Better Practice is Best Practice
Thursday, 2 May 2024
Best practice sells. No doubt about it. Selecting software that promotes ‘best practice’ and engaging a delivery partner who preaches ‘best practice’ provides great comfort to any organisation embarking on a transformation project.
At Mecklemore, we haven’t quite bought into the ‘best practice’ narrative within our enterprise performance management domain. In our opinion, best practice is an elusive goal that constantly changes as technologies and contemporary thinking evolve. Best practices mean different things for different industries and companies of differing sizes, capabilities, and capacities at a particular point in time. So, if ‘best practice’ is individual and varied, why call it ‘best’?
We position with our clients an ongoing aspiration for ‘better practices’. Assess where you are today, articulate a longer-term vision (that we happily help shape), and then start moving towards better practices and don’t stop. An enterprise performance management solution needs to continue to evolve beyond the closure of the initial implementation project or its relevance to the organisation will decay over time and, therefore, its value decline.
Invest in the skills of your in-house performance management team and continue striving for greater process efficiencies, broader organisational reach, and forward-looking insights that drive smart business decisions.
'Better practice' milestones of your epm journey could include:
- Fully automate management and statutory reporting cycles
- Empower business users with self-service reporting / dashboards
- Reduce budgeting and forecasting cycle times with integrated business planning
- Extend the time horizon of your rolling forecast to remove the need for an annual budget cycle
- Validate budgets and forecasts with machine learning / predictive planning models
- Use generative AI to assist with reporting narrative
Whereas the first steps are instantly achievable, the latter milestones may evolve during the journey as business priorities change (e.g. 18-month rolling forecasts are no longer en vogue or of limited incremental value; or software capabilities offer new possibilities (e.g. generative AI in EPM)).
Do you concur that continuously striving for better epm practices within your organisation constitutes a more rewarding goal than chasing the externally prescribed best practice? Would you like help elevating your organisation's performance management game? Express your views! Contact us today!
