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SOX Compliance Pushing Up BPM Demand: Hyperion

The Sarbanes-Oxley compliance is likely to drive increased adoption of business performance management solutions. Hyperion, a BPM software company, indicates that a growing number of customers are leveraging their investment in financial reporting software to meet compliance requirements and also keep pace with a dynamic and highly complex business environment.

Hyperion offers a Web-based, integrated solution for meeting regulatory requirements and managing overall business performance that includes scorecarding and dashboards; modeling; planning, budgeting and forecasting; and financial consolidation and reporting software.

“Our solution not only provides the critical insight companies need to gain confidence in the accuracy of their financial information, it also gives them the capability to manage business performance by identifying opportunities for growth and profitability,” said Rich Clayton, vice president of product marketing for Hyperion.

Hyperion alliance partner Deloitte Consulting LLP also believes that companies will increasingly recognize compliance as an opportunity and driver to help improve business performance.

“We’re seeing industry-wide demand for solutions to make compliance sustainable and, at the same time, more efficient and more effective,” said Lee Dittmar, principal and leader of Deloitte Consulting’s Enterprise Governance practice. “Many companies are beginning to act on improvement opportunities identified through their Sarbanes-Oxley efforts. Increasingly, companies are undertaking projects to better leverage technology to improve information quality, automate internal controls and enhance monitoring and reporting capabilities.”

A study from Gartner, Inc. confirms an increase in spending for financial compliance management and corporate governance software technology in 2005 and forecasts continued growth in those fields through 2007. The report, entitled Sarbanes-Oxley Spending Continues to Disrupt Software Purchases, was written by analysts Tom Eid, Joanne M. Correia and French Caldwell and was published on December 9, 2005.

The Gartner study points out that as companies mature in their approach to compliance and corporate governance, they will move through a continuum of technologies from point solutions for compliance to holistic solutions for governance and corporate performance management (CPM). Additionally, the study states corporate performance management provides the technology and infrastructure link between governance and compliance, providing insight and visibility into how well an organization is complying.

Gartner defines CPM as not only the process used to manage corporate performance but also the methodologies that may drive some of the processes, the metrics used to measure performance against strategic and operational performance goals. Hyperion uses a similar term, Business Performance Management, to define its solutions that are designed to improve financial and operational performance.


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