The basis for Performance Assurance is Performance Measurement which provides the tools to react to key performance indicators (KPI’s). Performance Management, the next stage, allows to be more responsive by incorporating process automation. Performance Assurance, as the highest stage, shifts to predictive approaches to enable early detection and corrective actions.
More specifically:
- Event management is used to establish trigger points when alerts are launched
- Corrective action workflows communicate best practices to responsible person at the time of need and monitor time-to-complete and individual workloads
- Continuous improvement efforts focus on earlier detection and more rapid resolution of adverse performance trends
IT techniques enable early detection and resolution of adverse performance trends:
- Systems across the organization contain information regarding policies, processes, definitions, and performance
- Portal-based technology rapidly disseminates the right information to the right people
- Through alerts, notifications, and collaboration tools, individuals identify and resolve problems before they impact performance
The IT architecture required to enable Performance Assurance is comprised of standard components that are available from multiple vendors:
| System Component |
Business Use |
Vendor Examples |
| Role or task-based user interfaces |
Establish individual views of the system |
SAP Portal |
| Workflow & business rules abstraction layer |
Define policies, drill-downs and escalation rules |
SAP Workflow, Tibco |
| Orchestration, monitoring and reporting |
Define KPI’s and standard workflows |
SAP BW, Oracle DW, SAP Business Objects, Cognos, Terradata |
| Services-Oriented Architecture (SOA) |
Collect and analyze process information |
Tibco, Westernacher Mediator |
A four-layer architecture is used where only the integration layer requires customization (see figure at the right).
