Tagetik provides financial performance management software. One particularly useful aspect of its suite is the Collaborative Disclosure Management (CDM). CDM addresses an important need in finance departments, which routinely generate highly formatted documents that combine words and numbers. Often these documents are assembled by contributors outside of the finance department; human resources, facilities, legal and corporate groups are the most common. The data used in these reports almost always come from multiple sources – not just enterprise systems such as ERP and financial consolidation software but also individual spreadsheets and databases that collect and store nonfinancial data (such as information about leased facilities, executive compensation, fixed assets, acquisitions and corporate actions). Until recently, these reports were almost always cobbled together manually – a painstaking process made even more time-consuming by the need to double-check the documents for accuracy and consistency. The adoption of a more automated approach was driven by the requirement imposed several years ago by United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that companies tag their required periodic disclosure filings using eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), which I have written about. This mandate created a tipping point in the workload, making the manual approach infeasible for a large number of companies and motivating them to adopt tools to automate the process. Although disclosure filings were the initial impetus to acquire collaborative disclosure management software, companies have found it useful for generating a range of formatted periodic reports that combine text and data, including board books (internal documents for senior executives and members of the board of directors), highly formatted periodic internal reports and filings with nonfinancial regulators or lien holders.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
ERP,
Human Capital Management,
Modeling,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
close,
closing,
Consolidation,
Controller,
Finance Financial Applications Financial Close,
IFRS,
XBRL,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC),
Business Performance Management (BPM),
CFO,
compliance,
Data,
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
benchmark,
Financial Performance Management,
financial reporting,
FPM,
GAAP,
Integrated Business Planning,
Profitability,
SEC Software
PROS Holdings, a provider of price and revenue optimization software, has an agreement in principle to acquire Cameleon Software, which offers configure, price and quote (CPQ) applications. The combined company is likely to benefit from a broader geographic presence (PROS is based in Houston while Cameleon is in Toulouse, France) for their sales and marketing efforts. However, the longer-term strategic value of the merger lies in the combination of the related categories of price optimization and CPQ to improve sales effectiveness and financial performance.
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Topics:
Sales,
FP&A,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
PRO,
PROS,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
CFO,
CPQ,
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
CEO,
FPM,
Price Optimization,
Profitability
Oracle continues to enrich the capabilities of its Hyperion suite of applications that support the finance function, but I wonder if that will be enough to sustain its market share and new generation of expectations. At the recent Oracle OpenWorld these new features were on display, and spokespeople described how the company will be transitioning its software to cloud deployment. Our 2013 Financial Performance Management Value (FPM) Index rates Oracle Hyperion a Warm vendor in my analysis, ranking eighth out of nine vendors. Our Value Index is informed by more than a decade of analysis of technology suppliers and their products and how well they satisfy specific business and IT needs. We perform a detailed evaluation of product functionality and suitability-to-task as well as the effectiveness of vendor support for the buying process and customer assurance. Our assessment reflects two disparate sets of factors. On one hand, the Hyperion FPM suite offers a broad set of software that automates, streamlines and supports a range of finance department functions. It includes sophisticated analytical applications. Used to full effect, Hyperion can eliminate many manual steps and speed execution of routine work. It also can enhance accuracy, ensure tasks are completed on a timely basis, foster coordination between Finance and the rest of the organization and generate insights into corporate performance. For this, the software gets high marks.
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Topics:
Big Data,
Mobile,
Planning,
Social Media,
ERP,
Human Capital Management,
Modeling,
Office of Finance,
Reporting,
Budgeting,
close,
closing,
Consolidation,
Controller,
driver-based,
Finance Financial Applications Financial Close,
Hyperion,
IFRS,
Tax,
XBRL,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
CIO,
Cloud Computing,
In-memory,
Oracle,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
CFO,
compliance,
Data,
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
benchmark,
Financial Performance Management,
financial reporting,
FPM,
GAAP,
Integrated Business Planning,
Price Optimization,
Profitability,
SEC Software
Pricing and profit margins appear to be trending topics, which is normal at this stage of the business cycle. North American companies achieved high levels of profitability coming out of the last recession by staying lean, but this trend has run its course. Margins are being squeezed, and companies are looking for ways to add to the bottom line.
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Topics:
Planning,
Sales,
Office of Finance,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Analytics,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
costing,
FPM,
Price Optimization,
Profitability,
S&OP
One of the most important IT trends over the past decade has been the proliferation of ever wider and deeper sets of information sources that businesses use to collect, track and analyze data. While structured numerical data remains the most common category, organizations are also learning to exploit semistructured data (text, for example) as well as more complex data types such as voice and image files. They use these analytics increasingly in every aspect of their business – to assess financial performance, process quality, operational status, risk and even governance and compliance. Properly applied, business analytics can deliver significant value by deepening insight, supporting better decision-making and providing alerts when situations require attention from managers or executives.
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Topics:
Planning,
Predictive Analytics,
Customer,
Human Capital Management,
Office of Finance,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Budgeting,
close,
closing,
Finance Analytics,
PRO,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Collaboration,
Cloud Computing,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
CFO,
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
Risk,
costing,
FPM,
Profitability
Profit Velocity Solutions’ PV Accelerator is an analytic application designed to enable capital-intensive companies to consistently achieve substantially wider margins and higher return on assets (ROA). Companies in industries such as specialty chemicals, building materials, integrated steel mills and silicon chip fabrication (to name just four) routinely fail to make the right decisions about pricing, production and sales management because they use analytic methods that, from an economic perspective, present a distorted measure of profitability. Profit Velocity’s approach is to use profit contribution per unit of time as the core principle for driving decisions about production, pricing and CRM-related issues, including compensation-, customer- and account management.
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Topics:
Performance Management,
Sales,
Human Capital Management,
Office of Finance,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
PV Accelerator,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Cloud Computing,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM),
Price Optimization,
Profit Velocity,
Profitability,
Software,
S&OP
This is the third in a series of blog posts on what CEOs (and for that matter, all senior corporate executives) need to know about IT and its impact on running a business. The first covered the high-level issues. As I noted, it’s not necessary for a CEO to be able to write Java code or master the intricacies of an ERP or sales compensation application. However, CEOs must grasp the basics of IT just as they must understand basic corporate finance, the production process and – at least at a high level – the technologies that support that process. My second post was about four supporting technologies that will drive change in business computing over the next five years. It relates examples of how applications can help every part of a business operate more effectively, not just efficiently. Now let’s turn our attention to finance and sales – and as I’ve noted in the previous posts, what follows is an “elevator pitch” treatment of what could be a much longer discussion.
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Topics:
Planning,
Predictive Analytics,
Sales,
Customer,
Human Capital Management,
Office of Finance,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Budgeting,
close,
closing,
PRO,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
CFO,
Customer Performance Management (CPM),
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
Information Management (IM),
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
CEO,
FPM,
Profitability,
SPM
It’s clear that certain customers generate more profits than others, just as some products offer greater economic returns than others, as I’ve noted before. For this reason, efforts to improve customer profitability are not a new trend. Good managers have always looked for ways to achieve the highest sustainable margins. However, at some point, almost all businesses realize that increasing sustainable profitability can’t be achieved simply through increasing revenue or cutting costs. Those straightforward approaches are fine for tactical, one-off decisions, but they’re too simplistic for designing and implementing business strategies.
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Topics:
Office of Finance,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Business Intelligence,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
CRM,
Customer Performance Management (CPM),
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
Information Applications (IA),
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
Financial Performance Management,
Profitability
Doing one’s homework is vital in buying business software. However, unless you’re replacing a relatively simple application, it’s hard to know exactly what to evaluate. Indeed, if people in a company given this task don’t have experience in using a specific type of business application or don’t understand how new or improved functionality will help execute business processes better, they may do a poor job of assessing the available alternatives. Third-party consultants may be helpful, but their prejudices and familiarity with a vendor’s products may cloud their objectivity. In the end, a buyer might agree with their point of view, but this agreement should be an informed decision.
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Topics:
Performance Management,
Sales,
Human Capital Management,
Office of Finance,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
Zilliant,
Model N,
Navetti,
Nomis Solutions,
PROS Pricing,
Servigistics,
Signal Demand,
Analytics,
Business Analytics,
Oracle,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
Customer Performance Management (CPM),
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
Vendavo,
Price Optimization,
Profitability,
Software,
Vistaar Technologies
I believe that one of the more important analytical applications that a company can implement is profitability management. IBM Cognos offers Profitability Modeling and Optimization as part of its Cognos 10 offering that my colleague has assessed. As I’ve noted, most people in a corporation are focused on profitability, but not necessarily in a way that optimizes results across the organization in a day-to-day, consistent fashion. Those responsible for each component piece that contributes to profitability (such as departments, product lines or divisions) have objectives, but in pursuing these individual objectives they may make decisions that degrade the overall profitability of the corporation. Moreover, companies rarely seek to maximize short-term profits. They routinely make decisions that diminish their bottom line, such as promotional pricing, warranties or services included at no additional cost, with the aim of achieving strategic objectives. The question they must answer in making these decisions is whether these moves are justified. Similarly, they also must ask what they are including in their offer that they might be able to charge more for, such as shipping or warranties.
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Topics:
Performance Management,
Forecast,
Modeling,
Office of Finance,
Operational Performance Management (OPM),
enterprise profitability management,
Business Analytics,
IBM,
Business Performance Management (BPM),
Cognos,
Financial Performance Management (FPM),
Sales Performance Management (SPM),
Workforce Performance Management (WPM),
financial services,
Profitability
