BASICS: VDDW and Corporate Performance Management (CPM)

Corporate Performance Management (CPM) is the latest industry rage. The VDDW approach provides the information foundation for CPM, and we would propose that CPM can be simply defined as follows:

CPM = VDDW + BI

Like many new IT trends, precise definitions of what CPM entails can be hard to come by, and what’s often proffered sounds like existing ideas wrapped up in new packaging.
CPM is different… somewhat. In terms of purpose, CPM is more targeted than traditional Business Intelligence. As the name suggests, CPM is focused on the management of financial performance. Therefore, CPM involves a collection of tools and best practices for helping companies forecast their performance, plan and budget accordingly, set benchmarks for the various segments of their business, and track actual results against those goals, with mechanisms for remedial or opportunistic response.
Functionally speaking, CPM entails a combination of reporting/visualization tools, collaborative workflow, what-if analysis, unstructured and external data integration, predictive analytics, and activity-based profit analysis. And it is in this sense that CPM doesn’t seem much different than BI. Even if more targeted in purpose, it relies on many of the same core functions that are already part of the conventional BI stack.
So it is different in some ways and the same in others. Suffice it to say, the CPM space is still young, and the integration framework for all of these components is not yet mature, even if the constituent components have been well-identified. Further, most of the market emphasis around CPM centers on the reporting, productivity, & process enablement tools that automate all of the collaboration & consolidation required, not the methods by which the required content is generated and integrated.
This is where the VDDW comes in to play. While CPM productivity tools are rapidly evolving and maturing, the VDDW approach addresses the big missing piece – content – and specifically, how to model & integrate operational, process, and financial data so that the various tools in the CPM productivity suite have a healthy and enriched supply of it. (See VDDW architecture for more information on how the VDDW integrates these elements.)
Getting the content right requires a schematic connection of operations, financials, and business processes that translates to big data, for these element should all be connected at the transaction level. This ensures accuracy and maximum reporting flexibility. And big data management and talk of schematic integration moves beyond user productivity tools into the realm of the data warehouse.
But traditional data warehousing does not address the needs of CPM, and herein lies the issue that the VDDW resolves. The VDDW approach takes the best concepts from the field of dimensional data warehouse design, re-positions ABC from being a BI point solution to a core piece of the data warehouse itself, and thereby marries together, in an efficient, scalable, and well-integrated manner, the various pieces of content required to support CPM.
Finally, in so doing, it helps order and simplify what in some ways seems an amorphous blob, and in other ways, a scattered, disjointed mess – that is, the inter-connected schmeer that these various fields (DW, BI, CPM) represent. Defining BI functionally as the content distribution channel (i.e., BI encompasses the complete suite of tools for reporting, visualizing, interpreting, predicting, fostering user collaboration, and operationalizing information content), CPM can be rather simply defined. CPM = VDDW + BI.