Who is Fourier?
Fourier Approach is a privately owned company that focuses on industrial engineering , development, integration and support of information systems and infrastructure.
News >Fourier Approach celebrates milestone
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Johannesburg, 31 March 2008
Fourier Approach continues to successfully support enterprise-wide performance management systems for a decade now.
Performance management means different things to different people. To many people it only means individual performance review sessions based on subjective views of a supervisor, which were not necessarily aligned with what the individual thought was important and how it would be measured.
Many years ago, however, Rummler and Brache identified three levels of performance management, namely the organisation, processes and only then the individual job level. Organisation outputs are produced through processes of which the process steps in turn are performed and managed by individuals.
For the last decade, Fourier Approach (http://www.fourier.co.za) has been involved in performance management projects at clients in various industries, ranging from measurements to manage workflow processes like the approval of home loan applications in banks to the monitoring of different processes in the facility management environment, such as the handling of work orders given different service level agreements.
Wherever possible, the design of the performance management solution is normally based on a well designed data warehouse, based on the dimensional lifecycle methodology of Ralph Kimball, from where measurements can be reported in a consistent manner.
To ensure alignment to organisation strategy, the Balanced Scorecard approach of Kaplan and Norton is also supported, often leading to a number of integrated data marts from where measurements supporting the different perspectives are calculated.
Fourier believes that performance management at various levels is one of the more practical applications of business intelligence (BI) in any organisation.
Fourier Approach has a strategic partnership with Alicornio Africa, which also believes strongly in the value of well designed data warehouses as the foundation for successful business intelligence solutions.
As part of its educational drive in the field of BI, it has hosted a Master Class in Data Warehousing for many years in South Africa, and this year is no exception. Please visit http://www.alicornio.co.za/masterclass/masterclass.html to get more information regarding this event, which will take place in Cape Town this year, from 19 to 22 May 2008. Fourier is proud to support this event.
Here are some of our products...
With industry maturing and developing new innovative solutions and approaches, efficiency and effectiveness across the entire supply chain is key to achieving a competitive edge. Best practises from other industries are adopted and applied to cash management that promise major cost savings and improvements.
Our Industrial Engineers ensure that processes are critically reviewed and re-engineered. The impact and value-added contribution of any proposed change to an activity or process is calculated, evaluated and predicted to ensure that to ensure that the best value is achieved and that companies make the right decisions the first time, every time.
Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), using principles of Business Intelligence coupled with real-time application intergation, is ideal to monitor and provide timeous feedback on process performance.