ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives | ERP and Continuous Accounting

Payment Technology is Transforming Treasury and Finance Operations

Posted by Robert Kugel on 22 September 2026

Finance has been a hotbed of technology adaptation, especially in the digital age, because money is just numbers and therefore easily lends itself to new types of digital innovation. For centuries, fortunes were found in removing friction from financial transactions. For example, starting in ancient times, coins were minted to reduce the need for weighing metal in every transaction, along with... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, blockchain, digital finance, Procure-to-Pay, Consolidate and Close Management, Treasury, Order-to-Cash, Payments, Stablecoins

AI Imperatives for Business Software Providers

Posted by Robert Kugel on 12 August 2026

I recently wrote about the distinction between personal productivity artificial intelligence (AI) and enterprise AI. Each has a role to play. An important challenge facing enterprises in the coming years will be encouraging and supporting the use of AI-enabled personal productivity applications for individuals and small workgroups while preventing their misuse in performing enterprise tasks and... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Supply Chain Planning, Business Planning, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, supply chain management, digital finance, Procure-to-Pay, Consolidate and Close Management, Order-to-Cash, AI & Machine Learning, Buyer Behavior, AI Governance

Oracle Fusion Agentic Apps May Address AI Cost and Control Issues

Posted by Robert Kugel on 30 July 2026

Oracle’s recent announcements around Fusion Agentic Applications represent a meaningful evolution in enterprise application architecture, especially as it facilitates automation and, ultimately, process transformation. Rather than following a prevailing view that assumes agentic systems must capture the nuances of every business process top-down, which would be prohibitively expensive and... Read More

Topics: Governance, Office of Finance, Business Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Procure-to-Pay, Consolidate and Close Management, Customers and CX - Business & Technologies, Employees & HCM - Business & Technologies, Order-to-Cash, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies, AI & Machine Learning, Supply Chain & Operations

More on the SaaS-Pocalypse That Won’t Happen

Posted by Robert Kugel on 16 July 2026

The “SaaS-Pocalypse,” which I commented on earlier this year, is a persistent yet cresting technology and Wall Street analyst narrative that rests on three flawed assumptions. First, advanced AI assistants and autonomous agents will make traditional software-as-a-service (SaaS) enterprise applications and their business models obsolete. Second, AI will allow ordinary workers to vibe code custom... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Procure-to-Pay, Consolidate and Close Management, Order-to-Cash

Agents and Process Intelligence Facilitate Digital Process Reengineering

Posted by Robert Kugel on 15 April 2026

If you’ve been around for more than a few years, watching some emerging trend in information technology can seem like coming full circle. Something new sounds a whole lot like something old. This may be true from one perspective, like looking down, but I’ve long thought that this progression is helical. That’s because, viewed sideways, we actually are at a higher level of capability, lower cost... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Analytics, Business Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Generative AI, Consolidate and Close Management, AI and Machine Learning

Reimagining Procure-to-Pay With AI

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 January 2026

Digitally transforming finance operations has been a priority since 2020. Especially with the application of artificial intelligence in all its forms, software can streamline purchasing and the procure-to-pay (P2P) cycle, shorten process times, reduce unnecessary costs, provide greater visibility into cash flows, increase control and improve results. The application of AI will increasingly... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Procure-to-Pay, Generative AI, Business & Technologies, AI & Machine Learning

You Can’t Spell ERP Without AI

Posted by Robert Kugel on 15 January 2026

The reason why artificial intelligence (AI) has been the focus of endless keynote speeches, product roadmap announcements by ERP providers and development efforts across all categories of business software is that AI-embedded systems promise (and will ultimately deliver) software that more closely molds its operation to the needs of a specific enterprise and individual user. The technology is... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Generative AI, Order-to-Cash, Business & Technologies, AI & Machine Learning

Addressing Critical Audit Matters With AI and Virtual Audits

Posted by Robert Kugel on 09 December 2025

Spectacular accounting frauds happen with enough regularity to beg the question, how did the auditors miss that? In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. established the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB or “peekaboo”) with the aim of protecting investors and lenders by overseeing the audits of public companies to ensure the reports and opinions are accurate, independent... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Consolidate and Close Management, Business & Technologies

AI Is Coming for the Tax Department (Good!)

Posted by Robert Kugel on 04 December 2025

Managing corporate income taxes effectively is important since these represent the second or third biggest expense for many enterprises. However attractive minimizing them might be, following all applicable tax laws and regulations is equally as important because failure to pay what the laws require can result in significant monetary fines and, potentially, reputational risk. Since there can be... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Tax, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Generative AI, Business & Technologies, AI & Machine Learning, Tax Provision, Tax Avoidance

Midsize Enterprises Need a Technology Update

Posted by Robert Kugel on 20 November 2025

The Chief Financial Officer of a midsize enterprise faces a different set of challenges than their counterparts in larger or smaller enterprises. Midsize enterprises have grown to the point of requiring capabilities similar to larger businesses but typically lack the staff or financial resources afforded to bigger ones. The past decade of IT innovation—especially the expansion of cloud... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, Business, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Consolidate and Close Management, Business & Technologies

Tokenizing Working Capital to Improve Performance and Efficiency

Posted by Robert Kugel on 13 November 2025

Tokenization is an emerging topic for business software providers. Tokenization is the process of representing something valuable or complex with a simple computer-readable substitute to enhance security or improve the efficiency and usability of a system. Tokens are already widely used in commerce. It’s now common for sensitive data used in a transaction, such as a bank account number or credit... Read More

Topics: Governance, Office of Finance, Operations, Analytics, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Procure-to-Pay, Generative AI, AI and Machine Learning, Order-to-Cash, Business & Technologies

Oracle Shows Off AI Agents for Performance and Productivity

Posted by Robert Kugel on 05 November 2025

The recent Oracle AI World event did not unveil much that was stunning “new” news for its business applications, because much of what has been evolving was presented already and has been in front of analysts for some months. What was on display, though, was steady progress to its advancing capabilities coming out every quarter. The company has focused on the development of agents and an agentic... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Generative AI, Consolidate and Close Management, AI and Machine Learning

NetSuite Next: Productivity by a Thousand Cuts with AI

Posted by Robert Kugel on 28 October 2025

Oracle NetSuite’s presentations and announcements at its recent user group meeting, SuiteWorld, focused on an initiative called NetSuite Next, a set of artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI capabilities that will be an inherent part of the NetSuite suite of applications starting in 2026. The company’s objective is to facilitate customers’ transition to this AI-centric... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, Digital Commerce, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Procure-to-Pay, Generative AI, Order-to-Cash, Business & Technologies, AI & Machine Learning

Data Is the Structural Steel of Finance Departments

Posted by Robert Kugel on 15 October 2025

There's a saying among military historians that amateurs debate strategy while professionals talk about logistics. In a similar vein, those rooted deeply in the workings of information technology (IT) pay close attention to data because it is fundamental to the proficiency and effectiveness of any IT system. Visionaries speak of data being the oil or gold of the information economy; practitioners... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Procure-to-Pay, Generative AI, Consolidate and Close Management, AI and Machine Learning, Order-to-Cash, Business & Technologies

Use AI and Technology to Optimize Working Capital

Posted by Robert Kugel on 03 September 2025

Working capital includes current assets (short-term items such as cash, money due from customers and inventory) and current liabilities (typically payments due to suppliers and loan amounts that must be repaid within one year). Working capital management is a prime function of the finance organization, designed to balance often-conflicting objectives related to revenue, liquidity, risk and... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Procure-to-Pay, Order-to-Cash, Business & Technologies

FloQast Gives Accountants an AI Hack to Improve Productivity

Posted by Robert Kugel on 28 August 2025

FloQast offers close management, reconciliation and accounting workflow automation software that streamlines processes and achieves reliable accuracy with less effort while providing real-time visibility into financial operations. The word “hack” originally referred to an ordinary horse, and later to a third-rate writer. More recently, it has come to mean—in a business context—a clever strategy... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Consolidate and Close Management, Business & Technologies

Successful AI Adoption: Change Management is Essential

Posted by Robert Kugel on 07 August 2025

Organizational change management is the discipline and process of guiding individuals, teams and organizations to a desired future structure. This is frequently an issue when implementing new technology designed to enable new strategies or business models. It is often a challenge because of human resistance to change, which is driven by a desire for stability, fear of personal consequences and... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, AI, Procure-to-Pay, Consolidate and Close Management, AI & Technologies, Order-to-Cash, Business & Technologies

Payments Technology and Evolution of P2P and O2C

Posted by Robert Kugel on 05 August 2025

At its heart, money is an intellectual construct, as demonstrated through its continual shape-shifting over the ages. Since most money today exists in digital form, technology has an outsized impact on advancing innovations, especially in the most mundane corners of finance. Payments—the transmission and receipt of money in commercial transactions—have been an especially fertile area for... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Procure-to-Pay, Order-to-Cash, Business & Technologies

Sustainability: Global Complexity Requires Software for Compliance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 30 July 2025

ISG Software Research is expanding our ISG Buyers Guide™ coverage to include the topic of sustainability. Our buyers guide will focus on sustainability exclusively rather than the full spectrum of environmental, social and governance topics. One reason is that gathering, managing, analyzing and reporting environmental data under the various frameworks and statutes presents enterprises with... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Operations & Supply Chain, ERP and Continuous Accounting, supply chain management, digital finance, Sustainability Management, Business & Technologies

Sage Defines its Future in AI for ERP

Posted by Robert Kugel on 24 July 2025

Sage recently held its Future user conference in Atlanta. Our ISG Buyers Guide for Midsize ERP Financial Management (2024) rated Sage Intacct as one of the top three providers, reflecting its strong performance in both product capabilities and customer experience. The event showcased its advances and roadmap aimed at embedding artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI in... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Procure-to-Pay, Order-to-Cash, Business & Technologies