ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

Be FIT: Modern Finance Needs Finance IT

Posted by Robert Kugel on 17 October 2019

The traditional office of finance has five main organs: accounting keeps the books; financial planning and analysis (FP&A) analyzes performance and manages the forward-looking activities of the company such as planning, budgeting and forecasting; corporate finance raises outside money; treasury takes care of the cash and bank accounts, and tax. The modern office of finance requires a sixth:...

Topics: Office of Finance, Analytics, Financial Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, Digital Technology, Operations & Supply Chain, ERP and Continuous Accounting, blockchain, robotic finance, Predictive Planning, Conversational Computing, revenue and lease accounting, collaborative computing, Subscription Management, AI and Machine Learning

Finally, a Faster Close

Posted by Robert Kugel on 07 October 2019

A quarter century ago the “fast, clean close” became a key measure of a finance and accounting department’s effectiveness. Since then there has been general agreement that companies should be able to close their books within a business week. Our research on the accounting close has consistently shown that companies with very similar characteristics (measured in terms of revenue, number of...

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

Dynamic Insights from Research on Finance Analytics

Posted by Robert Kugel on 19 September 2019

By itself, data isn’t useful for business; the application of analytics is necessary to transform data into actionable information. Data analysis of one sort or another has long been a core competence of finance departments, applied to balance sheets, income statements or cash flow statements. Today, however, Finance must go beyond these basics by expanding the scope of the data being examined to...

Topics: Customer Experience, Human Capital Management, Voice of the Customer, embedded analytics, Learning Management, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Data Governance, Data Lake, Data Preparation, Information Management, Internet of Things, Contact Center, Data, Product Information Management, Sales Performance Management, Workforce Management, Financial Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, Digital Technology, Digital Marketing, Digital Commerce, ERP and Continuous Accounting, blockchain, natural language processing, robotic finance, Predictive Planning, candidate engagement, Intelligent CX, Conversational Computing, Continuous Payroll, revenue and lease accounting, collaborative computing, mobile computing, Subscription Management, total rewards management, intelligent marketing, intelligent sales, AI and Machine Learning

TradeLens Emerges in a New Era of Trade

Posted by Robert Kugel on 17 September 2019

What’s the easiest way to completely immobilize a 500,000-ton ship?

Lose a sheet of paper.

The paperwork that accompanies international trade is a serious source of friction, inefficiency — and therefore cost — in supply chain execution. Trade documentation requires massive amounts of paper that today can be replaced by digital data. In 2018, Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, teamed...

Topics: Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, Internet of Things, Data, Operations & Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, blockchain, continuous supply chain

News from the 2019 Infor Innovation Summit

Posted by Robert Kugel on 14 August 2019

Infor recently held their Innovation Summit at Infor corporate headquarters in New York. At this annual event, they spend a good deal of time talking about progress on current initiatives and the exciting parts of the development roadmap. A key focus this year was AI and machine learning with Infor Coleman.

Topics: ERP, Office of Finance, Enterprise Resource Planning

IBM Blockchain Earns Our Innovation Award

Posted by Robert Kugel on 08 August 2019

Ventana Research has awarded IBM its 2019 Digital Innovation Award. This award recognizes the vendor’s support for identity management using blockchain technology through IBM Verify Credentials. The application is a first, small step in establishing a blockchain-enabled system for decentralized identity management, a technology that ultimately will enable point-to-point exchange of information...

Topics: Human Capital Management, Collaboration, Workforce Management, Work and Resource Management, blockchain

The Promise and Perils of a Platform Strategy

Posted by Robert Kugel on 06 August 2019

“Platform,” as used in the world of technology, originally referred to an operating system on which one could construct software applications. More recently, its usage has been expanded to apply to two types of business models. One enables third parties to create products and services that are complementary to a company’s core technology. For instance, both Apple and Salesforce have attracted a...

Topics: Human Capital Management, Marketing, Office of Finance, Voice of the Customer, Continuous Planning, Information Management, Internet of Things, Workforce Management, Financial Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, Digital Marketing, Digital Commerce, Operations & Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, robotic finance, Predictive Planning, revenue and lease accounting, collaborative computing, mobile computing, Subscription Management

How to Prove You Aren’t a Dog: Blockchains For Identity Management and Certification

Posted by Robert Kugel on 22 May 2019

Identity management is an old problem that has taken on new dimensions in the digital world. In 1993, at the dawn of the World Wide Web (WWW), The New Yorker ran a cartoon featuring two dogs talking, one perched in front of a computer. The caption reads: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” The phrase quickly evolved into a meme highlighting the issue of identity uncertainty in the new...

Topics: Human Capital Management, Office of Finance, Learning Management, Internet of Things, Data, Workforce Management, Digital Technology, ERP and Continuous Accounting, blockchain, candidate engagement, collaborative computing

Business Planning: Establish a Continuous and More Effective Path to Planning

Posted by Robert Kugel on 17 May 2019

Business planning in most companies is a relic, a process hemmed in by obsolete conceptions of what it can be. “Business planning” encompasses all of the forward-looking activities in which companies routinely engage, including marketing, sales, customer, supply chain and workforce planning as well as budgeting. In our view companies today can fundamentally change how they plan thanks to the...

Topics: Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, robotic finance, Predictive Planning, revenue and lease accounting

Oracle NetSuite: Steady as She Goes

Posted by Robert Kugel on 10 May 2019

From my perspective there were two significant takeaways from this year’s SuiteWorld. The first is that, almost two years on from the announced acquisition of NetSuite by Oracle, the combination has achieved its immediate objectives in growing NetSuite’s business, especially in Europe and Asia, and accelerating product development efforts. The second takeaway is that, at least for now, the unit...

Topics: Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, robotic finance, Predictive Planning

Prophix Supports the Strategic Midsize CFO

Posted by Robert Kugel on 26 April 2019

Prophix is a financial performance management (FPM) suite from Prophix Software offering statutory financial consolidation, planning, budgeting and reporting capabilities designed expressly for midsize companies and divisions of larger corporations. The chief financial officer of a midsize company faces a different set of challenges than those in larger corporations or small businesses. A midsize...

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

Scout RFP is Reimagining Sourcing and Procurement

Posted by Robert Kugel on 13 March 2019

Last week, Scout RFP held their 2nd annual user conference, Spark 2019. Scout’s software is designed to manage sourcing and procurement processes in companies. Even with a very targeted focus, there was one key aspect that stood out compared to all the other conferences I usually attend; Spark 2019 mainly focused on customer success with little time devoted to promoting the software itself....

Topics: ERP, Office of Finance, FPM, Price and Revenue Management, procurement, Predictive Planning, sourcing, Scout RFP

Blockchain's Presence at IBM THINK 2019

Posted by Robert Kugel on 25 February 2019

IBM’s THINK conference, just held this February in San Francisco, is IBM's annual user conference. THINK is designed to showcase upcoming product updates and releases from IBM, along with provide best practices on a wide range of topics. While many technologies were on display, there is one topic in particular I wanted to cover this year: Blockchain.

Topics: Office of Finance, IBM, Financial Performance Management, FPM, Digital Technology, blockchain

Supply Chain Management and Sourcing in a New Era of Trade

Posted by Robert Kugel on 22 February 2019

We’re in a new era of trade, the result of converging issues that have been building for at least a decade. Structurally and politically, the liberal ethos that drove the trade environment through the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st has changed. There will be a new equilibrium in the future; getting there, though, will be a bumpy ride. Adding to the challenges posed by a...

Topics: Office of Finance, Recurring Revenue, Continuous Planning, Financial Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, Inventory Optimization, Operations & Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, Sales and Operations Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Sales Planning and Analytics, revenue recognition

Revenue Recognition Standards Pose Planning Challenges

Posted by Robert Kugel on 18 February 2019

New rules governing revenue recognition for contracts have gone into effect for larger companies and are about to go into effect for smaller ones. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), which administers Generally Accepted Accounting Principles in the U.S. (US-GAAP), has issued ASC 606 and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), which administers International Financial...

Topics: Office of Finance, Recurring Revenue, Continuous Planning, Sales Performance Management, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Sales Planning and Analytics, Billing and Recurring Revenue, revenue recognition

Straight-Through Processing for Business and Commerce

Posted by Robert Kugel on 31 January 2019

“Straight-through processing” (STP) is a business process and data architecture methodology. Technology advances have made STP increasingly feasible for any business process, allowing companies to design and execute them from inception to completion in a more automated fashion, minimizing or eliminating human intervention in the process. The associated data also progresses automatically...

Topics: Sales, Customer Experience, Office of Finance, Recurring Revenue, Data Governance, Financial Performance Management, Digital Commerce, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Billing and Recurring Revenue

BlackLine Exorcises Accounting Details

Posted by Robert Kugel on 10 January 2019

I recently attended BlackLine’s annual user conference. The company aims to automate time-consuming repetitive tasks and substantially reduce the amount of detail that individuals must handle in the department. The phrase “the devil is in the details” certainly applies to accounting, especially managing the details in the close-to-report phase of the accounting cycle, which is where BlackLine...

Topics: automation, close, closing, Consolidation, control, effectiveness, Reconciliation, CFO, compliance, Data, controller, Financial Performance Management, FPM, Sarbanes Oxley, Accounting, process management, report

Wdata Puts the “A” back in FP&A

Posted by Robert Kugel on 13 December 2018

Workiva recently introduced Wdata, a cloud facility for centralizing financial and non-financial information from multiple sources. It frees up time for finance organizations, especially financial planning and analysis (FP&A) groups, to explore conditions and trends in their business because they need to spend less of it gathering data and preparing it for analysis and reporting. Ventana Research...

Topics: Office of Finance, Recurring Revenue, Continuous Planning, Data Governance, Data Preparation, Financial Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Sales Planning and Analytics, revenue recognition

FinancialForce Serves the Modern Service Business

Posted by Robert Kugel on 10 December 2018

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), subscription-based or recurring revenue services. FinancialForce’s key point of differentiation is that it is built natively on the Salesforce...

Topics: Sales, Office of Finance, Recurring Revenue, Cloud Computing, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Billing and Recurring Revenue, revenue recognition

Kinaxis Assists in the Planning of Supply Chains for the New Era of Trade

Posted by Robert Kugel on 06 December 2018

Kinaxis recently held its annual user conference, Kinexions, which focuses on helping the company’s customers improve their execution of supply chain and sales and operations planning (S&OP). This year’s event took place against a backdrop of what is beginning to look like a new and more challenging era of world trade. This will have a significant impact on most product companies with...

Topics: Continuous Planning, Financial Performance Management, Inventory Optimization, Operations & Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, Sales and Operations Planning