Implementation planning

Updated: 2009-04-30

Before building your applications, make sure that you consider your organization's business requirements and long-term technology goals. Gather pertinent information before you start. This will contribute to a successful implementation with a final product mapping to your company's business intelligence roadmap.

Note

Before you start implementing your PerformancePoint Planning server system, we recommend that you first read about the architectural concepts of Planning Server.

Note

See the PerformancePoint Server 2007 Deployment Guide for complete installation and deployment details.

Impact assessment

Conduct an assessment to measure the impact of deploying Planning as part of your process. The assessment should include which business activities will be affected, the identification of application goals and critical success factors, a review of your current performance management processes, and a list of identified risks complete with a mitigation plan for each.

Determine affected business activities

Identify all business activities that will be affected by your Planning implementation. Affected business activity examples include the following:

  • Planning, budgeting, and forecasting

  • Subsidiary-level and corporate reporting

  • Management and executive reporting

  • Workflow management and processes

Application goals and critical success factors

Determine which application goals are most critical to your Planning implementation and develop critical success factors that are unique, clear measures of implementation success.

Examples of application goals include the following:

  • Reducing the number of days spent on planning by fifty percent

  • Adding advanced financial and executive reporting capabilities

  • Reaching more users and involving them in performance-management processes

Examples of critical success factors include the following:

  • Improved accuracy in budgeting and forecasting

  • Increased management and employee satisfaction with performance management processes

  • Better accuracy and reliability in the performance management system

 

Strengths and weaknesses of current performance management processes

Identify what works and what does not work in your current performance management processes. Examples of questions that identify strengths and weaknesses include the following:

  • Are your systems designed to match your business model and organizational structure?

  • Are your reporting needs being met by your current system?

  • Can your organization easily update forecasts and generate corporate-level forecast consolidations?

  • Is the workflow for generating a budget clear and easy to navigate for users?

  • Is your sensitive financial data secure, and can you maintain individual permissions based on user?

Identify risks and define mitigation plans

It is important to identify the risks involved with your implementation and to determine an appropriate mitigation plan for each risk before you deploy Planning.

For each risk, assign a severity level and the probability of it occurring. A mitigation plan lessens the affect of the risk should it occur. Risks and mitigation plans depend on your implementation plan, and processes will vary by company.

Risks typically encountered during any software implementation include:

  • Lack of resources such as personnel, hardware, or data

  • Lack of management support

  • Complexity of the planned business scenario

A detailed implementation project plan can help reduce the effect of many of these risks.

Download this book

This topic is included in the following downloadable book for easier reading and printing:

See the full list of available books at Downloadable content for PerformancePoint Planning Server.

See Also