Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools have traditionally been delivered as best-of-breed tools. Consolidation in the ERP and BI market segments has radically transformed the CPM market much to the detriment of the small vendors.

The Value Proposition of CPM

CPM tools provide the bridge between reporting and planning applications. They enable diverse capabilities that are popular with both financial and operational corporate executives:

• Scorecarding to link finance and operations.
• Profitability modeling and optimization.
• Budgeting, planning, and forecasting.
• Financial consolidation.
• Financial reporting for compliance.

CPM functionality has most commonly been delivered by a wide variety of best-of-breed vendors. Hyperion, for example, established a very successful suite of CPM tools for SAP environments before expanding into broader BI offerings. Other vendors such as Business Objects developed competitive CPM tools and then grew market share through consolidation. This strategy was widely copied by other enterprise vendors.