Billable Consultants: 18
Headquarters: Stamford, CT
The key measures of BPM Partners' success? Expertise, independence, and understanding.
The firm's president and CEO, Craig Schiff, helped to create and define the field of business performance management (BPM), the combination of technology, processes, and key performance indicators (KPIs) that companies rely on to strengthen and integrate their planning, budgeting, forecasting, and financial and business reporting capabilities.
A founding member of business-intelligence and BPM stalwart Hyperion Solutions and, later, co-founder of BPM software provider OutlookSoft, Schiff launched BPM Partners in the summer of 2002 with a very simple equation in mind: Customers would equate expertise plus independence with understanding. He didn't realize that the commitment to independence would be such a hard sell.
"We had trouble initially convincing people of our vendor neutrality," Schiff recalls. "They just could not believe that anyone out there is truly neutral. That's quite different from most
of what takes place in the technology consulting arena."
BPM Partners does not sell or implement BPM software, nor does it receive finder fees from software providers that their clients select. The firm helps clients select BPM products; those selection services come with a fixed price attached. "Companies who engage us are trying to reduce their risk," says Schiff. "We don't want to introduce risk on the consultant side. You know exactly what we're going to do for you, you know how much it's going to cost, and the price doesn't change unless we mutually agree to modify the scope once the project has started."
BPM Partners also helps client companies assemble detailed requirements so that they are prepared for the implementation. The consulting and advisory firm also sells its research, although it has provided a wealth of material — vendor buyer's guides in particular — for free through editorial and Webcast collaborations with business-trade magazines targeting CFOs and other corporate-finance executives who typically buy BPM software.
John Colbert, the firm's vice president, service development, also worked for Hyperion. In a prior position with a Fortune 500 manufacturer, he was a BPM end user, which still influences the advice as well as the articles, white papers, and blog that the firm, which does not advertise, churns out. (Schiff's blog runs on the Business Intelligence Network site at www.b-eye-network.com/blogs/schiff.) "All of this content really gets our name out there," Colbert says, "which helped established our credibility as experts and illustrated that we understand the challenges end users have."
Schiff and Colbert report that client satisfaction with BPM applications has increased in the past two years. Looking ahead, they expect to help drive to even higher levels of end-user satisfaction. The firm is now working with vendors on ways to improve their products. "Because we constantly work with end users, the vendors have asked us what the market is looking for, what end users' real pain points are, and what end users like and dislike about their current offerings and the current offerings of their competitors," Schiff notes. "We provide a real-world view of what end users are seeing and saying in the marketplace. We bring that back to the vendors, and this helps us make good on our mission of helping end-user organizations be successful with performance management."
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