Build vs. buy, CPM edition
May 2, 2008 · Filed Under BI, Project Management
Rick Sherman, of Athena IT Solutions, has published in his latest newsletter a discussion of buy versus build for Corporate Performance Management (CPM) or Business Performance Management (BPM) software. The lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for packaged software assumes that business and technical requirements are met, and this is a grand assumption with CPM for the following three reasons:
- The particular challenge with a CPM package is that the built-in metrics, metadata, business logic, etc. must be a good fit for the business. This requires delving into both the business processes and the technical details of the software implementation.
- CPM relies on BI and ETL tools to feed it data. Is the CPM package compatible with the existing BI tools? Or does the CPM package come with its own set of BI tools that must be adopted?
- If multiple CPM packages are required, is there are risk of creating CPM silos? These will be even harder to break down than data silos, especially if the packages are from different vendors.
More often than not with CPM, the buy vs. build question becomes buy vs. build vs. buy and customize, as the cost of retro-fitting business processes to fit the software is so high.
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