A Business Performance Management Software was earlier used only in the finance departments, but times have changed, and this software is being used by a number of businesses in order to increase business intelligence.

The software is basically a kind of business intelligence, which is responsible for managing and monitoring the performance of a particular organization. For this unique purpose, KPI, or key performance indicators are used. This software is also referred to as corporate performance management software.

A performance monitoring software is known to have numerous benefits. The software enables the organizations to gather information from different sources, and analyze this information for improving the performance of the company. It is also responsible for helping an organization to identify problems before they get magnified and result in a crisis.

Moreover, the software can also be used for making reliable and predictable forecasts. To know about the best Business Performance Management Software that is currently ruling the market, this article contains the top Business Performance Management Software. Find out below.

• What is the Best Business Performance Software?
• What is Enterprise Performance Management Software?
• Which Company has the best Performance Management System?
• How do you develop a Performance Management System for a Software Industry?
• What are the Different Types of Performance Management Tools?
• What is the Difference Between EPM and ERP?
• What are the Three Stages of Performance Management?

What is the Best Business Performance Software?

1. Actus

Are you struggling to manage productivity remotely? Actus Virtual Performance and Talent Management Software provides the structure and visibility to enhance the performance of your remote workers. Simple to use and easy to roll out, Actus can reconnect you with your virtual workforce.

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Comprehensive functionality includes objectives, appraisal, 121s, recognition, 360 survey, onboarding, talent mgmt, succession planning & more. If you are a UK business with 100+ people why not take a look

Starting Price: $1.00/month/user

2. Primalogik

Organize 360° feedback surveys and performance evaluations for your employees with Primalogik. Simple, flexible, and affordable, Primalogik is crucial to creating a culture of honest feedback in workplaces, strengthening relationships and encouraging growth.

Primalogik offers a range of features for simple and streamlined performance management. Top features include 360° feedback surveys, performance appraisals, goals and engagement surveys.

Starting Price: $108/month/25users

3. Rhythm Systems

Rhythm software provides a competitive advantage to help high-growth companies execute and hit their strategic growth goals. Rhythm Systems cloud-based strategic planning software and white-glove service provide a competitive advantage to help fast-growth companies execute and hit their growth goals more predictably.

Their clients use Rhythm to document their strategic plans and create weekly dashboards so their teams can be held accountable to execute against them with precision. Our implementation is quick and painless. We put your strategic plan into Rhythm and your team is up and running at your next weekly meeting.

4. Wrike

Get full visibility and control over your tasks and projects with Wrike. A cloud-based collaboration, work management, and project management software, Wrike is trusted by leading companies like Airbnb and Verizon to help their teams achieve more.

Wrike offers world-class features that empower cross-functional, distributed, or growing teams take their projects from the initial request stage all the way to tracking work progress and reporting results. From custom dashboards and workflows to team-specific automation to streamline processes, Wrike has everything you need to work your way. No one else offers this level of versatility.

Wrike’s versatile and easy-to-use platform adapts to however your team manages their work so they can deliver more. Work as one with the most versatile shared collaboration platform for every team, function, and department. Connect your entire organization, share ideas, and produce your best work in a shared workspace.

Starting Price: $9.80 per user per month

5. peopleHum

Introducing peopleHum, the people a first platform. Hire Right, Engage Right, and Nurture Right for better business results. Get Started now with the new age people platform. peopleHum is the next generation people platform, built ground up to get a single view that shows how well the people in your organization are connected.

Be it candidates, employees or customers, use predictive and AI technologies to enable better people decisions. We are creating the Future of Work with peopleHum. Reduce hiring errors and cycle time by pre-screening candidates with machine learning technologies.

Increase brand attractiveness and optimize hiring with an integrated lifecycle and timely communication. Give your employees a voice. An integrated toolkit, specifically crafted for the millennial generation to better engage, measure, action and improve overall engagement.

6. iGrafx

We believe that process is at the center of everything. We deliver business transformation software that turns your processes into a portfolio of valuable assets. Our platform is the most comprehensive, supporting RPA and workflow automation, customer journey, governance, risk, compliance, and more, as well as SaaS and private cloud deployment. It’s also the most scalable, currently supporting the largest, global enterprise requirements. We possess 400+ years of process passion, and we share it.

7. Looker

Looker is a data analytics solution software that helps companies reanalyze business intelligence and data visualization. Users can easily integrate data from across data sources into a single view. With Looker employees can organize data, and make better-educated decisions when they access fresh reliable data.

8. IBM Planning Analytics

IBM Planning Analytics, powered by IBM TM1®, is an integrated planning solution designed to promote collaboration across the organization and help keep pace with the speed of modern business. With a powerful calculation engine, this enterprise performance management solution helps you move beyond the limits of spreadsheets, automating the planning process to drive faster, more accurate results.

Simplify oceans of data by unifying data sources into one single repository and empowering users to build sophisticated, multidimensional models that drive more reliable forecasts. Forego time-consuming, error-prone planning in favor of an automated, more reliable planning process designed for real business.

Break down siloes, unify data, and synchronize planning across the organization to reveal the full picture and drive integrated plans. See the impact of your decisions before making them using what-if scenarios. Plus, adjust plans in real-time to adapt to change.

9. Priority Matrix

Priority Matrix is a productivity tool for Outlook and Microsoft Teams that helps teams manage, prioritize, and focus on high-impact tasks. Customers save 100 hours per person per year using Priority Matrix to help them have more effective meetings, better prioritize emails, and create team alignment across the entire organization.

Priority Matrix is featured by Microsoft on the Teams app store and is used by thousands of organizations. Use Priority Matrix to get more out of Microsoft Teams, increase engagement of Office, and help everyone better unify emails and chat together on one platform. What makes Priority Matrix better than the rest? –

Full-featured project management solution that works within Teams and Outlook – Designed to reduce context switching so that you can stay focused. – Integrated with Outlook so you don’t need any other apps to collaborate – Artificial Intelligence technology helps prioritize and track the right project and people.

Starting Price: $12.00/month/user

10. Adaptive Planning

Adaptive Planning is the software of choice in the business planning software industry, helping to leverage an organization’s current processes and reports with the use of the in-app ‘adaptive insights analytics system.’

Sales and Finance teams can truly tackle common operational challenges with the use of the software’s intuitive features like Revenue Management, Workforce Management, Expense Management, Capital Management, Balance Sheet Cash Flow Automated Reports, and Financial Closing Statements. All these can be fixed with notifications so that the entire enterprise stays in unison.

What is Enterprise Performance Management Software?

Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) software helps you analyze, understand, and report on your business.

EPM refers to the processes designed to help organizations plan, budget, forecast, and report on business performance as well as consolidate and finalize financial results (often referred to as “closing the books”). EPM solutions are primarily used by CFOs and the office of finance, while other functional areas, such as HR, sales, marketing, and IT, use EPM for operational planning, budgeting, and reporting.

While often tied to enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, EPM software complements ERP by providing management insights in addition to top of operational data. In other words, ERP is about operating the business—the day-to-day transactional activity—and EPM is about managing the business—analyzing, understanding, and reporting on the business.

Today, EPM software is considered to be critical for managing all types of organizations by linking financial and operational metrics to insights—and ultimately driving strategies, plans, and execution. With EPM software, managers can drive improved performance across the organization by monitoring financial and operational results against forecasts and goals and using analytics to recognize key trends and predict outcomes.

In an environment of constant change, new competitors, and economic uncertainty, EPM offers a tool for organizations to manage their agile businesses. With finance at the helm, EPM business processes (strategic modeling, plan, consolidate and close, report, and analyze performance) can help organizations understand their data and use it to make better business decisions.

Which Company has the best Performance Management System?

There’s a wave of companies, small and large, that are redefining performance management from the ground up. From ditching the annual review all together, to implementing real-time feedback, these five companies are trailblazing the new path in performance management across all industries.

1. Accenture

If you think that large, traditional companies are unable to overhaul their age-old processes, think again. With over 300,000 employees worldwide, Accenture was able to ditch annual reviews and stack rankings all together.

The tech consulting giant was able to humanize their performance management process by eliminating processes that evaluated employees as mere numbers on a page. The result? More timely feedback on assignments, and a more equitable compensation process for all employees at the company.

2. Facebook

Year after year, Facebook tops the list of the world’s best places to work. It’s easy to attribute this trend to their universally known fun work environment and great employee perks, but if you dig deeper, you can see what actually causes Facebook employees to be more motivated and satisfied.

Facebook, like many companies of its size, holds semi-annual reviews that focus on peer-to-peer and employee-to-manager feedback. By zeroing in on peer feedback, Facebook managers get a good picture of how employees collaborate with one another, a value that is crucial to the company’s success.

Additionally, using internal software, Facebook managers and employees are able to give and receive continuous real-time feedback in between review cycles. Under this system, employees are no longer surprised by their reviews, because feedback is ongoing throughout the year.

3. Microsoft

Back in 2013, Microsoft realized that their stack ranking-style performance management system was negatively effecting employee engagement and motivation.

Since the departure of their old CEO Steve Ballmer, Microsoft has revolutionized their performance management to put more power in the hands of managers.

Microsoft now holds bi-monthly performance reviews. These check-ins are formal, structured conversations between managers and direct reports, in which they discuss goal progress, skill development, and more – so employees know if they’re moving in the right direction while they still have time to adjust.

4. Goldman Sachs

If a company founded in 1869 can transform its outdated and ineffective performance management, anyone can.

Goldman Sachs’ old performance management system focused heavily on annual reviews, stack rankings, and ratings – all of which have been shown to have detrimental effects on the workforce.

After various internal surveys indicated employees wanted more continuous feedback, Goldman Sachs adopted their own web-based tool for giving and receiving feedback in order to increase informal performance conversations.

5. Instacart

After relying on inconsistent Google Docs for performance management, Instacart decided that they needed a system that would allow them to align their employees’ performance with the changes in corporate priorities.

Enter Reflektive. Instacart implemented Reflektive’s Real-Time Feedback tool and reviews in order to give employees the responsiveness they needed to be nimble and keep up with the changes around them.

Since they started using Reflektive, Instacart has generated over 975 unique pieces of recognition and over 3,900 interactions through Real-Time Feedback. With tools that integrate into their communication methods, such as Slack, they’ve found an effortless way to keep growing quickly with the transparency they desire.

How do you develop a Performance Management System for a Software Industry?

Performance management involves more than simply providing an annual review for each employee. It is about working together with that employee to identify strengths and weaknesses in their performance and how to help them be a more productive and effective worker. Learn how to develop a performance management system so that you can help everyone in your organization work to their full potential.

1. Evaluate your current performance appraisal process. Look at what type of feedback you are providing to your employees. Determine if there is anything you need to change or add to the evaluation itself. You may decide to build on what you already have or to develop a new system altogether.

2. Identify organizational goals. Performance management systems help rally staff members around your organization’s goals because they help staff know how they are to be involved in reaching that goal. Take the time to clarify what your goals are for the next year as a company.

– Identify processes or procedures that could be simplified or done more effectively.

– Declare your sales goals for the next year or new products you would like to develop.

– Share your hope for better communication between departments and staff members.

3. Set performance expectations. As you sit down with each employee, clearly lay out your expectations for them.

– Acknowledge what they are already doing well. Use this to encourage them.

– Share some weaknesses that you have observed in them and in their work habits, and how overcoming those would help their performance in the company.

– Identify specific things you would like them to accomplish over the next year, or whatever time frame works best for you. Prioritize these so the staff member knows which is most important and make sure to give them a deadline for each task.

4. Monitor and develop their performance throughout the year. As employees begin to work on their performance, keep an eye on how they are doing. If they appear to be struggling to meet performance expectations, talk with them and see if you can offer any support or coaching.

5. Evaluate their performance. At each performance review, let the employee know how they are doing. It is often helpful to assign a numeric value on a scale, rating the employee from “not meeting expectations” to “meets expectations” to “exceeds expectations.”

• Provide feedback on their performance. Be as specific as possible, noting key examples of when they demonstrated a certain quality.
• Talk about the consequences or rewards of their performance. Let them know if they are on probation, are getting a raise in pay, changes in vacation days, or any other relevant action.
• Discuss any problems they may be having. Listen to their concerns or worries as you talk through potential solutions.

6. Set new performance expectations for the next year. Some items may be the same. However, since these are also based on organisational goals, you will need to re-examine your goals for the upcoming year.

Tips

• Reward and celebrate often. If a team exceeds expectations in meeting a specific deadline, take them out to lunch. If an individual is regularly staying late to make sure things get completed, find a way to thank them for their effort.
• Put your performance plans in writing. This provides a record that both the organization and the employee can return to. It also verifies that both parties saw and agreed to the plan (via their signatures).
• Tell your employees about the new performance management system. Explain why this change needed to take place and how it will help them as a staff member and the organization as a whole.

What are the Different Types of Performance Management Tools?

Performance management helps organizations become more successful and stay ahead of the competition. It essentially involves measuring, reporting and managing progress in order to improve performance, both at an individual level and at a corporate level. There are many, many performance management tools designed to make the process easier and more effective. Here we look at some of the most common tools.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics

KPIs and metrics provide a way to measure how well companies, business units, projects or individuals are performing in relation to their strategic goals and objectives. But the primary value of KPIs is not in measurement per se, but in enabling rich data-driven performance conversations and better decision making.

Measuring everything that moves provides little more than an illusion that performance is being managed. Instead, it’s important to ask, “What goal will this KPI help my organization achieve, or what problem will it resolve?” and “What decisions will the KPI help drive?” Well-designed KPIs should be vital navigational instruments, giving a clear picture of current levels of performance and whether the business is where it needs to be.

Performance appraisals

Alongside KPIs, performance appraisals are probably the most commonly used performance management tool. When used properly, performance appraisals are incredibly powerful for aligning the goals of individuals with the strategic aims of the organisation.

To get the most out of this tool, however, employees must feel that the appraisal process is a regular, honest, fair and constructive two-way conversation. If not, appraisals can be a powerful de-motivator, leading to a decline in performance.

360 degree feedback

This tool is all about answering the question, “How well are our people performing in the eyes of those who have a stake in their performance?” It provides individuals with a broad assessment of their performance based on the views of those around them, including their supervisor or manager, direct reports, peers, customers, suppliers, and so on. Results are confidentially tallied and presented to the employee, usually by a manager.

The insights from 360-degree feedback are typically used in employee training and development. Done well, 360-degree feedback helps to democratize the review process, by weighing the opinions of many people, instead of just the individual’s line manager.

Management by objectives (MBO)

MBO is the process of defining specific objectives and then setting out how to achieve each individual objective. It’s particularly powerful for specific work that needs to be done one step at a time, and is a great way to create a culture of working towards common goals.

The idea is that, as each objective is achieved, those within the organization are aware of their achievements, which, in turn, boosts morale and motivation. MBO involves measuring individual performance and comparing it with standards that have been set.

Performance management frameworks

Without a doubt, one of the most popular and best-known management frameworks is the Balanced Scorecard (BSC). Voted one of the most influential business ideas ever presented in the Harvard Business Review, the BSC has been massively popular over the last 20 years.

The BSC is a strategy execution tool that helps companies to: 1) clarify their strategy and communicate their business priorities and objectives; 2) monitor progress by measuring to what extent priorities and objectives are being delivered; and 3) define and manage action plans to ensure initiatives are in place to deliver the business’s priorities and strategic objectives.

Reward and recognition programmes

When employees feel that good performance goes unrecognised and unrewarded, motivation plummets, and people disengage from the company’s overall mission. Reward and recognition programmes are therefore an important part of any thorough performance management system, creating a method for celebrating those who are high performers.

For many companies, this means dishing out financial rewards, such as bonuses, but simple praise and recognition of a job well done is just as important for maintaining morale and continued high performance.

Personal development plans (PDP)

A PDP is effectively a tailored action plan that is based on reflection and awareness of an individual’s performance and needs, setting out goals for future performance and actions that will support personal development. PDPs are often used to identify specific training and development needs and create an action plan for meeting those needs (for example, through specific courses or shadowing other employees).

It helps individuals set out how they want to grow, and what actions they can take to achieve that growth. This not only helps the individual feel more invested in the company, and the role they play in its success, it also identifies concrete steps that can help drive individual performance in the future.

Investing in or developing performance management tools, techniques, and processes like these, is an important part of creating a culture of high performance. And that’s exactly what every business, regardless of size, in every industry, should be aiming for – strong performance at every single level of the organization.

What is the Difference Between EPM and ERP?

Enterprise resource planning is a software that has been there for decades now helping many companies in their accounting and business transactions.

ERP is mainly focused on organizational resources and transactions while also reflecting the operational and economic condition of the organization. But with companies growing and expanding, it gave birth to new complexities and challenges.

Few new things came into existence like forecasting, analytics, and reporting and it became difficult for ERPs to suffice the growing demands of the organizations. After a few years, new ERP systems were developed with a new set of capabilities that could address the growing complexities of organizations.

This gave rise to another software application which we know today as enterprise performance management (EPM).

Starting off, EPM did the job it was supposed to do. Thereafter, the software evolved and started to address all the shortcomings in the previous ERP systems such as budgeting, managing the business process, and more. Now EPM is at the stage wherein it handles core business challenges like strategic planning, reporting, tax provisioning, and more.

EPM vs ERP: Comparison of features

Key features of ERP

• Processing of core financial transactions like A/R, A/P, cash management.
• Provides accurate insights into enterprise performance through integrated reporting.
• Enterprise budgetary management.
• Reporting.
• A robust cloud technology platform.

Key features of EPM

• Building plans with a significant amount of detail.
• Support for budgetary, financial plans, capital asset planning, and financial statement planning.
• Intuitive user interface.
• Faster deployment with minimum IT support.
• Addresses complex enterprise planning and modeling across multiple systems.
• Complex budget maintenance and development.

Integration of EPM and ERP

Well, after knowing the origins of both the software systems, we can say that these two systems weren’t actually designed to work in the alliance as they were designed to address different objectives. While ERP addresses the operational processes, EPM works to streamline the management processes.

One of the notable differences between these two software is that ERP takes close to a year to get fully implement while EPM systems can be implemented within a few months. What we think is that, if integrated, ERP and EPM can work better and provide all-round benefits for the organizations.

If an organization wants to upgrade its ERP system, why not implement an EPM suite before the ERP upgrade. It’ll not only address the organization’s operational complexities but also streamline the management processes. Wouldn’t that be great? Need a bit more material? No problem! Let me put it this way.

Almost all organizations, at the inception stage, use ERPs to manage their resources while also using spreadsheets and excels to manage functions such as budgeting, reporting, and forecasting.

But these exact functions are performed by the EPM software. Yes, investment-wise it would be a bit more elaborate but it guarantees solid efficiency in the long run. Isn’t that the right thing to do?

Well, we think the best way for organizations to address the growing complexities is the integration of ERP and EPM software. The only way the organization will negate the challenges is when it is EPM and ERP instead of EPM vs ERP.

What are the Three Stages of Performance Management?

Performance management is crucial for improving and understanding a business. It is an umbrella term used to categorise numerous platforms and branches of management and human resources. A vitally important task is analysing growth and ensuring employees are meeting targets and increasing business functionality and productivity.

This can be done on the scale of an entire company, or as small as an individual employee. As a key part of human resources, performance management is widely recognised as a carefully curated cycle of processes including expectations, evaluation and consistent review. It is the role of somebody in human resources to monitor and repeat when new projects begin.

Large corporations implement frequent performance reviews in order to maintain a consistent workflow and reviews of day-to-day activity. This helps to ensure all employees have clear aims in their day to day work and have accountability for their progress.

The three stages of performance management can vary from company to company. The goals of each business will differ, therefore their performance management will be different. Generally, the cycle and the outcome will remain the same; the point is that reflection and consistent review is undertaken in order to maintain development both on a company level and on an individual employee level.

These three stages can be supplemented with more in-depth sub-stages if needed. Generally, these stages come in the following formats and can be expanded to omitted as needed for your business strategy.

Preparation

Firstly, throughout any performance management, preparation is key. This is the stage which is important for laying out areas of focus and communicating goals and desired outcomes. The preparation is important for determining how often and how in-depth the performance review will go.

Quite often, companies have a yearly or bi-annual performance review of their employees, in which the employees may participate and share their suggestions. Some, as mentioned earlier, have more frequent reviews of performance. Many HR managers implement performance reviews based on when they think their employees and outputs need monitoring.

Active Reviewing

This is a vital and observational stage of performance management which will need careful attention. Furthermore, it can be a time to flag up potential roadblocks or any employees which may not be meeting requirements or hitting targets.

The reviewing and monitoring stage is usually compiled of multiple different sub-stages. In order for a review to be successful, it needs to monitor all aspects of productivity, including accomplishments, delays, setbacks, issues and successful processes.

Reflection

Arguably, reflection is one of the most important stages of performance management. This is since it is the time when improvements can be made. Deep reflection is essential when looking for growth strategies; this time can be used to view lessons learned, successful strategies and what could be done better.

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Making sure you reflect as both an individual and as a collective (i.e the company) is a great way to work towards targets and identify areas of weakness. All good businesspeople understand there will always be areas lacking in quality or performance; adjusting principles and priorities to mitigate these weaknesses is vital.

Final Thoughts

The benefits included in HR software are diverse and provide coverage in areas of administration, training, applicant tracking (AT), performance management, payroll, and many more areas. Different software varies in the solutions that they provide. Though they vary, each given area is crafted to help implement a workforce and a work environment that is healthy and productive.

Businesses that range from small to mid-sized benefit greatly when using HR software. Small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) have the freedom to tracking the performance of their employees more efficiently. Tracking may include certification and advancement training and payroll that consists of compensation and bonuses.