We added purchasing, sourcing and payments to our core Office of Finance focus areas this year to reflect new and important opportunities to use technology to gain effectiveness through greater efficiency. Doing a better job of record-keeping and organizing paperwork – especially in a minutiae-laden process like source-to-pay – may seem trivial. Yet digitally transforming core business processes became essential as the pandemic required organizations to lock down in early 2020, and the need to...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
Purchasing/Sourcing/Payments
Digitally transforming core business processes became essential as organizations locked down in early 2020 because of the pandemic and the need to operate remotely presented a set of new challenges that were best addressed by software. Especially in the areas of sourcing, purchasing and payments, software has the ability to streamline processes, shorten process cycles, reduce unnecessary costs, provide greater visibility into cash flows, increase control and improve results. Digitizing...
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Topics:
ERP,
Office of Finance,
continuous supply chain,
digital finance,
Purchasing/Sourcing/Payments
We live in a time of uncertainty, not unpredictability. Managing an organization in uncertain times is always hard, but tools are available to improve the odds for success by making it easier and faster to plan for contingencies and scenarios. Software makes it possible to quickly consider the impact of a range of events or assumptions and devise a set of plans to deal with them. Dedicated planning and budgeting software has been around for decades but is about to become all the more useful as...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Data Management,
Business Planning,
digital finance,
AI & Machine Learning
The cloud has come to dominate many business software categories, but until recently, enterprise resource planning for manufacturing and product-focused organizations has been a notable laggard. Cloud-based systems can be less costly to operate, perform better, be more secure and shift maintenance and update chores from the IT department to the vendor, freeing IT teams to concentrate on more strategic needs.
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Operations & Supply Chain,
Enterprise Resource Planning,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
continuous supply chain,
digital finance
insightsoftware provides applications for finance departments and other business users in midsize and larger organizations, offering a broad range of functions including analysis, internal and regulatory reporting, planning, consolidation, tax provision and treasury. The software brings together applications that enable business users to maximize data collected in existing systems and streamline the performance of a range of office of finance functions, all while limiting or eliminating the...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
embedded analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Planning,
Financial Performance Management,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
profitability management,
Revenue, Lease and Tax Accounting
Trintech provides finance departments in midsize and larger organizations with software to accelerate their accounting close processes. This record-to-report (R2R) cycle is complex because it involves the coordination of numerous people, many systems and multiple sources of data. There are iterative portions that involve cycles of reviews and multiple levels of approvals. These include reconciliations and adjusting of entries during the close as well as authoring, editing and updating...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Financial Performance Management,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance
Ventana Research coined the term intercompany financial management (IFM) to define a discipline for structuring and handling transactions within a corporation and between its legal entities designed to maximize staff efficiency and accounting accuracy while optimizing tax exposure, minimizing tax leakage and ensuring consistent tax and regulatory compliance. Technology has advanced to a point where this approach is feasible and cost effective. For that reason, Ventana Research asserts that by...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance
FinancialForce offers cloud-based ERP and professional services automation (PSA) software. The company targets midsize and larger services companies, especially those that provide professional services (such as consultants or field service organizations) as well as those that offer subscription-based or recurring revenue services and products. FinancialForce’s key point of differentiation is that it is built natively on the Salesforce platform, ensuring that CRM data is already located on the...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Business Planning,
Digital Commerce,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
Subscription Management,
digital finance,
Revenue Management,
Revenue, Lease and Tax Accounting
The subscription and recurring revenue business models became a significant part of the economy this century with the advent of streaming services for entertainment and software as a service. They have grown in popularity because they enhance customer lifetime value by evolving what had previously been a one-time-sale relationship into a delivery of ongoing services which can create a more loyal customer relationship as well as provide a regular, more predictable revenue stream. I recommend...
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Financial Performance Management,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance
Ventana Research recently announced its 2023 Market Agenda for the Office of Finance, continuing the guidance we have provided since 2003 on the practical use of technology for the finance and accounting department. Our insights and best practices aim to enable organizations to operate with agility and resiliency, improving performance and delivering greater value as a strategic partner.
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Business Planning,
Financial Performance Management,
ERP and Continuous Accounting,
digital finance,
profitability management,
Revenue, Lease and Tax Accounting