Robert Kugel's Analyst Perspectives

Financial analysts typically classify real estate as a fixed cost. Strictly speaking, that’s correct, but looking at it this way leads many organizations to overlook opportunities to more carefully manage their real estate and other occupancy expenses. The changes in lease accounting that are going into effect have caused some organizations to reexamine their leasing policies and how they organize their lease accounting processes. They should take an even broader approach and consider ways to improve how they manage those leases.

Topics: Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Financial Performance Management, Operations & Supply Chain, Lease Accounting, Accounting, IFRS16, ASC842

PROS Holdings is a software vendor with two distinct but related sets of products. The company began in 1985 offering revenue management software to airlines, hospitality and rental car companies. More recently it added price and revenue management software focusing on B2B services, chemicals and energy, consumer goods manufacturers, food and beverage, healthcare, insurance and technology. This note focuses on the B2B portion of the business.

Topics: Analytics, Big Data, Data Preparation, Customer Experience, Marketing, Digital Marketing, Digital Commerce, Pricing and Promotion Management, Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, Sales, Sales Enablement and Execution, Sales Performance Management

Was accounting ever cool? Well, yes, in a nerdy sort of way. Double-entry bookkeeping, codified in the 15th century by Fra Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar and pal of Leonardo Da Vinci, was essential for the expansion of trade and the creation of the modern corporation. Bookkeeping and accounting were as important to economic development as two other financial inventions – insurance and fractional reserve banking. Double-entry bookkeeping is an elegant system, simple yet powerful. It supports the accurate recording of transactions and the economic condition of a business as well as analyses of its performance. That’s cool.

Topics: Analytics, Business Intelligence, Big Data, Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Financial Performance Management, Enterprise Resource Planning

A quarter century after a “fast, clean close” became a key measure of a finance and accounting department’s effectiveness, companies continue to take too long to close their books. Our Office of Finance research finds that 60 percent of companies take more than six business days to complete their close despite widespread agreement that it should be done within a business week. Closing sooner provides executives with financial and management accounting data sooner. A faster close also promotes agility in responding to markets and competitors, frees up departmental resources to enable CFOs to fix process issues that hamper the effectiveness of the department and allows extra time to concentrate on more valuable analytical tasks. Moreover, it’s likely that by focusing on issues that are delaying the close, the department will uncover the root cause of other issues that diminish its performance. “We’re too busy to figure out how to save time” is a common problem in these finance organizations.

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Financial Performance Management

OneStream XF from OneStream is a financial performance management (FPM) platform offering planning, budgeting and forecasting, statutory consolidations and reporting. The company was founded in 2010 and has been self-funded, which means that until recently its marketing and brand recognition efforts have been limited. I reviewed the company’s statutory consolidation capabilities earlier this year.

Topics: Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Financial Performance Management, Recurring Revenue

Longview Solutions provides tax departments with a full suite of tax software to manage direct (income) taxes. This includes tax provision and reporting, tax analysis and planning as well as operational transfer pricing and country-by-country (CbC) reporting. A dedicated tax application suite speeds the tax process, enhances control, reduces the chance of errors and ensures consistency in provision, reporting, analysis and planning.

Topics: Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management

Budget season is about to begin for many companies. I’ve spent a few decades doing research into – as well as thinking and writing about – the planning and budgeting processes in corporations. I’ve closely examined the role of the Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) group, which is usually charged with managing the corporate budget process. About seven years ago, I published a research note, “Putting the ‘A’ Back in FP&A”. In it I made the point that the time saved by using dedicated planning and budgeting software and therefore not having to deal with spreadsheet machinations would enable people working in FP&A to do what they were hired to do: Analysis.

Topics: Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, Financial Performance Management

Workday will acquire Adaptive Insights for $1.55 billion in cash, with the transaction scheduled to close in the third quarter of this year. The combination adds Adaptive Insight’s well-developed cloud-based financial performance management software to Workday’s workforce and financial management suite. Workday says Adaptive will operate as a standalone business and continue with its current product strategy.

Topics: Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, Financial Performance Management

Blockchains are attractive because their built-in security and trust factors make them useful for almost all business interactions involving organizations and individuals. Blockchains have two basic functions. One is as a method for handling transactions involving property such as land deeds, trademarks or other assets. The second involves exchanges of data such as identities of individuals or businesses, the location of an object at a point in time or weather conditions. All interactions involving property or assets include the transfer of data as well, of course, but some blockchain use cases are informational only.

Topics: Analytics, Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, data science, Internet of Things, Mobile, Big Data, Data Integration, Data Governance, Data Preparation, digital technology, Digital Marketing, Digital Commerce, Marketing Performance Management, Office of Finance, Operations & Supply Chain

Workday recently presented a technology summit for industry analysts. The presentations focused on Workday’s ongoing product advancements as well as its approach to employing emerging technologies. These technologies include artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), robotic process automation (RPA) and bots utilizing natural language processing. Ventana Research uses the term “robotic finance” to refer to these technologies when used in the office of finance. In our view, they will have a profound impact on the nature of white-collar work over the coming decade. Financial management and ERP software vendors are focusing on these technologies because they will disproportionately affect finance and accounting departments: I estimate that their adoption has the potential to eliminate one-third of the accounting department’s workload within a decade.

Topics: Cloud Computing, Collaboration, data science, Mobile, Big Data, Machine Learning, Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Financial Performance Management