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.