For business performance management (BPM) to truly deliver on its promise, it needs to move beyond the finance function. Many world-class companies have undertaken BPM pilot projects centered around finance -- primarily, initiatives that target budgeting, consolidations, and financial reporting -- but few organizations have extended the software, processes, and methodologies that make up this emerging discipline to the rest of their enterprise. By focusing their initiatives too narrowly, businesses forgo the great value performance management can provide when it's applied to a wide range of corporate functions.

A recent survey of Business Performance Management subscribers shows that as many readers of the magazine are working to expand their BPM initiatives (20 percent) as are tackling their first implementation. This indicates that the market for performance management software is evolving naturally. Early adopters continue to push forward with successful projects, and new users are following in their wake. However, both types of companies must consider how they can broaden the scope of their BPM project to ensure that it meets all of their short- and long-term objectives.

How can organizations that have achieved best practices in financial performance management extend those systems and processes to operations? And how can newcomers plan implementations that will reach beyond finance? The authors in this issue of Business Performance Management provide expert guidance on maximizing the value of BPM by extending it throughout the enterprise.

Mark Smith, of Ventana Research, posits that organizations should focus the lion's share of their performance management initiatives (and investments) on "the other BPM" -- operational performance management. While the rewards of such an approach are great, the stakes are high. The software market is crowded and confusing, and as Ventana's recent survey data demonstrates, best practices are still a work in progress.

Another area of confusion in BPM decisions is that few businesses evaluating, implementing, administering, or extending a BPM initiative understand the differences between BPM and business intelligence (BI) applications. Does BPM complement BI? Or does it supplant it? IDC's Henry Morris sets us straight on the BPM/business intelligence debate and helps frame discussions about long-term, enterprisewide BPM investments.

Regardless of an organization's approach to technology infrastructure, its BPM system can be only as good as its inputs and its outcomes -- the information the system contains and the work force it inspires. When extending BPM to operations, large organizations frequently use flawed and misleading cost data, which handicaps the initiative from the start. Gary Cokins, a leading expert on activity-based management (ABM) and a strategist with SAS, explains the critical role ABM plays in effective operational performance management. At the same time, Synygy's Mark Stiffler addresses BPM systems' potential impact on employees and ways to structure an initiative to gain employee buy-in. A BPM initiative can succeed only if the company's people are behind it, but many organizations fail to tightly link pay, performance, and business strategy. Stiffler describes how to cascade corporate goals to all employees to achieve accountability -- and improve corporate results.

Finally, in our ongoing attempt to help establish best practices in performance management, we have dedicated two feature articles to practitioners' experiences. First, we've included an in-depth case study chronicling the extensive performance management implementation at U.S. Sugar Corporation, a company that has embedded BPM so far into operations that the software helps predict crop yields and weather patterns that affect corporate operations. This issue also includes the write-up of a roundtable from our late-2003 conference, the first annual BPM Summit. In the story, several BPM experts and corporate implementation pioneers discuss what works, what doesn't, and how much potential BPM really has to transform organizations.

As always, we'd like to hear from you, too; we welcome your thoughts and comments.

David Blansfield is editorial director and publisher of Business Performance Management and chair of the BPM Summit. You can reach him at dblansfield@penton.com.