PerformancePoint Services Overview

PerformancePoint Services is relatively new even to veteran SharePoint users and administrators. The 2010 version of SharePoint is the first to include PerformancePoint Services as a base part of the installation. The product was born from a merger of Microsoft’s Business Scorecard Manager and products acquired from ProClarity. The first version of PerformancePoint was launched in 2007 and was initially sold under a separate license.

In early 2009, Microsoft announced plans to roll it into the SharePoint product. Effective in 2009, owners of the SharePoint Enterprise CAL became licensed for PerformancePoint; however, it remained a separate installation. With SharePoint 2010, PerformancePoint Services is now rolled into the SharePoint installation.

Despite being the “new kid” on the SharePoint block, the product is one of the more heavily anticipated components of SharePoint 2010. This is due primarily to its capacity to place rich report creation capabilities into the hands of power users. Users who are interested in seeing real-time analytical metrics can create reports that they can see updated whenever the data changes. No longer will they have to wait on a reporting tool or another department to generate a monthly or quarterly report. Additionally, some reports provide interaction for report consumers, which will enable them to more deeply analyze specific metrics of greater interest. Thus, they are no longer limited to the information they can glean from predefined report formats. Following are three example scenarios:

• A company’s advertising department is trying to target its advertising based on a number of factors. One objective is to help the company achieve its regional and product sales goals. At the same time, a limited advertising budget requires it to make appropriate decisions on where to place advertisements. Every month, advertising dollars are designated to specific television spots with all the major networks. To make the right decisions, the brand managers need to be able to determine which product lines are on track to sell above the target levels, and which ones are falling short. By having sales data available immediately, they can make more rapid decisions about where to and how often to place advertisements.

• A sales executive is reviewing sales data for the last quarter. In reviewing a graph of sales, he notices that one product line had lower sales during the period. With one click of the mouse, he can reform the chart by drilling down into that one product line to view individual products within the product line. He then notices that sales of most products within the product line remained steady during the quarter; however, one specific SKU underperformed. He could also see how the same data looks on a regional basis. With no individual region standing out as a problem area, he can return to the previous graph. From there, he can once again drill down to see sales for the one product, broken down by monthly or weekly timely periods. Having this power to regenerate graphs on demand enables people to isolate a problem area, which in turn enables them to make the decisions necessary to correct the problem.

• A product manufacturing company has several plants that have been producing below target levels. Several factors could help drive this, including frequency of safety incidents, capacity utilization, availability of just-in-time materials, and several other components. At the same time, other plants may be producing above their target levels. By having the appropriate metrics available to them, executives can strategically shift resources as appropriate to help the plants that are underachieving.

In the coming sections of this chapter, we look at some examples of how the various reports are built and distributed to help drive some of these decisions. We also explore examples of the types of dashboards users might create with the tools available.