So the first thing Cartesis Finance does is assimilate the data for us and give it back to us in a way that helps us run the business. The fundamental reports that we get out of it are comparative income statements, compared to budget and prior year, for the current month and year-to-date throughout the year with operations and exchange-rate impacts calculated separately. We use the software also to get some of our fundamental product-level revenue reporting and operating expense reporting. But we still supplement it with a lot of Excel reporting.

BPM: What kinds of things do you do in Excel?

Imperato: We do a lot of our forecasting in Excel. We download the actual information out of Cartesis Finance and build spreadsheets that mimic what's in it in terms of appearance, and we do the forecasting in Excel. We do this forecasting not only for the income statement, but also for the revenue detail and even for operating expense detail. For a lot of the other metrics we look at -- whether they're balance sheet metrics or cash flow metrics or capital spending detail -- we start with what Cartesis Finance gives us as the actual numbers each week or each month and then bring it to the next level of analysis or forecasting in Excel.

BPM: Do you have plans to reduce Excel's role in your performance management processes?

Imperato: When we've implemented JD Edwards, a lot of the base data that we're trying to pull into Cartesis Finance today to help us with things such as revenue reporting and expense reporting will probably come out of the ERP system versus Excel. On the flip side of that, we're starting to talk about using the software to support high level planning, forecasting, and business analysis, and to work our budgets and periodic reforecasts more into it. We'll use it more as the front end, as opposed to its current role as our main data collection program. So our processes will be more efficient, and we shouldn't rely as much on Excel.

BPM: Today when your company has an acquisition or divestiture, how do you integrate a new company into your reporting process?

Imperato: We've done eight acquisitions in the last year and a half, and one of the key steps of our early integration plan is to get the new acquisitions onto the software. That means getting some of our people out to the acquisitions, looking at the structure of the database that they have, whatever general ledger it may be, and getting the right extracts we need so that we can map them directly into Cartesis Finance. We'll usually get that done within the first 60 days. For a lot of reasons, including Sarbanes-Oxley and efficiency, we like to get the extracts capability and the mapping as quickly as we can. It gives us a closed loop.

BPM: And then within Cartesis Finance, you consolidate the information and report it up to VIASYS management?

Imperato: Yes. When we do an acquisition, we decide what management entity it's part of, collect the level of information that we need, and then it just becomes part of the SBU reporting structure.

BPM: How do you determine the metrics that you use to gauge the performance of all the different companies?

Imperato: Well, this is something that's evolved over the years here. When we first started, we were really just focused on getting a balance sheet and a P&L that had the integrity and was timely enough to let us look at the company the way we needed. As we evolved, we put in more sophisticated metrics. But to be honest, we're still somewhat limited in the types of things we can do often enough that they become institutionalized. So the things we're looking at are not unusual. One metric that's important to us, certainly, is revenue growth. And we put a fair amount of focus on new products. If we launch a new product, we like to track it for a couple of years to see how it's performing. We also look at the key operating expense items as percents of revenue and make sure that we can understand why they're moving as they are. We set financial and operational targets in areas such as R&D and SG&A on an annual basis. We also look at some productivity metrics in terms of head count and balance sheet indicators in different parts of our company.

We're a central corporate headquarters group here in Conshohocken, so we deal primarily with financial-type metrics, but as we've brought new talent into our business units and have focused more on operational issues at the SBU level, we've seen a lot of more traditional metrics coming into our manufacturing plants and other parts of the organization. When these were relatively small stand-alone companies, they were not focusing on a lot of these things.

BPM: If someone implements a new metric in one area of your organization and it's working, is there some kind of formal way for that to be shared?

Imperato: That's one of the really exciting things that's been happening at VIASYS in the last two years, in my opinion, although I'd be exaggerating if I said we have a formal process. Most of the people here, not only in the corporate headquarters but even in the business units, wear more than one hat in terms of their job responsibilities, and in the last two years we've finally found ourselves in a position where we could start putting in processes that allow people to share a lot more than they ever have before. In the early days we picked some of the low-hanging fruit -- for example by getting some of the purchasing people together and saying, "Look, it doesn't make sense to not have one communications contract with a major partner, one freight contract, one travel agency, etc." So we took care of a few of those things and got some nice benefits out of it.

But in recent years, as we've gotten better systems and more sophisticated people and the company's gotten a little bit bigger, we've done other things. For example, we put into place a manufacturing steering committee that is looking at our manufacturing capability on a global basis and trying to make sure that we optimize wherever we can and that we are looking at things as similarly as we can. It's hard with all different systems sometimes, but we have people talking and finding ways.

BPM: What would you say to someone in an organization that is engaged in quite a bit of M&A activity but doesn't have a good consolidation and reporting tool?

Imperato: A company that's doing a fair bit of M&A activity probably would find themselves struggling tremendously if they didn't make this one of their first priorities. If we hadn't done what we did back at the very beginning, if we hadn't done it as quickly as we did, I'm not sure what VIASYS would look like today. And that was even before Sarbanes-Oxley, which clearly changed our world tremendously. If you can't get your hands around what you're acquiring or what you're doing from a structural standpoint inside the company -- quickly and with the appropriate level of controls -- you're asking for trouble.

So what I would say to somebody that doesn't have one is that I would make it one of my highest priorities early on. You need to get data in a consistent and comprehensive manner on a timely basis so that you can understand what you've done and how it interfaces and interacts with the rest of your company.