Brainwaves, the official e-newsletter of the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum, is distributed bi-monthly to Forum members, content requestors and e-newsletter subscribers. Our objectives for Brainwaves are to provide relevant information, stimulate new ideas and help improve your decision-making regarding business performance management initiatives, strategies and execution. Let us know how we can improve this publication to help you achieve your goals.

Well, then, how well prepared is your company to respond to the next big market change? If you are in the tech sector, this 10-15 minute survey by the BPM Forum’s Competitive Strategy Roundtable, with underwriting and exceptional data-crunching support from Deloitte Consulting LLP, will be instrumental to help figure it out. To take the survey click here »

Welcome to Brainwaves. This issue, like our new thought leadership initiative sponsored by Dow Jones’ Enterprise Media Group, focuses on the make-up of the Alert Enterprise.

So, is your company Alert? Alert about your competition, changing market forces, customer preferences and loyalty, brand reputation and perception, regulatory compliance, external and internal threats… in general, Alert about risks and opportunities across the entire value chain, in real-time?

Our first article, by our own Digs Majumder, spotlights Dow Jones, a company that measures alertness and real-time information delivery in micro- if not nanoseconds, and incorporates a BPM Forum interview with Alan Scott, CMO of its Enterprise Media Group.

We then turn GREEN, as in “Green Alert”, an article by BPM Forum’s Eric Gertsman, also director of the Global Renewable Energy and Environmental Network (GREEN). Bottom line, environmental awareness has a positive impact to the bottom line and business’ ability to manage risks and meet regulatory compliance…

… a good segue into Lee Dittmar’s “The Complete Package: Aligning Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance”, and what he and his colleagues “at Deloitte Consulting call Risk Intelligence – requiring the right information delivered at the right time, in the right way, to the right people”… an essential element of Alertness.

But in the vast universe of exponentially growing information, an all-encompassing management approach to all data, structured and unstructured, remains a challenge. However, progress is being made. Of our last two articles, one frames the issue; the other discusses examples of “the marriage of business intelligence (BI) software and enterprise search technology.”

BPM Forum thought leadership initiatives underway are highlighted below. We hope you stay Alert about the ones that interest you.

Enjoy the issue!

Adriano Gonzalez
Editor
www.bpmforum.org

For the respected institution known as Dow Jones & Co., “alertness” is not an abstract concept—it’s in the DNA. That’s because it functions at the core of today’s free-flowing, fast-moving information economy, and remaining alert is critical to its survival.

On the one hand, Dow and its numerous incarnations exist at the cutting-edge. For example, last year it acquired full ownership of Factiva, which has also made its reputation providing critical information to discerning users. Today, the newly constituted Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group combines business news and information with content delivery tools and services that enable professionals to make better decisions faster. To perform that function, the company draws on an unparalleled collection of 10,000-plus sources, including the exclusive combination of The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times®, Dow Jones and Reuters newswires and the Associated Press, as well as Reuters Fundamentals and D&B® company profiles.

At the same time, for a company so fundamentally integrated with the latest information delivery technologies, it also has history on its side: Founded back in 1882, Dow Jones boasts the richest tradition of excellence in business journalism. The resources don’t hurt either: The business and financial news staff alone is approaching 2,000, the overall employee base has passed 7,000, there are operations in 48 countries and the client list would be the envy of any information provider.

Getting all that information out to all those companies and individuals involves a constant search for efficiency, clarity and focus. “We fundamentally help our clients get all the relevant content they need at the point of decision, and if you’re an information professional doing research, we give you search tools that have the most trusted content in them,” said Alan Scott, Chief Marketing Officer for the Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group, which now encompasses Factiva. To do that well, the information is always filtered in order to be most useful to the right audience: the CEO, the CIO, the marketer, the strategist, the finance executive, etc.. “We apply technologies to enhance the content without any extraneous information,” he stresses, with proprietary tools and processes such as tagging the meta data, visualization, etc.

One reason this industry is so dynamic, and why remaining forever alert is mission-critical, is that it’s always changing. New formats gain popularity with lightning speed, as can be seen in the rise of blogs—it’s estimated that there are already some 52 million blogs worldwide, and the number is spiking daily, with each one accumulating more content. For Dow, this is not only a huge undertaking—essentially, an enormous content base that it needs to add to its source material—but a tremendous business opportunity. And it also means doing things a little differently: using computing power to “read” blog content.

“We’ve invested heavily in text-mining technologies, so that, in effect, we read huge numbers of blogs and build profiles around key issues, employees, brands and competitors,” Scott reports. “There’s always something new that we have to stay one step ahead of: Just as the blogs are new, the text mining and visualization processes are very new, and the process of machine reading content and tagging it is very new.”

Looking just a little way ahead, it’s clear that video will play a leading role in information dissemination. For Scott and his co-workers, this is yet another format that has to be brought into the fold, another kind of content that will need to be captured, analyzed, sorted, mined and otherwise customized for use by the business community. Scott says the company is already transcribing certain kinds of video content, and is extensively evaluating technologies to enhance the process and widen the company’s offerings.

“This is a constant process—we’re always looking at new technologies, and how we might apply those technologies to our business model,” Scott emphasizes. And while he sounds more like an IT executive than a marketer in his relentless pursuit of new products, this tech-savvy CMO says he actually works with a team of techies “who understand clearly our clients’ goals and objectives and ask themselves: How can I apply tech to solve the issues I have?”

And in another sign of his forward-looking approach, Scott, unlike other executives in his position, says he welcomes corporate scrutiny of his function and believes there should be “full visibility into marketing mix, so we can know what’s working and what’s not.” He advocates the establishment of quantifiable ROIs for marketing.

The constant evolution Scott embodies is being played out on a larger scale at his employer. Following the full acquisition of Factiva from its partner in the venture, Reuters, Dow recently restructured its Enterprise Media Group. The new structure integrates three complementary businesses (Dow Jones Newswires, Dow Jones Licensing Services and Factiva) into a new unit, Dow Jones Content Technology Solutions, which will develop and offer content and technology solutions that allow professionals to use news and business information to stay alert in ways that create opportunities and financial gain.

Technology, like information, is by its very nature transient—old formats fade away, new features emerge, and capabilities (both human and technical) go through constant evolution. It’s precisely this dynamism that makes alertness so critical, and why companies like Dow Jones ensure that it’s built into their most basic operating procedures.

Today’s business climate is changing at an even faster rate than the earth’s climate. By now, most consumers and businesses are acutely aware of the environmental challenges that face the planet, including global warming, waste management, air and water pollution, habitat conservation and sustainable agriculture, just to name a few. In a sign of the times, the Academy Awards last month went green, and now, even the far more conservative Wall Street is trending in that direction—just look at the TXU deal. Bottom line: Alert organizations are taking notice.

The underlying reality is that it’s actually about the bottom line. Organizational efforts to be more environmental come as much from an opportunistic perspective as an ethical one—as much for the green as, well, the green. The most basic business concerns are still alive and well, and we’re seeing the smartest companies regularly and proactively explore ways that they can leverage environmental issues to their benefit.

Here are a couple of alertness dynamics at work:

Customer affinity and reputation management
An alert organization realizes that customer affinity and brand loyalty is in constant flux. This puts pressure on companies to meet buying forces by delivering products and services that reflect existing values. If nothing else, the green movement has and continues to be driven by a general desire by consumers to “greenify” their lives and be responsible stewards of the earth. Consequently, business segments are changing as a result of increased demand for things like organic foods, fuel-efficient vehicles, energy conserving electronics, green building products and goods with less retail packaging. Of course, consumer awareness goes much deeper today than it ever has before with greater attention being paid to the environmental correlations to corporate brands. This is affected by areas like energy usage, manufacturing processes, materials management, transportation decisions, agriculture practices and participation in charitable endeavors. An alert organization will not only engage in responsible practices, but also make a point to communicate these endeavors to the marketplace.

Increased efficiencies and cost savings
It’s not all perception. Companies experience increased efficiencies involved with the usage of environmentally friendly products and solutions. Renewable energy provides one good example, where well-planned systems can offer returns on investment of less than five years, depending on the utilities rate structure, geographic location, technology, availability of tax credits and other factors. Organizations find that creating their own onsite energy also reduces uncertainties associated with utility grid blackouts and brownouts, natural disasters, security threats and an antiquated utility infrastructure. Other best practices exist in the area of waste management, where companies are cutting the cost of landfill disposal and replacing it with income from practices like reuse, recycling, composting and waste-to-energy.

Regulatory compliance
Most industries face stringent environmental regulations from federal and state governments. Whether it’s the Clean Water Act or the Food Quality Protection Act, awareness of policies is a critical business matter. Companies need to understand how they can effectively become compliant and always keep an eye peeled for new legislation and regulations that might be coming down the pike. Some organizations deal with regulations aggressively (such as with lobbying efforts), while others chose to put their energies elsewhere (adopting best practices that go well beyond mere compliance).

Risk Management
Environmentally friendly solutions can also help reduce a company’s risk profile. One of today’s clearest examples again involves energy, from better energy efficiency and green building techniques to the use of clean distributed energy sources like solar panels, wind turbines, combined heat & power units and biofuels. Companies find that onsite energy production not only delivers a measurable return on investment, but also reduces power outage downtime, utility cost fluctuations and geopolitical instabilities associated with access to resources like fossil fuels.

Organizational Culture
Alert organizations must always take the pulse of their internal culture. Employees and stakeholders want to feel confident in their company’s mission and the impact of its business activities. A commitment to the environmental sustainability of their practices is no exception. It instills a sense of pride and at the same time sends a message that the company values innovation, responsibility and out-of-the-box thinking. These philosophies can infuse all segments of the organization.

Businesses can approach their environmental alertness in a number of ways, some fairly universal and many unique to each individual organization. One thing is clear: The business environment is ripe to be environmental. Sound the green alert.

IBM sees green in environmental tech
CNET.com
Read More »

Beyond The Green Corporation
BusinessWeek
Read More »

Lee Dittmar, a Principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP, discusses issues directors and senior executives increasingly face with governance roles, and what can be done to deal with these challenges.

Aligning Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance. New Thinking Can Help Boards and Management with Oversight Roles.

Today, more than ever, boards of directors, individual directors, and senior executives face a higher bar in performing governance roles. Recent business events and regulatory developments have dramatically transformed board membership from a largely ceremonial role to a much more difficult one. Boards are now expected to be highly engaged, well-qualified, and knowledgeable of the companies they oversee. It is no overstatement to say that issues related to governance are among the most visible and most important in the business world today.

Recent events and the current environment have overtaken the ability to deal with anything in a linear fashion, making it difficult to identify the most important issue for boards to focus on because there are so many issues of potential importance. The challenge many boards and individual directors face is how to make the most effective use of their time, talents, and energy; what can be most challenging is being confident that the board is focusing the right amount of time on the most important issues.

It is challenging to prioritize multiple focus areas in less trying times, but it’s become even more challenging in the aftermath of the turmoil caused by high-profile company failures, management fraud charges, and the subsequent plethora of new rules and regulations intended to help improve corporate governance.

Boards can determine whether they are focusing their time and efforts effectively by using a framework to help evaluate work, confirm whether their priorities are right, and determine whether they need adjustments.

The Board Effectiveness Framework, or “Governance Cycle,” divides roles in to four categories: direction, navigation, execution, and validation. Directors can use this framework to help determine how much time is spent on each role, and to help determine whether they have the necessary information to effectively perform them.

Many directors feel they are consumed by compliance issues and are not spending enough time on the companies’ performance. They know they are spending more time in total on board agendas, but not necessarily in efficient and effective ways.

A key challenge is to integrate processes and metrics monitoring adherence to regulatory requirements, with those used to help understand organizational performance. The goal should be to create information and a set of processes to help enable ongoing viability and performance of the company, and to help align the board and executive team’s focus; “integrating compliance and performance objectives.”

Compliance should be part of what you do; not adding compliance to all you do already. Even at the board level, compliance and performance can and should be integrated.

One concept that is taking hold is GRC – Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance is the fundamental idea to view these three as separate, but related, activities in a comprehensive, integrated manner. The potential benefit is that common processes and systems can be leveraged to help address all three, so they no longer live separate “lives” within the company. GRC can help overcome the inertia of “silos,” – organizational, functional, or process silos.

Silos have been with us for as long as we have been providing consulting services, but the difference today is the perception and reality that corporate governance was not as good as it could or should have been. Too often, boards were viewed as “rubber stamps” and insufficiently engaged or knowledgeable of the issues faced by companies they were expected to govern. Risk management was on the radar screen, but was often viewed within individual organizational silos – such as environmental risk or product liability. Very few companies were taking a full, enterprise-wide view of the issue, and recent history shows some boards grew complacent with compliance.

We must address governance, risk management, and compliance all together, because they are extremely reliant on high-quality information; the information a board needs to perform its governance role and the information senior management needs to effectively manage risk and compliance, have much in common. The concept can help align the board’s processes and focus with the company’s processes and priorities; this alignment is key to helping enhance the board’s efficiency and effectiveness.

We see evidence of the GRC concept taking hold in many ways – literature of many professional service organizations and advisors; focus of the information technology vendors; discussion forums where corporate governance challenges and ideas are shared and debated; and focus of industry organizations. For example, the Open Compliance & Ethics Group’s mission statement is, “to help organizations align their governance, compliance, and risk management activities to better drive business performance and promote integrity at the same time.”

Performance can be improved by aligning GRC activities. GRC can encourage and motivate sharing and using leading practices, and enhance the measurement of effectiveness and performance – internally and externally – against objective benchmarks. This can lead to efficiency improvements by reducing costs of meeting legal requirements, reducing complexity, and leveraging common process and program elements.

GRC also depends on high-quality information. Corporate leaders have had a rude awakening over the past few years about the quality of their information, and their capabilities to efficiently and effectively turn data into high-quality information. As boards and executives are held to higher standards than ever before, they’re expected to be well-informed about what’s happening within the companies they oversee. Leaders need timely, accurate, transparent business information to better meet heightened governance expectations. The problem is that they are experiencing data overload and information deficit.

A big part of the problem is that many IT systems are not really effective in meeting informational needs. For example, compliance with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley, and other regulations, has forced companies to perform a thorough review of IT processes and systems, as well as their governance of data. It quickly became evident that technology was not widely used for internal control purposes; many controls were manual and focused on detection, rather than being automated and focused on prevention. It isn’t easy to get information about a control problem, or some other risk area, before it becomes a crisis. Many companies have found that their IT infrastructures are simply incapable of meeting their informational objectives.

Some say governance is all about risk management, others view compliance as just one type of risk that boards should be concerned about. Having the right information can be the key to identifying, avoiding, and mitigating risks when dealing with the challenge of providing high-quality information. Boards, and the companies they oversee, should strive to be risk-informed and have what we at Deloitte Consulting call Risk Intelligence – requiring the right information delivered at the right time, in the right way, to the right people.

If the right processes and systems are not in place and the right information is unavailable, the resulting breakdowns can put the company at risk and effective governance can be lost.

Concerns around GRC are pushing executives to get the IT function to truly deliver, which requires a great deal of improvement in cross-functional communications and an understanding of the entire company—helping to further break down the silos.

Thinking around the alignment of Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance can help tackle multiple challenges boards and senior management face today, and can lead to an integrated performance monitoring strategy that will consider the important issues of GRC—how they are interrelated, what risk they may pose, and what role the board

As business intelligence (BI) evolves from recounting the past to forecasting the future, unstructured information and enterprise search capabilities move to center stage.
Read More »

Search technology can make business intelligence — both text and data — more accessible.
Read More »

More than any other sector, the high tech sector is characterized by change. Identifying and responding to market altering changes – such as the rise of user generated content, the continued growth of open source development models, and the shift to multicore processing – is an issue that strategy executives in the technology sector struggle with every day.

How to successfully manage these market altering disruptions is the focus of the ongoing study by the Competitive Strategy Roundtable, a new strategic interest group of the BPM Forum, with lead underwriting from Deloitte Consulting LLP’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Practice.

As a leader in the high tech industry, we invite you to join other strategy executives at top high tech companies to contribute to and learn from this important study.

By participating in our survey and reviewing the resulting report, you will gain a greater understanding of:

• The nature of current course altering market changes;
• The tools and processes that are most effective in managing market altering changes; and
• The most common barriers to better responding to these changes.

To participate in the survey and receive a copy of our report simply click here »

We anticipate the survey taking no more than 15 minutes of your time. Thanks for contributing to this important study.

What makes up an Alert Enterprise? What are its optimal components, systems, processes, and best practices?

The Alert Enterprise continues to expand on the Forum’s earlier program, Accelerate How You Differentiate: The Alert Enterprise Audit, which focused on identifying and putting into perspective the challenges companies face in keeping up with the increased velocity and pace of change of today’s global environment. Not surprisingly, Accelerate How You Differentiate confirmed that business executives are indeed feeling the pressure to build a more Alert Enterprise. The study also found that these executives had increased expectations for IT to play a larger role in rapidly responding to evolving market conditions and align itself more effectively with strategic business objectives. Download the report here »

Now the Alert Enterprise program takes the next logical step and seeks to define the desired attributes of, and establish a comparative baseline model for, the alert enterprise. This authority leadership research program is being developed by The BPM Forum in collaboration with Dow Jones Content Technology Solutions.

The Global Renewable Energy and Environmental Network (GREEN) is an affinity group sponsored by the BPM Forum, of corporate, non-profit, academic, and government professionals, who are involved and interested in a wide range of clean energy and sustainability topics. We endeavor to deliver innovative resources, reports, and events that advance knowledge and further reflection in a number of different areas, including renewable energy, biofuels, waste management, green building, pollution prevention, smart transportation, sustainable agriculture, environmental education, and advocacy. The organization’s partners and members bring considerable industry and technical knowledge to the undertaking as the channels of communication always remain open. Find us at www.bpmforum.org/green.

The global talent war is upon us. As organizations struggle to find, retain, motivate, and develop their people adequately, they face an ever-dynamic talent landscape that is more globally competitive, demanding, and expensive than ever before. The 2007 Performance and Talent Management Trend Survey, fielded by the Business Performance Management (BPM) Forum and SuccessFactors, in cooperation with the Human Capital Institute, audits and assesses talent management trends and trajectories for 2007. The study demonstrates that the battle for talent is intensifying, leading to higher compensation packages, slower time to new hires, strains on quality and customer service, and reduced business flexibility. Download the report Here »

In today’s environment of accelerated business cycles, non-traditional global competition and financial accountability, making good decisions has become more critical than ever. Yet, 40 percent of this BPM Forum’s study participants said their companies have “significant” shortcomings when it comes to making decisions. BPM Forum’s Business Traction report looks at the dynamics and drivers of good (and bad) decision making, the critical forces that accelerate or inhibit decision making, and the best course of action to improve the process. Learn more

To download the Business Traction from Better Decision Action Report click here »

The research, sponsored by InfoExpress, Nokia, and Sybase, reveals that while most businesses are integrating mobility into their organization, too few have policies in place to protect mobile device content for compliance and security purposes, fewer still have measures in place to enforce those policies, and a sizable number are simply waiting for disaster to happen in order to take action. For all of the findings:

To download the Comply on the Fly report click here »

To view the on-demand webinar click here »

Stay tuned (and alert) for upcoming dinner dialogues, roundtables, other symposia, and events across the nation and Europe on the Tech Sector Competitive Readiness Review and the Alert Enterprise.

The 2007 Lean Six Sigma Excellence Summit
American Strategic Management Institute (ASMI)
March 26-28, 2007
Miami, Florida
Learn the Most Cutting Edge Process Improvement Tools through Multiple Interactive Sessions and Workshops.
Website: http://www.asmiweb.com/events/index.html

Corporate Strategic Planning 2007
American Strategic Management Institute (ASMI)
March 19-20, 2007
Arlington, Virginia
Website: http://www.asmiweb.com/events/index.html

Learn how to translate mission into strategy implementation, develop internal solutions to foster leadership and employee buy-in, utilize the latest Thought-Leadership to archive strategic goals, and align your budget to you strategic plan to drive corporate performance.

Gartner Business Process Management Summit
ebizQ
March 26-28, 2007
Royal Lancaster Hotel, London
Website: http://www.ebizq.net/events

Everyone talks about aligning IT with business. And business processes are where this happens. The Gartner Business Process Management Summit will take you from process understanding to business innovation.

RFID World 2007
Manufacturing Business Technology Magazine (MBT)
March 26-28, 2007
Gaylord Texan Resort, Dallas, Texas
Website: http://www.mbtmag.com/resources/events/default.asp

RFID World 2007 returns to Dallas for the RFID/EPC industry’s largest industry exhibition, conference, and demonstration. Attend to meet RFID systems suppliers, integrators, enabling solutions providers—and hear educational sessions on RFID in maritime and logistics, investment, active RFID and sensors and more.

Business Process Management Conference Service-Oriented Architecture Conference Business Architecture Conference
BTQ Magazine
April 10-11, 2007
The Drake Hotel, Chicago
Website: http://www.btquarterly.com/

This program features a strategic management perspective presented by the best and brightest industry luminaries, independent analysts and experienced practitioners from world class organizations.

8th Annual Six Sigma Summit
BPM Group
April 17-20, 2007
London, UK
Website: http://www.bpmg.org/events.php

Seriously strengthen management support for Six Sigma to drive long-term cultural reform, guarantee sustainable resourcing strategies and harness the power of innovation. Celebrate excellence at the Six Sigma Excellence Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner at the 8th Annual Six Sigma Summit.

3rd Annual Lean Six Sigma Summit
WCBF Six Sigma Solutions
Summit, April 25-26, 2007, Workshops April 24 & 27, 2007
The Westin Chicago North Shore, Chicago
Website: http://www.wcbf.com/quality/events.php

WCBF’s 4-day Lean Six Sigma Summit is the event for Lean Six Sigma in 2007 to meet an unrivalled, original speaker panel of CEOs, SVPs and VPs of Quality, Lean and Six Sigma driving business improvement in Manufacturing, Services and Transactional Environments.

Internet Strategy Forum Executive Summit
July 19-20, 2007
Governor Hotel, Portland, Oregon
Website: http://www.internetstrategyforum.org/events/executivesummit2007.html

The Executive Summit—sold to capacity for the past three years—is ISF’s premiere annual conference. The theme this year is Web 2.0 and Social Media. Conference attendees will engage with executive speakers from Yahoo!, FedEx, IBM, One Economy Corp. and more, who will share their insights and ideas on how to best leverage the Internet and integrate it into overall business strategy. 

American Strategic Management Institute (ASMI) is the nation’s leading authority on measurement and management methodologies for improving individual and organizational performance. ASMI’s mission is to identify, study and disseminate the leading strategic management and performance measurement practices pioneered by best-in-class organizations. Through national conferences, in-house training programs, consulting services and on-going research, ASMI helps organizations access cutting-edge expertise in planning, implementing and evaluating business strategies to address their management challenges and improve organizational results.

Published by Analysts In Media, Business Trends Quarterly (BTQ) presents insightful analysis of current important events, developments, and trends in the business world. BTQ features informative articles and forums by the leading business executives and industry analysts who share knowledge from their respective fields. This dynamic forum allows these thought leaders to unite in order to analyze existing enterprise systems and challenges from an IT solutions standpoint, but more importantly, to clearly define goals in order to prepare for the future.

Executive Decision (XD) is unlike any other business publication. Why? Because it offers take-away value (TAV) for its C-Level readers through in-depth features and succinct analysis of executive decisions. XD helps Chairmen, CEOs, Presidents and other senior level executives make better decisions and offers pragmatic concise information and solutions. XD covers it all – technology, marketing, human resources, finance, legal, commercial real estate and more. Our editorial team covers the evolution of business practices in an ever-changing world by analyzing the innovative tactics, critical information technology and proven techniques needed to build a more effective organization. What was behind the decision-making process? What were the results and consequences of such choices? Who were the players? And how can you benefit from these decisions? Inform yourself. Empower your staff. Execute with confidence.

TechTarget publishes integrated media that enable information-technology (IT) marketers to reach targeted communities of IT professionals and executives in all phases of the technology decision-making and purchase process. Through its industry-leading Web sites, magazines and conferences, TechTarget delivers measurable results that help IT marketers generate qualified sales leads, shorten sales cycles and grow revenues. Founded in late 1999, TechTarget has won dozens of awards for its innovation and industry leadership, including more than 25 awards for editorial excellence in the past three years alone. In 2004, TechTarget was named to the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in the United States. TechTarget’s more than 2,500 advertisers include the leading IT companies in the world, among them, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Cisco, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Intel. More information about TechTarget is available at www.techtarget.com.

The BPM Forum encourages its members and web site guests to share articles or white papers that relate to business performance management strategies, execution and results: operational visibility, financial accountability, process renovation, governance, compliance, as well as global competitive agility, pre-emptive planning and innovation. Approved content will appear on the BPM Forum’s web site and/or will be featured in an upcoming issue of Brainwaves.

If you would like to submit an article or recommend one, please follow these guidelines:

• Business performance management focus: people, process, policy, technology, methodologies, best practices and business innovation
• Pictures, illustrations and charts to support your submission are welcome
• Include a brief biography with relevant credentials
• Maximum 850 words

Email this issue of Brainwaves to senior executives in finance, operations, technology, and business innovation roles who are interested or are experts in business performance and sustainability. Subscribe to Brainwaves here »