ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives | ERP and Continuous Accounting (8)

CFOs in Midsize Companies Face Challenges

Posted by Robert Kugel on 25 November 2019

Ventana Research recently published benchmark research findings on the Office of Finance, many of which show a trend in the right direction. Organizations are closing the books sooner; financial planning and analysis has improved; and companies are more frequently establishing Finance IT groups to manage the increasingly technological requirements for effectiveness. However, one participant... Read More

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

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:... Read More

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... Read More

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... Read More

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

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... Read More

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... Read More

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... Read More

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... Read More

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

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... Read More

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... Read More

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... Read More

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

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... Read More

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... Read More

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

Workday Supports the Finance Department of the Future

Posted by Robert Kugel on 29 November 2018

This year’s Workday Rising, the company’s annual user group meeting, offered details of the company’s latest release, Workday 31, and provided a roadmap for the next several semiannual releases. To put these plans into a broader context, I’ve commented before that information technology is on the verge of delivering capabilities that will enable finance and accounting organizations to transform... Read More

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

Real Estate Isn’t Just a Fixed Cost

Posted by Robert Kugel on 12 October 2018

Financial analysts typically classify real estate as a fixed cost. Strictly speaking, that’s correct, but looking at it this way leads many organizations to overlook opportunities to more carefully manage their real estate and other occupancy expenses. The changes in lease accounting that are going into effect have caused some organizations to reexamine their leasing policies and how they... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, Financial Performance Management, Operations & Supply Chain, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Accounting, Lease Accounting, ASC842, IFRS16

Make Accounting Cool (Again)

Posted by Robert Kugel on 12 September 2018

Was accounting ever cool? Well, yes, in a nerdy sort of way. Double-entry bookkeeping, codified in the 15th century by Fra Luca Pacioli, a Franciscan friar and pal of Leonardo Da Vinci, was essential for the expansion of trade and the creation of the modern corporation. Bookkeeping and accounting were as important to economic development as two other financial inventions – insurance and... Read More

Topics: Big Data, Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, business intelligence, Analytics, Financial Performance Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting

FloQast Facilitates a Fast Close

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 August 2018

A quarter century after a “fast, clean close” became a key measure of a finance and accounting department’s effectiveness, companies continue to take too long to close their books. Our Office of Finance research finds that 60 percent of companies take more than six business days to complete their close despite widespread agreement that it should be done within a business week. Closing sooner... Read More

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

OneStream XF: A Finance Department Platform

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 August 2018

OneStream XF from OneStream is a financial performance management (FPM) platform offering planning, budgeting and forecasting, statutory consolidations and reporting. The company was founded in 2010 and has been self-funded, which means that until recently its marketing and brand recognition efforts have been limited. I reviewed the company’s statutory consolidation capabilities earlier this... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Recurring Revenue, Continuous Planning, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting

Workday Advances Technology Roadmap for Finance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 21 May 2018

Workday recently presented a technology summit for industry analysts. The presentations focused on Workday’s ongoing product advancements as well as its approach to employing emerging technologies. These technologies include artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), robotic process automation (RPA) and bots utilizing natural language processing. Ventana Research uses the term... Read More

Topics: Big Data, Data Science, Mobile, Machine Learning, Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, Cloud Computing, Collaboration, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting

OneStream Delivers Financial Performance Management

Posted by Robert Kugel on 04 May 2018

OneStream XF from OneStream Software is a financial performance management (FPM) platform available on-premises or in the cloud. The company is a relative newcomer (it started in 2010) but its founders are industry veterans and it has a long list of referenceable customers. Being self-financed, it only recently began to raise its market profile. Its SmartCPM system consists of software for... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, Analytics, HRMS, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Sales Planning and Analytics