THE BPM FORUM JOINS FORCES WITH LEADING AUTHORITY ON BUSINESS PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Craig Schiff’s Vendor-Neutral BPM Partners Teams with BPM Forum as the Inaugural Affiliate Member

Stamford, CT—November 25, 2003—BPM Partners, the leading independent authority on business performance management (BPM) solutions led by Craig Schiff, has joined the BPM Forum as the inaugural Affiliate member. The Business Performance Management Forum (www.bpmforum.org ), which includes more than 220 leading business executives and thought leaders, addresses the growing challenges of performance management, corporate accountability, and compliance in global enterprises. Through their partnership, the BPM Forum and BPM Partners will promote thought leadership to advance new practices, technologies, and processes to improve the measurement and management of business performance.
BPM Partners is a vendor-neutral consultancy working directly with Fortune 1000 clients to develop requirements for BPM initiatives, evaluate and map vendor offerings to the project specifications and implement BPM activities globally. Established earlier this year, the BPM Forum serves as a central repository of thought leadership for advancing performance management among senior executives overseeing enterprise finance, operations, and technology functions.

"With deep roots in business performance management, BPM Partners brings perspective on both the industry and the trends in the end user community," said a BPM Forum spokesperson. "This affiliation will enable the BPM Forum to extend its reach as a leading contributor and resource for accelerating BPM leadership among C-level executives worldwide."

"Our recent survey shows that BPM will be a significant undertaking for most large businesses in 2004," said Craig Schiff, president and CEO of BPM Partners. "By joining forces with the BPM Forum, together, we can help companies to better understand the benefits of performance management projects and how these initiatives can result in more accurate understanding of the financial state of affairs."

BPM is a combination of business processes, select measures (metrics, key performance indicators) and systems that enable an organization to understand, act on and influence its business performance. Budgeting, planning, consolidation, scorecards, dashboards, business intelligence (BI) and analytic applications all fall under the BPM umbrella. In addition, regulatory issues such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II, IAS 2005 compliance are often business drivers for today’s BPM applications.

BPM Forum members represent global companies with combined annual revenues of more than $400 billion. Those represented include GE, Harper Collins, Hewlett-Packard, JP Morgan Chase, IBM, ICN Pharmaceuticals, Phelps Dodge, PPG Industries, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Sabre Holdings, Safeway, Saks Incorporated, Southwest Airlines, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Bank of America, TD Waterhouse,

Tyco International, The Gap, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and many others.

BPM Partners and the BPM Forum share a similar mission in promoting the opportunity for today’s enterprises to be successful with their performance management endeavors. The two organizations will embark on joint initiatives, programs and shared content on their Web sites: www.bpmpartners.com and www.bpmforum.org

About the BPM Forum
The BPM Forum is an organization advancing the understanding of business performance management techniques, technologies, and processes in global enterprises with more than $400 billion in combined annual revenues. The not-for-profit organization brings together over 220 influential business line managers and senior executives overseeing enterprise finance, operations, and technology. Forum members will join in the pursuit of innovations in business performance management, a term that describes the methodologies, metrics, processes and systems used to monitor and manage a company’s business performance. Driven by demands for improved operational accountability and corporate governance, the BPM Forum will research and promote cutting-edge methods to strengthen financial management disciplines, and drive performance improvements across large organizations. For more information or to nominate a member, please visit http://www.bpmforum.org

About BPM Partners
BPM Partners is the leading independent authority on business performance management (BPM) solutions. BPM Partners’ vendor-neutral consultants guide companies through their BPM initiatives from start to finish, helping companies attain the maximum value from their business performance management initiatives. This is done through hands-on services that provide insight on how to collect and analyze the right information to address specific business goals. BPM Partners leads clients through vendor selection, evaluation and implementation of departmental or enterprise-wide BPM systems.

By analyzing and then matching the client’s requirements with the appropriate vendor, BPM Partners helps companies narrow the selection of vendors from a lengthy industry list that includes Applix (Nasdaq: APLX), Cartesis, Cognos (Nasdaq: COGN), Computer Associates (NYSE: CA), Comshare (TSE:GAC), FRx Software, Hyperion (Nasdaq: HYSL), Longview Solutions, OutlookSoft, PeopleSoft (Nasdaq: PSFT), SAP (NYSE: SAP), SAS, SRC Software and others. For further details, go to www.bpmpartners.com