We conducted our recent Smart Financial Close Dynamic Insights Research in part to assess to what extent the substantial disruptions of the pandemic have impacted the accounting close. When office lockdowns began in the first quarter of 2020, many finance departments were challenged to conduct the quarterly close remotely without face-to-face interactions. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission was so concerned that corporations would be unable to meet filing deadlines...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Financial Performance Management,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Smart Financial Close
insightsoftware offers a portfolio of software designed mainly for the office of finance to handle reporting, budgeting and planning, consolidation and close management, business intelligence (BI) and analytics, as well as compliance. The company’s applications directly address a core issue confronting many finance department executives today: Productivity. The U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics reported that 17% of accountants retired or resigned in the 2020-22 period, cutting the available...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Business Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Analytic Data Platforms,
Revenue, Lease and Tax Accounting,
Consolidate/Close/Report
Board offers a platform that enables financial planning and analysis (FP&A) groups to forecast, plan, budget, analyze and report, using a consistent set of data from across the business to speed these processes, improve forecast and planning accuracy, and accelerate analysis and reporting. Board was categorized as an Exemplary Vendor in our Ventana Research Business Planning Value Index, with leading in Manageability and Reliability.
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Continuous Planning,
Business Planning,
Operations & Supply Chain,
Enterprise Resource Planning,
digital finance
The emphasis on environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues has been growing for some time. I participated in the development of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) as a software industry expert more than a decade ago. The rise of ESG’s profile in corporate reporting is the latest evolution of “responsible investing,” a topic that goes back centuries in the west. The modern era of responsible investing took form in the United States beginning in the 1960s and then...
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Topics:
Governance,
Office of Finance,
Business Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
ESG,
Environmental
SuiteWorld, the annual user conference from Oracle NetSuite, focused on three topics: artificial intelligence, a reimagination of the role NetSuite can play in managing an organization and emphasizing the value to existing customers of using more of what NetSuite has to offer.
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Business Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Consolidate/Close/Report
Because artificial intelligence is top-of-mind, Workday spent a great deal of time on the topic at its recent Workday Rising annual user group meeting in San Francisco. It was front and center in the general sessions, in the announcements made at the event and in the product roadmaps.
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Business Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Purchasing/Sourcing/Payments,
AI and Machine Learning
I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research 2023 Business Planning Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories that reflect the real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal to Office of Finance vendors supporting the...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Business Planning
The 2023 Ventana Research Buyers Guide for Business Planning research enables me to provide observations about how the market has advanced.
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Business Planning
In accounting terms, working capital includes current assets (short-term items such as cash, money due from customers and inventory) and current liabilities (typically payments due to suppliers and loan amounts that must be repaid within one year). Working capital management is a prime function of the finance organization, designed to balance often-conflicting objectives related to revenue, liquidity, risk and profitability. The basics of working capital management date back to ancient clay...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
CFO,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
Purchasing/Sourcing/Payments,
Accounts Payable,
Treasury,
Accounts Receivable,
Working Capital
This title plays on the now-ancient meme from the 1990s: “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” which pointed to a challenge of anonymity posed by new technology. In this case, though, I’m using it to highlight an opportunity that generative artificial intelligence presents in streamlining routine business functions that require some level of individual skill and experience to handle. Ordinary contracts are just one example of work products that require humans to create, edit, analyze,...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Digital Technology,
digital finance,
AI & Machine Learning,
robotic automation,
Generative AI