180 View – We continue to see organizations struggling with complex budgeting and forecasting. It seems that most of them are forced to rely on excel. There are alternatives from the ERP vendors and from CPM (Corporate Performance Management) vendors. See our CPM portal at http://www.cpm180systems.com/ for vendors of budgeting and forecasting systems.

180 View – There is some useful discussion. I would add that metrics should be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely. Without being specific, the numbers are ambiguous and there can be many ways to interpret the results. You should not choose metrics that are can’t be measured accurately or take a huge effort to obtain. Actionable means that the metric is easily understood and that it ties back to a specific team that is being measured. Relevant metrics are linked to strategy. Companies that need to wait a month or more for their metrics are in deep trouble. Real-time should be the goal, but accuracy objectives will cause a delay to make sure the numbers are right. You should be shooting for days – not weeks.

As well some measurements are inherently lagging indicators, which tell you about historical results – sales, gross profit, customer satisfaction… The most important metrics are leading indicators, which foreshadow things that could happen. For example rising error rates in shipping or longer time to ship often precede declining customer satisfaction.

Fortunately, the tools to make budgeting and planning more efficient are increasingly accessible – even for those determined to retain the much-maligned spreadsheet as part of the process. As FSN has previously highlighted, the collaborative nature of cloud-based applications such as Microsoft Office 2010, Google Apps and various other online productivity tools can make collaborative processes such as budgeting much easier to manage, by removing the need to distribute data via email, and eliminating the confusion and complexity that can be created by version management during the collection and consolidation phases…

The next level up is purpose-built budgeting software. It was once the preserve of the very large and those with very deep pockets, but cloud-based offerings are making these specialist systems more widely accessible and affordable…

180 View – Many organizations go through hoops to complete their annual budget using inadequate tools. The article suggests a number of alternatives and suggestions for improving the budgeting and planning process.

180 View – You will need to register with the BOARD but it’s worth the effort if your’re interested in CPM functionality and CPM vendors.

180 View – Forrester calls it Business Performance Solutions while most organizations call it Corporate Performance Management. In either case, it includes strategy management, budgeting and forecasting, financial reporting, consolidation and business intelligence. The article explains CPM and scores the vendors based on surveys, product demos and customer reference surveys. The article is a summary report but it is a good place to start in understanding CPM and some of the vendors.

• the ability to produce real-time reporting at select points in a business process while scaling the solution to a broad user base; this applies to operational reporting, management reporting and the budgeting process;
• the ability to handle large data volumes or data models in a cost-effective manner that meets both end user and IT needs;
• the ability to meet a planner’s real-time modelling cycle time (from input of drivers to output of key performance indicators and metrics);
• the ability to meet the data access security requirements of your organization’s end users in a cost-effective manner; and
• the ability to produce high-quality financial and management information through built-in preventive and detective data integrity controls…”

180 View – Business Intelligence must be a hot topic. There were two good articles about it in CAmagazine this month. This article agrees with Mark Cane’s article (“Business intelligence for the SME”) in that it’s a “struggle for companies to turn the huge amounts of data they produce into the sort of information that is useful at the right time.” This article also includes discussion of Corporate Performance Management (CPM) systems and the quote above adds some good points to consider in the selection of a CPM system that are often not considered.

The acquisitions represent a growing trend toward providing end-to-end solutions. Initially ERP was a back-office application (financials, distribution, etc.). Then it came to include the front office (CRM, eCommerce). Now it encompasses BI and corporate performance management. ERP systems contain a ton of data that needs to be turned into information. That is BI’s job. CPM includes BI as well as budgeting, forecasting and consolidation…”

The governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) category, for example, continues to attract new entrants and to generate a bewildering variety of applications for mandates ranging from email retention management to enterprise risk management. John E. Van Decker, research vice president with Gartner Inc., points to a burst of innovation around reconciliations management: “Financial governance software is starting to bring together process-management-type solutions for all of the activities that you need to do before you close the books. These may or may not be managed in larger systems, but you need some type of process to line up these activities and ensure that these things are done…”

Plus, a best-of-breed package can be an attractive option for companies that don’t want to take on a mammoth project at this point. Many organizations are “looking for something that can provide incremental steps to value,” Van Decker notes. “We’re also starting to see more use of software-as-a-service, where companies may want to do something on a 3-year basis, but with the understanding that by the end of that period they will have implemented a much larger set of applications.”

180 View – You will also find lists of products in this article for Corporate Performance Management (they call it Business Performance Management), Business Process Management, Spend Management, Cash Management, Receivables and Collection Management, Fixed Assets Management, Tax Management, Expense Management, GRC (Governance, Risk Compliance) Management and Project Portfolio Management.

We have also seen that some companies try to save time and costs by taking a best of breed product. This is can be a good strategy as long as there is not excessive integration required.

The objective for this site is to provide an unbiased portal to ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems, ERP Value Added Resellers (VAR’s) and relevant ERP articles.

CPM/BI Portal

The objective for this site is to provide an unbiased portal to CPM (Corporate Performance Management) and BI (Business Intelligence) systems, CPM/BI Value Added Resellers (VAR’s) and relevant CPM/BI articles.

BPI Portal

The objective for this site is to provide an unbiased portal to BPI (Business Process Improvement) systems and relevant articles. BPI is about efficiency and effectiveness as well as about GRC (Governance Risk and Compliance).

With the field’s top three vendors (Business Objects, Hyperion, and now Cognos) sold off, players in what’s left of the independent BI market are pointing to opportunities and omissions now that the usual suspects are off the map.”

180 View – ERP systems have been characterized as data rich and information poor. By including BI in ERP (which partly explains the acquisition of Hyperion by Oracle and Business Objects by SAP), organizations should not need to customize their systems to extract or slice and dice their ERP data. Although IBM does not sell ERP systems, they do have big opportunities with Cognos. A portion of IBM’s existing clients will be interested in Cognos, and IBM can also offer their services to Cognos customers. As well, Cognos will be used by some of the customers of the ERP vendors including SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. As IBM does not compete in the ERP space, IBM could be recommended by SAP, Oracle, Microsoft… for Cognos implementations as IBM is not an ERP competitor.

180 View – The article refers to Business Performance Management, but we think it’s more often called Corporate Performance Management (CPM). CPM typically consists of strategic planning, scorecarding, budgeting and forecasting, consolidation and business intelligence functionality. It’s a logical progression for ERP vendors to extend ERP to include CPM. It’s happened with the Tier One ERP systems with SAP’s purchase of OutlookSoft and Business Objects, and with Oracle’s purchase of Hyperion. And it’s also happening with mid market ERP systems with Exact’s purchase of Longview. The trend will clearly continue.