Success And The Corporate CFO

In a Cognos White Paper on Performance Management, a comment by Dan London of Accenture is quoted where he observes that the “average lifespan of an S&P 500 company is now only 15 years.” The implication: performance management must be hardwired into your company’s approach and practice if you want to establish and sustain your leadership. Size today is no guarantee of keeping the top spot. And senior financial executives know what they want from a performance system. Among the various capabilities of performance systems, CFOs generally select these four elements as key pieces they are missing at present:

• An ability to focus on key business drivers.

• Ability of business users to view and analyze performance reports at will.

• Visibility into current results.

• Reporting of non-financial measures.