Project Management and BPM: Connecting the Dots

BPM software delivers a holistic view of projects that helps companies integrate their initiatives into overall corporate strategy.

Maybe it's a new plant or a product rollout. It might be a key software initiative or a drive to streamline the organization's IT infrastructure. Any corporate endeavor important enough to attract resources and have its own budget can rightly be called a project. And for many businesses, managing their ever-expanding collection of highly diverse projects can rightly be called a headache. Historically, companies' efforts to achieve enterprisewide project management have been haphazard at best. Too often, a review of an organization's project portfolio reveals an archipelago of disparate activities unconnected to one another or to the mainland of corporate strategy.

That translates to wasted resources and lost opportunities. For example, a departmental project may be progressing on schedule and meeting its goals, yet its sponsors may lack insight into its long-term value for the organization at large, and they may overlook potential synergies with other ongoing or planned initiatives.

But business performance management (BPM) software can help companies connect the project management dots. More and more organizations are leveraging BPM tools to gain a big-picture view of their critical initiatives. "With BPM, you get a more holistic view of how well various projects are integrated into the overall plan," says David Davidson, an Atlanta-based partner in Accenture's finance and performance management group.

Corporate strategies change quickly, and an initiative that seemed critical in January may seem inconsequential by June. With a BPM system, finance executives can easily compare a project's performance with its original goals. And they can scrutinize their ongoing initiatives to identify those that continue to warrant funding and those that may need to be scaled back or terminated.

While most organizations use dedicated software to track their initiatives' progress, a BPM system's analytic capabilities give companies much deeper insight than they can obtain from their project management software alone. These tools work best when they work in concert; by inputting data from their project management software into a BPM system, companies can leverage that information to maximum advantage.