand that statements dont need to be the

cost sink theyve previously been, but rather that they representan opportunity to interact with customers in a variety of ways.

Xenos helps bridge the gap between companiesdocumentsand their customers, recognizing the true potential of onlinestatements. With a powerful solution like Xenos ePresentmentbehind the initiative and the right champions within thecompany driving it through online presentment can bringany companys statements into the present and through tothe future, helping to maintain and build their customer-clientrelations at the same time.


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when evaluating strategies, as well as the most commonmistakes organizations make when assessing their strategies.Well start out by examining some of the errors and follow upwith a review of the best practices Ive seen.

Mistake #1: Failure to Get External Opinions onStrategy

Deciding on strategy is often more an exercise in politics thanlogic and reason. The executive team may brainstorm a list ofpossible strategies for achieving the goals, but its funny howthe ones that make the shirt list are almost always the onessuggested by the CEO. Once in a while the CEO does not tryto control the decision and its a more democratic process,but in these cases it is usually the person who can argue andpresent his/her case the best who gets to select the strategies.Regardless of how the decision making is done, though, it

is always a wise idea to get the council of some outsiders.Perhaps your board can provide advice on picking the rightstrategy, but sometimes they are even too close to thesituation and there is always the political factor operating withboard members and executives as well. Most organizationshave a handful of consultants or advisors who know theircompany well and who they can call on for honest adviceabout whether or not they have picked the right strategies. Iwould take the time and spend the money to get at least twoor three outside opinions on the strategies you have selectedbefore settling on them. This will be money well spent if theoutsiders can point out some risks or aws in your choices. Thedanger with this approach is doing it when you have alreadymade up your mind and dont want to hear anything that iscontrary to the strategies you have already picked. Therefore, itis important to get this ex ternal input when the strategies arestill in the idea phase, and probably before some big off-siteplanning meeting. This can provide you with some of the datayou present when discussing alternative strategies.

Mistake #2: Measuring Strategies with ActivityMetrics

A pension organization I worked with had a strategy ofbalancing their investment portfolio to manage risk better. One

of their metrics was the number of meetings with investmentadvisors. Another was the number of research papers writtenon different investment options. A second client had a strategyof growing sales through innovative new product designs; thiswas a fashion-oriented business, so it sounded like a greatstrategy. However, they measured the strategy by countingactivities like time spent with customers, trade shows attended,and milestones completed on design projects. A third clienthad a strategy for improving communication with employeesthat focused on a newsletter, brieng meetings, and employee

website. They measured the effectiveness of the communicationstrategy by counting metrics like butts in chairs at briengmeetings, the number of newsletters distributed and web sitehits. When they measured the effectiveness of communicationthe following year, it actually got worse.

I tried using Google ad words as a marketing strategy for myconsulting and training business; I paid Google $400 to $600every month to make sure Mark Graham Brown showed upon the rst page if someone did a search on performancemetrics or Balanced Scorecard. I got close to 1,000 hits permonth, which people told me was excellent. I did this for sixmonths before realizing that not one of those website hitstranslated into dollars in business, or even a good hard lead. The big mistake all of these organizations (including my own)are making is to judge the success of a strategy by measuringmilestones, activities, or behaviors associated with the chosenstrategy. You can complete all the activities on time and in theright number and still not achieve the goal.

Mistake #3: Measuring Strategy with Only OutcomeMetrics

This i s probably even more common than tracking activitiesas a way to tell if youve picked the right strategy. For manyorganizations, the only way to tell if a strategy worked is tolook at lagging outcome metrics like revenue, prots, or marketshare. Its true that often these things are the ultimate goal orreason for the strategy. However, by the time you nd out ifthe strategy worked, it is too late if this is all you measure. Thismistake is much more prevalent in business than in the non-prot or government sector. They tend to be happy with activityor programmetrics. The people who run the Say No to Drugsprogram are happy to track metrics like eyeballs that view their TV commercials or billboards, school programs conducted andbuttons distributed. They dont want to be accountable for thefact that drug use has steadily risen as has spending for the SayNo to Drugscampaign. Business people want to see outcomesthat are usually measured in real dollars. Ive run across manylarge corporations that measure the success of their strategiesby only looking at outcomes that are water under the bridge.

In other words, by the time we realize that the new office inSingapore was a bad strategy we have already lost millions ofdollars. The success of any strategy is ultimately judged by theoutcomes it produces. However, waiting for those outcomesand only measuring success with outcome data often makes i timpossible to spot a bad strategy until it is too late.

#1 Best Practice for Spotting Bad Strategies: Logic!

Its amazing to me how little thought and logic go into manystrategies Ive seen in big organizations. Often the overall goals

for growth, market share and prot are handed down fromon high by the executives, board, or parent organization. Weusually dont have much say in these, regardless of how stupidthey might be. For example, I remember talking with a well-known Fortune 100 technology rm right after the internetbubble burst in the mid 1990s and they still had a goal of 50

percent sales growth over the previous year! The best andeasiest way of spotting a bad strategy is logic and reason.

Its hard for outsiders to understand how some big smartorganizations can make such stupid decisions sometimeswhen coming up with strategies. Apparently some of thesestrategies are decided on without much in the way of a logicalanalysis. Some organizations rely on the nice diagrams withcircles and arrows called strategy mapsto think through theirstrategies. These diagrams are created in ipcharts with a teamof experts and they look very scientic, but most are nothingmore than a series of broad assumptions drawn on charts witharrows used to indicate causal relationships. For example, thesequence goes something like this: If our end goal is growthin prots, then we need more loyal customers who give usmore business. In order to improve loyalty, we need greatercustomer satisfaction. To achieve greater customer satisfaction,we need high levels of engagement from our employees. Toachieve that we need to do a training workshop to teach everyemployee how they can contribute to improved customersatisfaction and loyalty, and thus prots. Whew!

Sounds good right? So the aw here is that no one is askingfor evidence or even a logic test to evaluate each of the

assumptions or theories in this strategy map. How, for example,can a training workshop lead to higher levels of engagementfrom employees? If people are disengaged because they areoverworked and mostly have idiots for bosses, no trainingworkshop is going to change that. If customer satisfactiondoes improve, how do you know that will lead to more loyalty?If loyalty does improve from some of your worst customers,this could result in a decline in prots. The bottom line is thatsomeone needs to evaluate your strategies with a critical eyeand Mr. Spock logic to test all of the assumptions that havebeen made and ask for data/evidence to support them.

#2 Best Practice for Spotting Bad Strategies: LackKnowledge/Experience/Success

Its funny how when companies get big they start to think theyare good at business, and that any business that comes alongthey can make successful. This directly contradicts Jim Coll

ndings that great companies stick to the knitting. In othwords, stick to what you are good at. The further you stray froyour roots, or what you currently do, the greater your chancefor failure. Weve seen this time after time. Anheuser Buscgreat at making and selling beer, so they come up with a growthstrategy called Eagle Snacks (pretzels and chips). The stratecapitalizes on their core competences of manufacturing foodproducts, distribution, and marketing to consumers. It woulseem to be a pretty easy transition, but it wasnt. Eagle Snaceventually failed and the remnants were sold to Frito Lay. Oof the simplest ways of spotting a bad strategy is to comparthe strategy with the organizations track record for succes This is what scares most people about a government-ruhealthcare system. The government is not very good at runninanything, except perhaps the military. The Medicare system already crippled by paperwork and bureaucracy and a strategyof having the government run the entire healthcare businessseems doomed to failure.

Strategies should be selected based on the likelihood that theorganization can make them work. The chances of any strategbeing successful do include factors like luck and timing, bexperience is probably the most important variable. This where outsiders are sometimes valuable because they can ask

the hard questions like: What makes you think you can pull thoff when you have never done anything like this before?Its hato ask questions like this when you are inside the organizationyou might be viewed as not being a team player.

#3 Best Practice for Spotting Bad Strategies: BetStrategic Metrics

One of the best and most scientic ways of spotting bastrategies is to come up with a suite of metrics or an indemetric that drills down to lower-level indicators of succesHeres a great example: A consumer-products company ha


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a growth strategy that depends on establishing a tighterpartnership with a few key successful retail customers who

stock and sell their product. The success of this customerrelationship management strategy is measured with aCustomer Engagement Index. The index includes a numberof hard and soft measures of the strength of the relationship,including factors such as shelf space, use of the consumer-products company as consultants, turnover of key customercontact personnel on both sides, customer prot margin,customer satisfaction, brand strength, and relationship withcompetitors. The consumer-products company is able tomeasure customer engagement on a monthly basis to evaluatethe success of the relationship building strategy.

Another client had a growth strategy linked to innovativenew products. New products sometimes took three to veyears from concept to market, so the company developed anInnovation Index that included the following sub-metrics:

Employee perceptions and beliefs regarding risk takingand innovation;

Ideas/suggestions passing through rst, second, and thirdscreens;

Milestones met on innovation projects;

Patents;

Industry rsts;

Awards, rankings, recognition;

Sales and margins from new products.

The key to coming up with a good strategic index metric is tomake sure it includes the following types of sub-metrics:

Inputs;

Processes;

Outputs;

Outcomes.

The input and process metrics are the leading indicators thathelp tell you the strategy is a good one, but the ultimate successof a strategy is determined by the outputs and outcomes, whichare lagging indicators.

Summary and Conclusions

Business textbooks are lled with all sorts of strategies that werecolossal failures: Daimler-Chrysler, Time Warner/AOL mergers,New Coke, diet pills that give you uncontrollable diarrhea, spray-on hair and lots of companies branching out into new productsand markets and cultures where they dont know what theyare doing (EuroDisney!). The most important dimension of anyapproach to spotting bad strategies is speed. Organizationsneed to quickly detect a bad strategy in the rst month or two,change course, and come up with a new one. Waiting until theend of the year to see if any strategy is a success dooms you tofailure. Ask for outside opinions on your chosen strategies, testtheir logic, pick strategies that link to your past successes, andmeasure the progress of each strategy with a suite of leading andlagging indicators.

Mark Graham Brown has 30 years of experience helping business andgovernment organizations measure and manage performance. Hiscurrent clients include the U.S. Navy, Medtronic, Eagle Systems, Inter- American Development Bank, and Nestle Purina. Mark i s the authorof a number of books on performance measurement, including hismost recent: Performance Management Pocket Guide (2010). Heis currently collaborating on a new book with Steve Player calledBanishing Business Bullshit How to Save Millions and be a Heroat Work that will be published in 2011. Mark has his own consulting practice in Manhattan Beach, California.

Contact the author at [email protected] or via his website atmarkgrahambrown.com.

NHSSouth of Tyne and Wear isnt modest in itsambitions. Despite challenging demographicsand intensive demands on its health services, the regionalNHS body excels in the provision of information to practice-based commissioners and aspires to achieve World-ClassCommissioning status within the next two years.

It is often said that, if you want something done quickly andwell, ask a busy person. The same seems to be true in theNHS. If you want to see real step change, go and talk to anoverstretched PCT whose resources are under pressure.

NHS South of Tyne and Wear provides a single managementinfrastructure serving some 600,000 people across Gateshead

and South Tyneside Primary Care Trusts, as well as Sunderla Teaching Primary Care Trust.

The statistics for Sunderland alone are striking. The 2004 Inof Multiple Deprivation ranked Sunderland as the 22nd modeprived district (of 354) in the UK. Sunderland has also bfound to be part of the worst 10 areas in England for bingdrinking, and one in three adults and one in ve children age10 to 11 are clinically obese. Meanwhile, an already dominaelderly population is set to double by 2025, with increasinnumbers having long-term conditions including serioudisabilities. (Almost one in four adults suffer from a long-tecondition, compared to one in 10 in England as a whole).

The Road to World-ClassCommissioningEarly Adoption of PBC Software has put NHS South of Tyne and Wear Streets Ahead of Other PCTs in its Journey Towards Commissioning Excellence


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So it is impressive, faced with these not insubstantialchallenges, that NHS South of Tyne and Wear is developingan enviable reputation for its approach to informationdelivery for PBCs.

From Performance Management to PBC

NHS South of Tyne and Wear was in the process of procuring asystem for Performance Management when the Departmentof Health (DoH) introduced its targets for PBC. It chose theBIRT Performance Scorecard suite of Business Intelligencetools from Actuate, which leads the way in PerformanceManagement. Its solutions capture and analyze managementinformation from a range of sources, presenting this tostakeholders in a very accessible, visual way via the web.

When the DoH made its move to the Annual Healthcheck inplace of star ratings, NHS South of Tyne and Wear decidedthat Actuate was ideal for the task, thanks to the depth andclarity of its information reporting. Actuate agreed to lendthe Trust management some development time, in order tohone the software so that it would measure specic criteriaacross the full range of commission categories and relatedbudgets.

Speed to Market

The software, r st procured in January 2006, went live thatApril a full eight months before the DoHs strict deadlinefor universal PBC coverage. The speed of the roll-out owed agreat deal to the applications ease of use, and i ts web-basedconguration. Scott Watson, Acting Head of InformationManagement and Business Intelligence at the Trust explains:Prior to the integration of our management structure, thesystem was deployed in Sunderland only. Our rollout inSunderland took place almost overnight, with all 54 GPPractices being able to access BIRT Scorecard within a matterof days. Following integration, the strategic decision wasmade to use BIRT Scorecard as the vehicle for the deliveryof Practice Based Budgets and associated managementinformation across the NHS South of Tyne and Wear patch.Due to the systems easy-to-use architecture, we were able to

deploy BIRT Scorecard to an additional 64 practices in a fractionof the time it would have taken other products.

Previously, NHS South of Tyne and Wear had a range of disparatesystems in place that made it difficult to collate or assess PBCinformation across the integrated landscape. With the new

system, this situation was transformed in a matter of a few weeks.We are still one of the few PCTs to have a single, centralized

About NHS South of Tyneand Wear

NHS South of Tyne and Wear covers GatesheadPrimary Care Trust (PCT), South Tyneside PrimaryCare Trust (PCT) and Sunderland TeachingPrimary Care Trust (TPCT) and is the name givento the integrated management arrangementswhich exist across the three PCTs. This means that,whilst each PCT remains a statutory organizationin its own right, the day-to-day management ofthe PCTs has been brought together under asingle management team.

NHS South of Tyne and Wear covers thesame area as Gateshead, South Tyneside andSunderland Local Authorities and is responsiblefor spearheading improvements to the healthof local people. To do this they must understand

the health needs of their local communities anduse their resources to fund, improve and developeasily accessible healthcare services in line withthose needs. This means working closely withlocal hospitals, GP practices, pharmacies, dentalpractitioners and optometrists, as well as theirsocial care partners, to ensure the best possiblerange of services are available

Scott Watson, Acting Head of Information Management and Business Intelligence

system for delivering budgets, rather than multiple emailedspreadsheets,notes Watson.

This means that the 117 GP practices in its region now receivefully-costed budgets at healthcare resource group level for allpatients. This allows them to get a clearer picture of whereresources are being expended, and where areas of pressureare developing, so that these can be addressed efficiently andeffectively.

Savings

Since deployingthe PBC systemtwo years ago, NHSSouth of Tyne andWear estimates thatit has saved over

1 million by beingable to pinpointexcessive outpatientappointments andfrequent yerpatients. The abilityto identify andquantify the impactthese patients haveon local healthproviders hasenabled the PCT toutilize alternativecommunity services,ultimately ensuring resources are usedappropriately, but most importantly, providing better moreappropriate care to patients,Watson says.

Having gained an early advantage and made good headwaywith initial PBC target monitoring, NHS South of Tyne and Wearis now working at encompassing broader community metricsinto the system. It wants to be able to measure activities andresource consumption among district nurses and healthvisitors, as well as capturing more primary-care data fromGP systems (such as attendance and prevalence). Our aim

is to link primary and secondary health care information, toprovide an holistic view of the health of our population, andthe effectiveness of our services,Watson explains. Knowledge,after all, is power.

Watsons ambitions are fueled by the ease of use of the BIRTScorecard suite, which he describes as visually very striking. Itdisplays information very exibly using a hierarchical structureand traffic lights, so you can see how everything interconnectsand identify immediately where issues are arising,he says. Youcan then drill down into more detail to see whats going on.

Traffic-Light Alerts

The sophisticated reporting capabilities provided by BIScorecard are so accessible that they are used across thboard from executive directors (for performance informatioto the staff on the front line (for management and clinicainformation, to support decision-making). BIRT Scorecprovides a Brieng Book feature, for example, which alloorganizations to create and deploy customized views operformance to accommodate specic usersneeds.

Previously, we had a number of disparate systems tacklinvarious aspeof PerformaM a n a g e m e nbut there was continuity, and th

were many gaWatson says. It also very resouintensive trying update them Now, everythis centralieveryone has it, aits very accessibl

The software very intuitive so you dont neIT skills to introd

new elements. If new legislation is introduced concerninadditional performance areas that need to be measured, youcan build new frameworks very quickly, without having to wafor an external software exper t to come in,Watson explains.

Staff Savings, Better Decisions

The software has provided such a boost to productivity that itallowed NHS South of Tyne and Wear to free up resources other more strategic tasks. But above all, the system lets us puout information and robustly monitor and manage resources

Watson says. This is its real value getting practices to loat their budgets and review how they are referring patients tsecondary care, so that improvements can be made.

The journey towards World-Class Commissioning stacontinues, as NHS South of Tyne and Wear works to introduadditional data into BIRT Scorecard. Thanks to the Actusystem, we now have a very good feel of where we are with thiWere now using BIRT Scorecard for all aspects of PerformaManagement and health commission frameworks, so we hava clear roadmap on which to chart our progress,Watson says


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Rich Information ApplicationsEnable Healthcare Providersto Maintain Healthy Data

By 2030the United States over-65 pexpected to nearly triple from ia result of the inuential bageneration reaching their retirement years. And as is natural with population, those baby boomers will face escalating health issues, in tumore and more pressure on the healthcare system and continuing to addit for years to come. Thats not the only concern that the healthcare indueither; 16 percent of Americans dont have medical insurance, while percent of the population has opted out of their health insurance for a mof reasons, including an inability to afford the payroll deductions.

Meanwhile, as demand increases, costs are escalating, largely becausehealthcare hasnt been organic. While more customers enter the healthcarthere are fewer companies out there to offer them the services that thInstead, existing companies grow to try to accommodate the increased Skyrocketing costs are making it look like the industry is getting biggbecause costs and revenues for those left keep going up. The total nu

commercial healthcare plans is decreasing, while high-deductible healthdecreasing prots. As a result a greatby necessity, has been put on costs, sefficiencies. Growth, in turn, has cquality of the services that are beMechanisms are needed to spur orgain healthcare, as well as to entice tuninsured and to build more consuproducts.

As changes continue to reshape the industry, healthcare providers are they must view themselves differenthe past and improve their methogather the right data in an efficient waneed information that allows them ttheir performance in a wide range oincluding regulatory requirements, phealthcare services, outcomes opernance. Rich Information Applicatmassive impact on a healthcare orgability to deliver services, create dand enhance market appeal.

Too Much Data, Too Little TimHospitals are businesses, and like athey need to make money in otrevenue must exceed expenses. Whena hospital often cant afford to continuis why the United States is losing an ahospitals a year. Others risk closing of Medicaid under funding. Meanthird of the revenue that used to be ca

EMERGENCYRESPONSE

By John Katsoulis & Seema HajiActuate Corporation


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hospitals now goes to non-hospital providers, physicians andambulatory surgery companies. Occupancy rates are goingup but the number of beds is on the decline. Fees are goingdown but costs are going up.

Healthcare data is also getting more difficult to manage with more regulations, complex reimbursement processesand fewer staff. Although patient care continues to be topof mind, utilization management, physician satisfaction andemployee satisfaction also need to be measured accurately.An explosion of data has accompanied these factors on adaily, weekly, and monthly basis, including:

Detailed nancial data spitting out from billing and cost-tracking systems;

Average census, admissions, discharges, and length-of-stay information;

Turnover rates, vacancies, accident r ates, and employeesatisfaction tracked by Human Resources;

And accreditation, certication, outside performancebenchmarks, and patient satisfaction levels, monitoredby managers;

The result is data overload.

BIRT-Based Rich Information Applications andBusiness Intelligence ToolsAn effective healthcare information system must access andintegrate real-time data such as efficiencies and utilization,patient and physician information, and employee satisfaction. This information exists in multiple systems. As new mandatesare implemented, healthcare providers must expand theiruse for larger user populations. Dependability and highperformance become crucial business requirements at thisstage as well.

Actuate Healthcare solutions can help healthcare agencieswade through the data overload. They are built on BIRT(Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools) and BIRTPerformance Scorecard to deliver a cost-effective powerfulsolution that can be used by hospitals, medical facilities and

healthcare professionals.For healthcare, BIRT tools offer options for creating interactivedashboards, billing and claims scorecards, physiciansdashboards, strategy maps and interactive reports, enablingthe management and improvement of performance. ActuateHealthcare solutions empower hospitals and medical staff by:

Streamlining nancial, operational and customerinteraction processes with up-to-the-momentinformation to slash costs and improve patientsatisfaction;

Delivering regular and on-demand content to all usersfrom a single unied platform so they can make the rightdecisions at the right time;

Lowering the total cost of ownership with Open Sourcetechnology, zero-training environments, lowest setupcosts and fastest time to market;

Providing physicians, nurses and other staff with therichest, most personalized user experience possible.

BIRT Performance Management

BIRT displays powerful, visually engaging dashboards andscorecards to track healthcare Key Performance Indicators ( KPIs)such as operational efficiencies, billing and claims informationand physician performance to convey this information tohospital administrators in an easily consumable format. BIRT

dashboards display data about current and past performanceand show what needs to be improved either immediately orin the future. Users can drill through into BIRT reports for root-cause and what-if analysis.

Users can view or create dashboards from templates, readcommentary down to the measure level and view trendinginformation over time and location. Enabling interactivecontent allows stakeholders to evaluate the results of servicesprovided and the overall effectiveness of processes. Withthe right view of KPIs, areas for concern can be identiedimmediately and a hospitals performance and outcomes canbe managed effectively.

End users can access regular and on-demand content in avariety of presentation styles, including brochure-qualitydocuments, performance scorecards, Brieng Books, Excelles, dashboards and simple data-driven web pages. Withlimitless data presentation formats and integration possibilitiesfrom a single platform, Actuates Rich Information Application-ready platform leads to 100 percent user adoption across theenterprise.

Conclusion

The healthcare industry in the United States faces greatchallenges now and in the years to come. A rigorousPerformance Management program can keep track ofperformance trends; without one, results are difficult toascertain. Increasing regulatory guidelines detailing newcritical areas of performance, the demand for performanceimprovements in clinical outcomes, and increased reportingdemands have all contributed to this need for a practical anduseful system. The key areas of patient care, healthcare services,operations, outcomes, and nance can be measured withActuate applications built using Actuate BIRT.

The PSEG Challenge

Theclarity of a one-page statement on monthlyactuals, plan and forecast with drilldowncapability offers compelling value to anybusiness. The larger the organization, the more critical theneed.

The Commercial Operations Group at Public Service EnterpriseGroup (PSEG), a $12 billion energy and energy services companyheadquartered in New Jersey, deployed the SAP BusinessInformation Warehouse (SAP BW) to provide a data warehousethroughout its organization. PSEG found it difficult to use thereporting functionality within SAP BW to create its key nancialperformance statement, called the Business Performance Report(BPR). The BPR is used by all of PSEG Services Corporationsbusiness units and the management reporting team. Therefore,PSEG created multiple Excel reports to display the data needed

for the BPR. This report generation process was manual atook several days after the month-end close to produce.

Teams throughout PSEG were spending a substantial amounof time producing reports and compiling analysis,states DavShor, Senior Business Process Design Specialist in the PSServices Corporation. Not only was this process inefficibut the data was often outdated by the time it reached themanagement reporting team.

The Actuate Solution

PSEG selected Actuate to deliver a critical nancial managemeapplication for its business units and management team. Thcompany selected Actuate over Business Objects and Cognobased on the following reasons:

The ability to include revenue, expense and residual datfrom multiple information sources, on a single page;

PSEG Leverages Actuate to ReduceCosts and Increase Productivity


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About PSEG

Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) i s a publicly-traded (NYSE:PEG), growing energy and energyservices company headquartered in New Jersey. The company delivers gas and electric ser vice safelyand reliably to areas of New Jersey in which about 70percent of the population reside. PSEG has assets over$28.6 billion and total revenues of $12.2 billion, withover 10,000 employees.

The PSEG Services Corporation was formed in 1999 toprovide quality, value-added services to internal clientswithin the PSEG family of companies. This divisionemploys approximately 927 associates, who in turnprovide transactional and professional products andservices to 21 business units. hospitals, GP practices,pharmacies, dental practitioners and optometrists,as well as their social care partners to ensure the bestpossible range of services are available

Industry: Energy & Utilities

Challenge:

Compiling monthly Excel and SAP BW analysis wastime-consuming and inefficient;

Financial information was outdated by the timereceived;

Wished to produce an at-a-glance snapshot forbusiness and each unit, with drilldown capability.

Solution:

e.Reports, e.Spreadsheet and Information Objects fornancial management reporting

Benets:

Saved the equivalent of 20 workdays per month of afull-time employee through process automation;

Tailored reports to specic user needs, empoweringusers. Improved development efficiency, freeingup IT resources.

development. e.Spreadsheet enables PSEG to source data fromboth SAP BW and SAP R/3 and combine the data into a singlereport. Actuate e.Spreadsheet gives PSEG the ability to createdynamic, reoccurring formulas based on different nodes ofmultiple hierarchies. Links and formulas are based on the server,not in the spreadsheet, so deleting rows and columns will notaffect data or formulas.

By partnering with Actuate Professional Services, PSEGcompleted the e.Reports implementation in two months andthe e.Spreadsheet implementation in less than six months.

Benets of ActuateGenerate cost savings

Prior to Actuate, PSEG relied on a manual, time-consumingprocess to create the BPR. Actuate has fully automated thisprocess, pulling data from both SAP R/W and SAP BW into toa single report. As a result, PSEG has saved 20 days per monthof work because of the Actuate application, and is expectedto save more time as additional reports are developed ine.Spreadsheet.

Tailor reports to user needs

Actuate offers a exible, powerful development environmenfor precise control. The PSEG development team has not beelimited in terms of the kinds of enterprise reports that can bdelivered, ensuring that specic end-user needs are met.

Improve development efficiency

With Actuates e.Spreadsheet, PSEG gets the power acustomization capabilities of Actuate combined with thinteractive and familiar interface of Excel. Power users are a

to develop their own e.Spreadsheet reports, offloading thdevelopment from IT staffs.

The PSEG Future

PSEG will continue to leverage Actuate for nancial managemeas it has helped in reducing operating expenses while increasinuser satisfaction.

Going forward, PSEG plans to increase the use of Actuthroughout our organization,says Shor.[ Figure 6.1: PSEGs Actuate reports aggregate annotations, providing variance and revised forecast explanations as well as the ability

to drilldown and expand to lower levels of details . ]

The ability to store annotations at a cell level for eachbusiness unit that runs the report, and aggregate thoseinto a single report for management reporting analysis;

Flexible output, including Excel.

PSEG selected Actuate because it met all of our functionalrequirements and could integrate with the SAP BWinfrastructure. We had multiple requirements for our reportingsolution, including web based, user friendly and the ability tosupport multiple hierarchies and queries from a single report.In addition, Actuate was also the only solution that would allowannotations within a report at a cell level a key requirement,says Shor.

David Shor, Senior Business Process Design Specialist, PSEG Services Corporation

Actuate e.Reports is integrated with SAP BW and aggregatesdata from multiple information cubes into a si ngle presentation-quality report with full annotation capabilities. Over the pastcouple of years, the Actuate Business Performance Report(BPR) has become one of the most critical reports in the PSEG

Services Corporation. The BPR is a prot-and-loss statementthat compares actual, plan, and forecast data and is used by allbusiness units, as well as the management reporting team. Thisreport presents a clear, one-page picture of PSEGs nancialperformance, including summaries and forecasts for eachbusiness unit.

PSEG is also leveraging Actuate e.Spreadsheet and I nformationObjects to enhance the user experience and to speed


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How do you get where you want to go in a fast andfocused way? Realize your business goals efficientlyand effectively?Its all about performance, the partners at Promaco Consultingwill tell you. Performing well on all levels can make yourcompany shine. Knowing where your performance strengthsand weaknesses may be and measuring them along the wayto see where you arent up to par can give you a better ideaof where you might need to focus your efforts, so that you canwork on improving that performance to make your businessrun better.

As a consulting company with 20 years experience and aspecialty in Business Performance Management as well as

Corporate Governance, Process and Project Management, anIT Integration Promaco has made i t their business to help theclients measure and improve their performance and to realiztheir business plans and goals. With offices in Antwerp, Belgi

and Utrecht, The Netherlands, the team of consultants haworked all over the world with primarily medium- to large-sizcompanies from a range of industries, including healthcarwaste management, electronics, tobacco, nancial and textile

In the last seven years, Promaco has gone even further to trto meet its clientsneeds, by developing a software applicatioCalled Connect, its a user-friendly data and metadata Esoftware and allows for the seamless integration of Actuates BPerformance Scorecard Performance Management softwarwith any type and number of data and metadata sources.

Top-NotchPerformance

How Promaco Consulting Uses Years of Experienceto Measure and Improve their Clients Performance

Capabilities

[ Figure 7.1: Using Connect you can seamlessly integrate your BIRT Performance Scorecard with any underlying metadata and data source. Due toConnects capability to dene connection procedures using variables for measure, location, comparative and period, one and the same procedurecan process data for a wide spread of combinations. ]


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Quick Facts aboutPromacos Connect

A system with 100 measures, 20 locations,three comparatives and 12 monthlyperiods might yield a total of 72,000combinations. Using Promacos Connect,and depending on the structure of yoursource data, this could be reduced to aslittle as 100 procedure signatures.

Connect allows you to use metadata fromyour existing transactional systems, or to

prepare measure and location structures.After connecting to these sources, thesystem will process the available metadataand automatically create measure andlocation structures for your Scorecard onthe y.

How Does BIRT Fit In?

Promaco has had a long and fruitful history with Actuate and itsteam. They use the Actuate suite of performance and reportingtools, as well as their own Connect ETL and PerformanceManagement expertise, for fast and reliable deployments of auser-friendly management information solution that providesa clear connection between a companys strategy, tactics andoperations.

The consulting rm rst started using BIRT PerformanceScorecard formerly referred to as Views in 1995 and hassince seen their company evolve along with the softwaresolution. Theyve used the application in close to 40 differentcustomer settings, and in the past two years have started usingBIRT reporting capabilities as well.

With help from Actuates performance and reporting tools,Promaco also now offers a solution for Independent Software

Vendors (ISV) that wish to deploy an integrated managementinformation solution on top of their application. The solutioncan be set up for any ISV vendor i n a matter of days and requiresas little as one day to be deployed at each new customer site.Its proven to be a successful offering, and Promaco now has 80percent of the Housing Authorities market in The Netherlands,where they provide a boxed solution to deploy a managementinformation system on top of their transactional systems, usingActuate and Promacos technology and based on a pre-builtperformance framework for the industry.

[ Figure 7.2: In Connect, variables can be used in simple click-and-select procedures or in full blown SQL or MDX statements. On execution anyvariable will be replaced with the name of the object data youre looking for. As a result, the number of connection procedures can be reduceddramatically, saving time in both the initial setup and the maintenance. ]

Established in 1848 , Prudential plc is an internationalnancial services group with signicant operationsin Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom.It provides insurance and nancial services through

its subsidiaries and affiliates throughout the world. In the UK,Prudential UK & Europe is a leading life and pensions providerwith approximately seven million customers.

PGDS is a distinct company within the Prudential plc group ofcompanies. It is responsible for the delivery of IT infrastructureservices for the group.

A Xenos customer since 2001, Prudential has relied on Xenosto streamline a number of internal processes. Prudential initiallyimplemented Xenos d2e software, the technology behindthe transformation-services-for-documents component ofXenos Enterprise Server. More recently it expanded on Xenos

capabilities to bring even more workow improvements to itdocument generation, proong and COMche functions.

Challenges

Prior to adopting Xenos technology, proong Xerox-formatte

documents was a time-consuming process for PrudentiaIT staff. The proong process took a lot of time due to tslow turnaround on test prints,says Jane Spittal, IT Te chnSpecialist with PGDS. In order to check application changprogrammers often had to wait two or three hours for their tesoutputs to be printed and sent back to them. If further changeswere required, it could take several days to test even minochanges to formatted output.

Xenos d2e technology enables the transformation andrepurposing of high-volume print stream documents into

Expanded Opportunity How Prudential Expanded its File Conversion

Capabilities Using Technology from Xenos


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John Alcock, Senior IT Technical Specialist, PGDS Prudential

transport to and from the site was too great. We wanted toeliminate the physical transport of data and adopt an onlinealternative. In doing so we would be able to achieve a next-dayturnaround,Alcock adds.

Solution

According to Spittal, taking on the additional print streamswould more than double the volumes of what was beinghandled by the existing Xenos transformation technology.As she points out, while they initially considered a number ofvendors, Xenos had been chosen because of the delity of theprint stream conversion. In considering the new requirements,we had to be satised that Xenos could handle outputs fromour IBM mainframe as well as the existing Unisys outputs. Andwe needed to ensure that the system could cope with the extravolumes without adversely affecting turnaround on existingPDFs.

After considering a software upgrade, the decision was madeinstead to add CPUs to increase processing power, as well asacquire a test license for the COMche data requirements.Prudential was aware that the conversion was a considerableeffort, since it entailed a number of changes in mainframefunctions.

It was a big project that involved many people on both the

IT and business sides, says Alcock. We did look at differentversions of software to implement, but ultimately decided itwould be better to augment the processing power instead. Wealready knew the capabilities of the Xenos solution, so we feltthis would allow us to implement the transition with minimaldisruption. We were worried, however, that the large le sizes up to 650 MB is some cases might tax the system.

The worries were laid to rest fairly quickly in the process. Theche conversion exercise was very successful, Alcock adds.By adding processing power to the Xenos technology, it

electronic formats. In 2001, Prudential purchased thetechnology specically to streamline the document-proongprocess. With this transformation services software, Prudentialwas able to convert print streams to PDF. This enabled staff to check changes right away, reducing the testing cycle fromhours and in some cases days to a matter of minutes.

From the outset, when volumes were in the region of 1,000documents per month, Prudential increased the use of Xenostechnology every year. A second license was purchased toenable the software to be used for distribution of outputs tobusiness areas, and volumes reached 15,000 documents permonth by the end of 2008.

Jane Spittal, IT Technical Specialist, PGDS Prudential

As the regulatory climate changed, Prudential decided inMarch 2009 to reconsider the management of its COMchecreation and storage. Historically we had been sending printstreams from our mainframes offsite via tape to be converted tomicroche and returned to us for storage,explains John Alcock,Senior IT Technical Specialist, PGDS. According to our policy, wesent tapes out once a week. This ultimately meant a potential10-day turnaround before we saw the output in microcheform. Also, there were occasional mislings and search functionswere cumbersome at times.

In addition to lengthy processing delays and potential errors,Prudential also decided that the risk of losing data during

easily handled the le sizes and volumes, and we have had noproblems in terms of loading and searching. Now all les aavailable and easy to locate; and users are beneting from thsearch capabilities i n PDF.

About the Technology

Xenos d2e is the underlying technology within XenEnterprise Servers Transformation Services for DocumeXenos Enterprise Server (ES) transforms, indexes and repurpoinformation into other formats for print and presentation. integrates with existing applications through a variety of inpuand output services, allowing organizations to add value ttheir document-centric business processes and applicationswithout changing their infrastructure. With its Java-based, multhreaded architecture, Xenos ES is desi gned to process millioof high-volume print documents each with sub-secondperformance.

Summary

To date, the Xenos platform handles 30,000 documents month on average, half of which are used for online viewinfor internal and external users. As users become more familwith the technology, Spittal says that Prudential will continuto build on its capabilities to improve processes in other areasOriginally we started with document proong. The next stag

was distributing internal reports to business users in theoffices, then the COMche conversion. There is still more can do with the new system. We are all very happy with thchange.

Prudential plc is a company incorporated with its principal placbusiness in England. Prudential plc is not affiliated in any mawith Prudential Financial, Inc, a company whose principal placbusiness is in the United States of America.


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A Clearer ViewMaximizing the Value of the New BIRT Reporting in IBM

ational ClearQuest

By Virgil Dodson,BIRT Evangelist, Actuate Corporation;Karishma Haji,Product Marketing Manager, Actuate Corporation;and Sean Wilbur,Rational Unleash the Labs, IBM Corporation

Introduction

Software development management is the ability to track soucode as it goes through the various stages of developmentfrom requirements gathering, testing, to release. S oftware requirements, plans and technicachanges in a project, combined with the eminent interdependent and repetitive nature ofthe software development process, can make management chaotic for project managersand increase software quality risks. Reporting is a business attribute of project administratiofor software development. Metrics, summaries, and contextual reports provide views andinsight into the status of a project and help bring projects to successful completion.

IBM Rational ClearQuest, a comprehensive exible change management system suitable fomultiple process management, provides change tracking, process automation, reporting,traceability, and control of the software development lifecycle. Software development teamsuse Rational ClearQuest to successfully manage change in their development environmentsand throughout the software development cycle.

Version 7.1 of Rational ClearQuest provides a new, exible reporting mechanism based oa data-pull reporting model, adding signicant exibility over the traditional data-pusmodel, so that individual team members can gain real-time visibility into developmentactivities. Data is pulled from Rational ClearQuest via the supplied ClearQuest ODA JDdriver and presented in the standard reports shipped with ClearQuest 7.1 that are based onthe Open Source Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools (BIRT), a project of the EcliFoundation.

BIRT is an Open Source reporting system for web applications, especially those based oJava and J2EE. Actuate founded and co-leads the BIRT project, while IBM is also an actparticipant, with representation on the Project Management Committee and a number ofdevelopers contributing code.

The BIR T project brings Rich I nformation Application capabilities as well as interactto the web-based reporting of structured data. As a result, it is the Open Source BusinessIntelligence offering with the most momentum, with more than 6.5 million downloadsthrough 2008. BIRT consists of a comprehensive report development environment, reportinengine and powerful skill-specic tools for creating rich, interactive reports for client anweb applications in a variety of formats. Rational has implemented these technologies asthe basis of the new built-in reporting solution within Rational ClearQuest 7.1, along with set of standard BIRT reports that present the most commonly needed data.

BIRT provides the foundation for the new web-based reporting in Rational ClearQuest 7and will help meet the core, on-demand reporting requirements of ClearQuest users.

This new architecture also provides the basis for more advanced reporting capabilitiethat will allow users to maximize the value of the data captured in ClearQuest. Thesadvanced capabilities span a range of reporting needs, including customization and userpersonalization of reports, web-based report development by any ClearQuest user, andreport scheduling, archiving and distribution.


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[ Figure 9.1: Launching the BIRT Designer from the ClearQuest client. ]

The New Reporting Paradigm and Feature-RichBIRT Reporting in ClearQuest

Rational ClearQuest Version 7.1 provides a new paradigmfor reporting using a data-pull reporting model, addingsignicant exibility over the traditional data-push model,and enabling real-time reporting. Prior versions used a data-push model to run reports, which precluded reporting onmultiple data sources and multiple result sets. With the newdata-pull paradigm and built-in BIRT reporting technology,ClearQuest users have signicantly more exibility, withthe ability to create real-time reports that use multiple datasources and multiple data sets, and the ability to store andmanage reports by using an enterprise reporting server.

The reporting solution built into Rational ClearQuestincludes the Open Source BIRT Designer, BIRT Engine and

BIRT Viewer from the Eclipse project. The BIRT Designerprovides ClearQuest customers with the ability to createreport designs as a part of ClearQuest, without the need topurchase a separate report designer, while the BIRT Engineand BIRT Viewer provide on-demand reporting capabilities.

Designing ClearQuest Reports with the BIRTDesigner

The BIRT Designer is bundled as a plug-in for the ClearQuestclient and is a perspective within the ClearQuest Client for

Eclipse. The BIRT Designer guarantees stable source code as itis based on an Open Source initiative and has been tested by awide variety of users on different infrastructures and platforms. The report designer provides an intuitive, easy-to-use, drag-and-drop environment for representing structured data withina layout similar to a web page. Developers can use the designerquickly and effectively to create complex markups includingdashboards, drillable charts and charts that can change colorsbased on values, where each cell pulls in information from theinternal implementation of ClearQuest.

The BIRT report designer provides advanced capabilities throughreusable components such as libraries and templates andprogrammatic control over the individual elements in a reportthrough Java and JavaScript. Components can be frequentlyused data queries, visualization items, calculations or storedconnections. These reusable report components can be usedas is or enhanced to meet new requirements, enabling users toquickly change reports as business requirements mature.

The BIRT Designer connects to ClearQuest through a JDBCdriver called the ClearQuest ODA, based on the Open SourceEclipse Open Data Access (ODA) project. The ClearQuest ODAdriver was developed by Rational and is key to the real-timereporting capabilities. The ClearQuest ODA provides local andweb connections exposing the underlying ClearQuest queriesa user may have access to. I n addition, the security mechanisms

[ Figure 9.2: Designing reports with the BIRT Report Designer provided with Rational ClearQuest. ]

built into ClearQuest are honored by the reporting capabilitiesexposed by the ODA driver for BIRT. Security mechanismssupport the ClearQuest Folder Access Control Lists (ACL) aswell as ClearQuest Security Context, allowing only users withthe correct permissions to access, read and write to records.

The ClearQuest ODA driver also facilitates access to multipleClearQuest data sources, as well as to multiple ClearQuestqueries. Users can leverage BIRT capabilities to access multipledata sources which can be implemented via multiple ClearQuestqueries. Similarly BIRT capabilities can be used to accessmultiple ClearQuest and non-ClearQuest databases such asRational RequisitePro to pull information into a common BIRTreport. This is particularly useful for managers who want to mapthe software requirements to the defects across individual ormultiple projects

On-Demand ClearQuest Reports Using the BIRTEngine and BIRT Viewer

The ClearQuest Web report management user interface utilizesthe BIRT Engine and BIRT Viewer to deliver the report executionand viewing environment to users. The reporting engineexecutes a report and generates the output within the contextof an application. Output formats supported include HTML,Adobe PDF, Word DOC, Excel XLS, PostScript, and PowerPointPPT output as well as custom formats.

On-demand report generation provided by ClearQuest WebManagement is supported by the ability to pass run-timparameters through BIRT. Parameters ow from the Benvironment into the ClearQuest query, tailoring the report tthe powerful query dynamic lters inside of ClearQuest.

ClearQuest Web Management UI allows users to uploaand share report designs, organize them into folders, exporeports into other formats, save report executions and emaihyperlinks securely.

Rational ClearQuest ships with a library and a range of Breport sample designs that allows users to quickly stadesigning and deploying reports, reducing time to market andenabling customers to get an immediate return on investment. The BIRT report sample designs are starting points and dethe overall report layout, structure, look, and data available the report developer. Project Managers can use these intuitivdesigns to quickly and easily create and distribute reports.

Additionally, a new web application, the Report Server fClearQuest, is included as an optional subcomponent whenyou install ClearQuest Web. The Report Server for ClearQusupports management and running of reports on-demandby using the ClearQuest ODA Driver.

Report management services include basic managemenof user accounts, access control for reports, and fold


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management. Report services include running reports, printingreports, creating report snapshots, and exporting reports toPDF format or Microsoft Word documents.

You can access the Report Server for ClearQuest from theRational ClearQuest Client, Rational ClearQuest Client forEclipse, or Rational ClearQuest Web Client, or directly from aweb browser. Security for report viewing, generation, andmanagement is provided by user authentication through theClearQuest database.

Extending the Value of ClearQuest BIRT Reporting

While ClearQuest BIRT reporting architecture meets the on-demand reporting requirements of a user, the BIRT productline from Actuate addresses the more unique reporting needsthat different applications may have. This adds additionalpowerful capabilities delivered via skill-specic environmentsto the ClearQuest reporting introduced in Version 7.1. RationalClearQuest users requiring additional capabilities such asreport scheduling, archiving, and end user interactivity caneasily leverage Actuates products as Open Source BIRT is thefoundation across both.

The BIRT product line from Actuate meets specialized reportingneeds and includes the following products:

iServer Express. A light-weight report server designedto deploy, manage, schedule, archive, secure, run anddistribute BIRT reports.

iServer Enterprise. The most powerful enterprise reportserver in the market, with all the functionality of iServerExpr