Robert Kugel's Analyst Perspectives

Environmental, social and governance issues have grown increasingly pressing over the past few years as investors and government entities urge organizations to measure and disclose ESG metrics. I’ve already covered the broader topic as it relates to external reporting and how financial planning and analysis groups are likely to own this mandate going forward. (It’s mainly been a marketing and public relations effort up to now.) FP&A departments are also likely to be charged with responsibility for internal ESG analysis and reporting, because to achieve environmental and social goals, organizations will need to assign specific objectives to individual business units and their responsible parties. I assert that by 2025 more than one-half of corporations required to comply with ESG reporting will centralize responsibility for preparing related reports and filings with FP&A to achieve accuracy, control and efficiency objectives. To do so, FP&A groups must immediately establish a data management strategy consistent with its targeted ESG analysis and reporting approach.

Topics: FP&A, Office of Finance, ESG

ESG reporting is a matter that organizations – and especially publicly held corporations – will be confronting over the next several years. Ventana Research asserts that by 2025, one-half of corporations with 1,000 or more employees will have a formal ESG reporting process in place to address legal mandates or shareholder demand. The roots of ESG investing go back many decades but it has gained significant attention recently as demand in the investment world for non-accounting measures to guide ethical investments has grown. Organizations face three distinct challenges in dealing with ESG. In this analyst perspective, Ventana Research SVP and Research Director Robert Kugel discusses the considerations and benefits of organizing your organization’s ESG reporting.

Topics: FP&A, Governance, Office of Finance, Reporting, CFO, ESG

As a result of the rapidly changing business landscape in 2020 and the need to quickly – and intelligently – change business plans and budgets, many more companies have been deciding to adopt a continuous planning approach to be able to add speed and flexibility. Transforming how organizations plan and budget has become a top-of-mind issue for CFO and even CEOs. Ventana Research has been advocating what we call continuous planning to improve organizational performance. In this multimedia Analyst Perspective, SVP and Research Director Robert Kugel discusses three important technologies necessary for continuous planning – technologies that can substantially enhance the effectiveness of the FP&A organization.

Topics: FP&A, Office of Finance, budget, CFO, financial planning

Profitability management produces a sustainable competitive advantage but by 2025 only one-third of companies will have implemented a profitability management initiative, explains Ventana Research SVP and Research Director Robert Kugel. This brief video shows why FP&A organizations must be part of a profitability management approach to pricing and costing.

Topics: FP&A, Office of Finance, Sales Operations, CFO, financial planning, Price Optimization, Price and Revenue Management

In this Analyst Perspective from Robert Kugel, learn how FP&A can redefine its mission to achieve the long-stated goal of making it more of a strategic partner with the rest of the organization. This means fully adopting integrated business planning, a high participation, collaborative, action-oriented approach to planning and budgeting built on frequent, short planning sprints. Short planning cycles enable companies to achieve greater agility in responding to market or competitive changes, and in the face of a very uncertain future, companies have been discovering the value of rapid planning and budgeting cycles. Watch the video to learn more.

Topics: FP&A, Office of Finance, Budgeting, Business Planning, CFO, financial planning, forecasting

FP&A and business analysts can make reporting more effective by reimagining how, what and when their company does its reporting. They should provide the users of their reports the information they want in a form they want it. They should be thinking about how they can make reporting more effective by rethinking how data is presented, how interactive it is, and what visualizations are used. Rethinking how to combine narratives, data, charts and graphics to everyday communications. How to add audio and video where it’s appropriate. Reimagine reporting to make it a more effective form of communications designed to improve a company’s performance.

Topics: FP&A, Office of Finance, CFO, financial regulation, financial reporting, financial risk management, financial standards, tax planning

The use of blockchain distributed ledgers in business processes is now a common theme in many business software vendors’ presentations. The technology has a multitude of potential uses. However, presentations about the opportunities for digital transformation always leave me wondering: How is this magic going to happen? I wonder this because the details about how data flows from point A to point B via a blockchain are critically important to blockchain utility and therefore the pace of its adoption.

Topics: Planning, Predictive Analytics, Forecast, FP&A, Machine Learning, Reporting, budget, Budgeting, Continuous Planning, Analytics, Data Management, Cognitive Computing, Integrated Business Planning, AI, forecasting, consolidating

Ventana Research uses the term “predictive finance” to describe a forward-looking, action-oriented finance organization that places emphasis on advising its company rather than fulfilling the traditional roles of a transactions processor and reporter. Technology is driving the shift away from the traditional bean-counting role. The cumulative evolution of software advances will substantially reduce finance and accounting workloads by automating most of the mechanical, rote functions in accounting, data preparation and reporting. (I recently summarized these in a “Robotic Finance”)

Topics: Planning, Predictive Analytics, Forecast, FP&A, Machine Learning, Reporting, budget, Budgeting, Continuous Planning, Analytics, Data Management, Cognitive Computing, Integrated Business Planning, AI, forecasting, consolidating

Ventana Research defines financial performance management (FPM) as the process of addressing often overlapping issues involving people, process, information and technology that affect how well finance organizations operate and support the activities of the rest of their organization. FPM software supports and automates the full cycle of finance department activities, which include planning and budgeting, analysis, assessment and review, closing and consolidation, internal financial reporting and external financial reporting, as well as the underlying information technology systems that support them.

Topics: Performance Management, ERP, FP&A, Human Capital Management, Office of Finance, Consolidation, Financial Performance Management, FPM

Using information technology to make data useful is as old as the Information Age. The difference today is that the volume and variety of  available data has grown enormously. Big data gets almost all of the attention, but there’s also cryptic data. Both are difficult to harness using basic tools and require new technology to help organizations glean actionable information from the large and chaotic mass of data. “Big data” refers to extremely large data sets that may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends and associations, especially those related to human behavior and interaction. The challenges in dealing with big data include having the computational power that can scale to the processing requirements for the volumes involved; analytical tools to work with the large data sets; and governance necessary to manage the large data sets to ensure that the results of the analysis are accurate and meaningful. But that’s not all organizations have to deal with now. I’ve coined the term “cryptic data” to focus on a different, less well known sort of data challenge that many companies and individuals face.

Topics: Big Data, Data Science, Planning, Predictive Analytics, Social Media, FP&A, Office of Finance, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Budgeting, Connotate, cryptic, equity research, Finance Analytics, Human Capital, Kofax, Statistics, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Data, Datawatch, Financial Performance Management (FPM), Kapow, Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Strata+Hadoop