ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

Finance Analytics Innovation

Posted by Robert Kugel on 21 July 2011

Our recently completed benchmark research on how finance departments use analytics makes clear that while they have a distinct competence in this area and execute the basics well, a majority of companies are immature in their use of advanced finance analytics. Regardless of industry or geography, few finance departments use predictive analytics or delve into important areas such as strategic...

Topics: Predictive Analytics, Office of Finance, Finance Analytics, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CFO

Business Analysts, Take Control of Your Analytic Destiny

Posted by Mark Smith on 24 June 2011

The recent buzz around business analytics has generated resurgent conversation about what businesses need from their data to optimize business processes and make better decisions. Our benchmark research on business analytics in more than 2,500 organizations produced unprecedented information about business and IT usage and competency with analytics. It confirmed that effective use of business...

Topics: Sales Performance, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, Business Technology Innovation, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Uncategorized, Workforce Performance, Business Planning, CFO

Budgeting Is So Unimportant

Posted by Robert Kugel on 08 June 2011

I think one of best epigrams attributed to Mark Twain is, “Everyone talks about the weather but nobody ever does something about it.” This also has relevance to the situation with corporate planning and budgeting. Bemoaning its lack of value and calling for some sort of change goes back a long way, but few companies have matured their process. In the 1970s something called “zero-based budgeting”...

Topics: Planning, Predictive Analytics, Sales, Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, Office of Finance, Budgeting, contingency planning, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CFO, finance, Financial Performance Management, Integrated Business Planning

SAP’s Opens Road for HANA and Big Data at SAPPHIRE NOW

Posted by ISG Software Research on 27 May 2011

At this year’s SAPPHIRE NOW conference (Twitter: #SAPPHIRENOW) SAP demonstrated its in-memory computing technology and applications. SAP’s High Performance Analytic Application (HANA), which I think of as a high-availability network appliance, is part of the technology industry movement to increase the performance and scalability across a range of applications, from analytics to transactions, to...

Topics: Sales Performance, SAP, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, IT Performance, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Workforce Performance, CFO, COO

SAP Advances Enterprise Performance Management in Version 10

Posted by Robert Kugel on 21 May 2011

SAP announced the release of version 10 of its SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Solutions suite, an enhanced and updated set of applications and capabilities for executives and managers. In our Value Index assessment of financial performance management suites and my analysis of it last year, Ventana Research gave SAP’s offering the highest score, and this new release...

Topics: Planning, Sales Performance, SAP, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, Forecast, Office of Finance, budget, Budgeting, XBRL, Operational Performance, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Management, Workforce Performance, CFO, agile, budgeting software, CEO, Corporate Finance, Financial Performance Management, Integrated Business Planning

SAP’s New Management and Products Faces the Future at SAPPHIRE NOW

Posted by Mark Smith on 13 May 2011

It is no easy task to change the culture of a global technology company, especially one that has a very demanding customer base with high expectations for advancing its widespread product lines. This is the challenge that SAP faces as it transitions from a company of three-letter-acronym collections of applications including CRM, SCM and ERP to one that focuses on specific business processes and...

Topics: Sales Performance, SAP, Social Media, Supply Chain Performance, Sustainability, Business Technology Innovation, IT Performance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Business Intelligence, Business Mobility, Business Performance, Business Technology, CIO, Cloud Computing, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Information Applications, Information Management, Information Technology, Location Intelligence, Operational Intelligence, Workforce Performance, CFO, COO

Acquisition of Lawson Complements Infor’s Portfolio

Posted by ISG Software Research on 12 May 2011

Golden Gate Capital and Infor (which is owned largely by Golden Gate Capital) will acquire Lawson Software for approximately $2 billion in a transaction that is expected to be completed sometime in this year’s third quarter. Lawson is the latest in a string of enterprise software acquisitions made or financed by Golden Gate that began almost a decade ago. Today, Infor is made up of legacy...

Topics: Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, ERP, Human Capital Management, Operational Performance, Business Analytics, Business Performance, Business Technology, Customer & Contact Center, Financial Performance, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Oracle, Workforce Performance, CFO, Infor, Talent Management, Corporate Finance, Financial Performance Management

Alight Does Agile Planning

Posted by ISG Software Research on 25 April 2011

Alight Planning sells planning and budgeting software mainly to midsize companies and stresses its software’s ability to support a more effective approach to corporate planning and budgeting. It calls this “agile planning,” a term used to contrast a traditional, highly deterministic method of drawing up and executing plans with an “agile” mindset that is better able to deal with the high level...

Topics: Planning, Sales Performance, Supply Chain Performance, Forecast, Office of Finance, budget, Budgeting, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Workforce Performance, CFO, agile, budgeting software, CEO, Integrated Business Planning

Infor Helps Midsize Multinationals Manage Finance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 14 April 2011

While Europeans have long had to adapt to working in many languages, currencies and legal jurisdictions, a generation ago most midsize companies in the United States did all their business in their home country and in U.S. dollars. Today, though, the relentless globalization of the world economy means that an increasing number of midsize companies in North America are functionally multinational...

Topics: ERP, Office of Finance, Sunsystems, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CFO, Financial Management, Infor, Corporate Finance, FMS

SAP Solidifies Software Category with SAP BusinessObjects GRC 10.0

Posted by ISG Software Research on 05 April 2011

When the term “governance, risk and compliance” (GRC) was introduced almost 10 years ago, software for this purpose was not a real category but a loose grouping of disparate applications that had something to do with meeting the requirements of the recently passed Sarbanes-Oxley Act. (You can find my perspective on the GRC category from a couple of years ago here. Now, with the release 10.0 of ...

Topics: SAP, GRC, Office of Finance, IT Research, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Information Management, CFO, Corporate Governance, Governance Risk and Compliance

SunGard IntelliMatch: Financial Governance and Reconciliations

Posted by ISG Software Research on 05 April 2011

Back-office operations in commercial and investment banks are among those critical functions that are underappreciated until they stop working well. This includes transaction reconciliations and the related exceptions management. Reconciliations are necessary to achieve a reasonable assurance of complete and accurate record of trading activity. The process is especially challenging now, partly...

Topics: GRC, Office of Finance, Financial Governance, Reconciliation, Sungard, Operational Performance, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Performance, Financial Performance, Information Management, CFO, Corporate Governance, Governance Risk and Compliance

Bringing Tax Into Mainstream Finance

Posted by ISG Software Research on 01 March 2011

Taxes are a big expense for most companies, profitable or not. Many larger and midsize companies must traverse a complex and constantly shifting landscape of tax rules, rates, and jurisdictions. I’ve previously written about the need for corporations to manage their taxes more intelligently, and that that may require someone in the tax department who understands both the department’s functional...

Topics: Tax, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CFO, Corporate Finance, Financial Performance Management

Your Company Needs a Tax Technology Expert

Posted by Robert Kugel on 21 February 2011

To manage taxes more intelligently tax departments need to focus more on execution than compliance. I’ll confess that this observation is based on informal rather than rigorous research, so I’ll leave it up to individuals that work in these departments and in the finance function generally to consider whether this applies to their company.

Topics: Tax, Business Performance, CFO, Corporate Finance, Financial Performance Management

Putting the “A” Back in FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis)

Posted by Robert Kugel on 10 February 2011

People who perform the financial planning and analysis (FP&A) function in the finance organization put together and update the budgets and forecasts. In many companies, the “A” portion of this activity gets short shrift. That’s because the mechanical process of pulling together and collating the data takes up so much time that very little remains for analysis. The result is that planning and...

Topics: FP&A, Finance Analytics, Financial Applications, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CFO, finance, Integrated Business Planning

Enterprise Risk Management Addresses the Agency Dilemma

Posted by Robert Kugel on 28 January 2011

I have written before about enterprise risk management, which is an essential piece of both performance management and corporate governance. Every aspect of business entails risk. Everyone who makes a business decision is – whether consciously or not – making trade-offs between risk and reward. Assessing risk is tricky in business because it means different things to different people depending on...

Topics: Governance, GRC, Office of Finance, Operational Performance, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CFO, compliance

Optimizing Tax Risk Exposure

Posted by ISG Software Research on 10 January 2011

I recently commented on why I believe companies must manage taxes more intelligently. One dimension of this is optimizing tax risk exposure. Most corporate tax codes are notoriously complex and at times ambiguous, leaving room for companies to interpret their application. These interpretations fall on a scale of “conservative” to “aggressive,” in which companies weigh the risk of penalties and...

Topics: Tax, Business Performance, Financial Performance, CFO, Financial Performance Management

SAP Plugs a Gap in Financial Filing

Posted by Robert Kugel on 16 December 2010

SAP is in the process of acquiring certain financial disclosure management software assets from cundus, a German provider of BI and performance management software. SAP will be buying cundus’ Financial Statement Factory and informationCollector, which together manage the collaborative creation and editing of financial and management reports using both structured and unstructured information. SAP...

Topics: ERP, Financial Applications, Uncategorized, CFO, finance, Financial Performance Management

A New Financial Force in the Cloud

Posted by ISG Software Research on 15 December 2010

One of the prominent salesforce.com partners on display at the recent Dreamforce in San Francisco was FinancialForce.com. It’s one of a growing list of providers of in-the-cloud accounting and finance packages built on the Force.com platform. Like other of these accounting vendors (such as Compiere, Intacct, Netsuite and - to some extent and eventually– Workday), it aims principally at companies...

Topics: ERP, Financial Applications, Business Performance, Cloud Computing, Financial Performance, CFO, finance

Sustainability and Performance Management

Posted by Robert Kugel on 03 December 2010

Years ago I was given a tour of a company’s factory by the CEO who was credited with engineering its recent turnaround. We were walking along a gallery one story above the shop floor when he pointed down to it and told me that when he first looked down on this scene he saw people dashing madly back and forth. Rather than taking that as a good sign of a busy factory, he said it was a clear...

Topics: Sustainability, Environment Management, Uncategorized, CFO, finance, Green

SAP Hits Suite Spot for Financial Performance Management

Posted by Robert Kugel on 01 December 2010

Ventana Research recently completed its 2010 Financial Performance Management Value Index of the major financial performance management suites. Financial performance management (FPM) is the process of addressing the often overlapping issues around people, process, information and information technology that affect how well finance organizations operate and support the activities of the rest of...

Topics: SAP, ERP, Financial Applications, Financial Performance, CFO, finance, Financial Performance Management