The financial planning and analysis (FP&A) group is the linchpin of any transformation effort in the Office of Finance. Our recently completed Office of Finance benchmark research was conducted against the backdrop of the idea that finance organizations must play a more strategic role in the management of the modern organization. This transformation envisions a finance department that’s more of a partner to the rest of the company — one that is less focused on “bean counting,” instead directing...
Read More
Topics:
Office of Finance,
embedded analytics,
Analytics,
Financial Performance Management,
robotic finance,
Predictive Planning
Configure, price and quote (CPQ) software has been around for decades. Lately, I’ve been using the term “Dynamic CPQ” to apply to a variant of this software category that explicitly aims to produce a quote that optimizes the trade-off between the profitability of a deal and the probability of closing a sale. Dynamic CPQ software is a hybrid of price and revenue optimization (PRO) software and CPQ, providing companies with the ability to better execute their market share and pricing strategies....
Read More
Topics:
Customer Experience,
Office of Finance,
Data Preparation,
Information Management,
Sales Performance Management,
Financial Performance Management,
Price and Revenue Management,
robotic finance,
revenue and lease accounting,
sales enablement
The traditional office of finance has five main organs: accounting keeps the books; financial planning and analysis (FP&A) analyzes performance and manages the forward-looking activities of the company such as planning, budgeting and forecasting; corporate finance raises outside money; treasury takes care of the cash and bank accounts, and tax. The modern office of finance requires a sixth: Finance IT (FIT).
Read More
Topics:
Office of Finance,
Analytics,
Financial Performance Management,
Price and Revenue Management,
Digital Technology,
Operations & Supply Chain,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
blockchain,
robotic finance,
Predictive Planning,
Conversational Computing,
revenue and lease accounting,
collaborative computing,
Subscription Management,
AI & Machine Learning
A quarter century ago the “fast, clean close” became a key measure of a finance and accounting department’s effectiveness. Since then there has been general agreement that companies should be able to close their books within a business week. Our research on the accounting close has consistently shown that companies with very similar characteristics (measured in terms of revenue, number of employees, location and industry) vary considerably in the number of days it takes them to complete their...
Read More
Topics:
Office of Finance,
Financial Performance Management,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
robotic finance
By itself, data isn’t useful for business; the application of analytics is necessary to transform data into actionable information. Data analysis of one sort or another has long been a core competence of finance departments, applied to balance sheets, income statements or cash flow statements. Today, however, Finance must go beyond these basics by expanding the scope of the data being examined to include all financial and operational information that can yield actionable insights. Analysis thus...
Read More
Topics:
Customer Experience,
Human Capital Management,
Marketing,
Voice of the Customer,
business intelligence,
embedded analytics,
Learning Management,
Analytics,
Collaboration,
Data Governance,
Data Lake,
Data Preparation,
Information Management,
Internet of Things,
Contact Center,
Data,
Product Information Management,
Sales Performance Management,
Workforce Management,
Financial Performance Management,
Price and Revenue Management,
Digital Technology,
Digital Marketing,
Digital Commerce,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
blockchain,
natural language processing,
robotic finance,
Predictive Planning,
candidate engagement,
Intelligent CX,
Conversational Computing,
Continuous Payroll,
revenue and lease accounting,
collaborative computing,
mobile computing,
Subscription Management,
agent management,
extended reality,
AI & Machine Learning
“Platform,” as used in the world of technology, originally referred to an operating system on which one could construct software applications. More recently, its usage has been expanded to apply to two types of business models. One enables third parties to create products and services that are complementary to a company’s core technology. For instance, both Apple and Salesforce have attracted a wide array of third-party software developers whose offerings greatly increase the value of each...
Read More
Topics:
Human Capital Management,
Marketing,
Office of Finance,
Voice of the Customer,
Continuous Planning,
Information Management,
Internet of Things,
Workforce Management,
Financial Performance Management,
Price and Revenue Management,
Digital Marketing,
Digital Commerce,
Operations & Supply Chain,
Enterprise Resource Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
robotic finance,
Predictive Planning,
revenue and lease accounting,
collaborative computing,
continuous supply chain
Business planning in most companies is a relic, a process hemmed in by obsolete conceptions of what it can be. “Business planning” encompasses all of the forward-looking activities in which companies routinely engage, including marketing, sales, customer, supply chain and workforce planning as well as budgeting. In our view companies today can fundamentally change how they plan thanks to the maturation of information technology. Current systems can support better business planning as well as...
Read More
Topics:
Office of Finance,
Financial Performance Management,
Price and Revenue Management,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
robotic finance,
Predictive Planning,
revenue and lease accounting
From my perspective there were two significant takeaways from this year’s SuiteWorld. The first is that, almost two years on from the announced acquisition of NetSuite by Oracle, the combination has achieved its immediate objectives in growing NetSuite’s business, especially in Europe and Asia, and accelerating product development efforts. The second takeaway is that, at least for now, the unit appears to continue to operate as if the combination were a private equity investment by a public...
Read More
Topics:
Office of Finance,
Financial Performance Management,
Enterprise Resource Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
robotic finance,
Predictive Planning,
revenue and lease accounting
Prophix is a financial performance management (FPM) suite from Prophix Software offering statutory financial consolidation, planning, budgeting and reporting capabilities designed expressly for midsize companies and divisions of larger corporations. The chief financial officer of a midsize company faces a different set of challenges than those in larger corporations or small businesses. A midsize company typically has grown to the point where it must have capabilities similar to those of a...
Read More
Topics:
Office of Finance,
Financial Performance Management,
Predictive Planning
IBM’s THINK conference, just held this February in San Francisco, is IBM's annual user conference. THINK is designed to showcase upcoming product updates and releases from IBM, along with provide best practices on a wide range of topics. While many technologies were on display, there is one topic in particular I wanted to cover this year: Blockchain.
Read More
Topics:
Office of Finance,
IBM,
Financial Performance Management,
FPM,
Digital Technology,
blockchain