Performance Management Software improves data analysis

The second major benefit of strategic performance management software applications is the ability to analyze performance data much more effectively and comprehensively. The interactive drill-down capabilities described above are the most intuitive way of exploring and analyzing strategic performance data. However, many of the strategic performance management software applications provide much more sophisticated analysis features, such as:

• Drill-downs
• Data visualization (including comprehensive graphing)
• Trend analysis
• Impact analysis
• Correlations and regression analysis
• Multidimensional OLAP analysis
• Simulation and scenario features

Using performance management software to visualize data in more graphical formats can be very powerful. In the section above I have described how entire interactive value creation maps can be visualized. Nowadays, many of the software applications come with powerful graphic capabilities that go far beyond what ordinary spreadsheet applications can deliver.

The other important analysis performance management software can provide is impact analysis or the assessment of correlations or regressions in causal models. If organizations have created causal value creation maps or other cause-and-effect logics, they are then able to use the data to ‘test’ and validate their assumed relationships.

Often, performance management has to be viewed from different perspectives and a sophisticated technique is needed to explore accumulated data, and software can help with this. Multi-dimensional analysis tools usually perform this task. With them, data can be stored and examined in a multi-dimensional format similar to an ordinary spreadsheet, but in more than two dimensions. These tools are linked to a graphical user interface (GUI) which provides the results on the computer screen presented in tables or graphs.