Placing first for customer satisfaction in the 2007 survey, KCI Computing, Inc. today announced it has again earned the distinction of "Highest Customer Satisfaction" among all business performance management (BPM) software vendors represented in the sixth annual BPM Pulse Survey.

Among all performance management vendors, final survey results confirmed that KCI achieved the highest customer satisfaction rating, 4.6 out of a possible 5. KCI, considered a "noteworthy vendor" by BPM Partners, outranked such leading vendors as Microsoft, IBM/Cognos, SAP/Business Objects and Oracle/Hyperion.*

The BPM Pulse, conducted annually by BPM Partners, an advisory services firm with a focus on performance management solutions, surveys C-level executives and finance and information technology managers about their use of business performance management and their evaluations of the software vendors in their market. Respondents come from small, medium and large businesses worldwide.

Including sales process, product functionality, price/value, ease of use, ease of implementation, product quality, performance, documentation, and support/training/consulting, customer satisfaction results were based on customer responses across nine key areas.

President and CEO of BPM Partners, Craig Schiff, said: "For the second year in a row, KCI had the highest rating of customer satisfaction of the leading software providers in our survey". "They have developed a very happy customer base by providing excellent service and a comprehensive, unified BPM product that can compete with leaders in the market."

KCI's CONTROL® software, in contrast to the other BPM solutions, addresses every aspect of performance management in a single platform. There are no distinct modules or technologies that need to be integrated or synchronized. All financial functions, processes and data are seamlessly and dynamically united enabling the transparency that fosters optimal decision-making, collaboration and accountability.

Also known as corporate performance management (CPM), BPM, is a growing software category with approximately 100 vendors. Performance management combines business processes, metrics, key performance indicators and systems that enable an organization to understand, act on and influence its business performance. BPM, initially limited to finance departments, is expanding to encompass operational areas that contribute to financial performance.

The core components of BPM software include strategic and operational planning, modeling, budgeting, forecasting, consolidations, analysis and reporting as well as graphical scorecards and dashboards that communicate important corporate information. BPM software also aids businesses in complying with such regulations as Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II, and IFRS.