ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives | Financial Performance Management

Research Reveals the Importance of Technology in Shortening the Close

Posted by Robert Kugel on 12 December 2023

We conducted our recent Smart Financial Close Dynamic Insights Research in part to assess to what extent the substantial disruptions of the pandemic have impacted the accounting close. When office lockdowns began in the first quarter of 2020, many finance departments were challenged to conduct the quarterly close remotely without face-to-face interactions. In the United States, the Securities and... Read More

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

insightsoftware Enables a Predictive and Effective Finance Department

Posted by Robert Kugel on 14 February 2023

insightsoftware provides applications for finance departments and other business users in midsize and larger organizations, offering a broad range of functions including analysis, internal and regulatory reporting, planning, consolidation, tax provision and treasury. The software brings together applications that enable business users to maximize data collected in existing systems and streamline... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, embedded analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting

Trintech Streamlines a Transformed Record-to-Report

Posted by Robert Kugel on 09 February 2023

Trintech provides finance departments in midsize and larger organizations with software to accelerate their accounting close processes. This record-to-report (R2R) cycle is complex because it involves the coordination of numerous people, many systems and multiple sources of data. There are iterative portions that involve cycles of reviews and multiple levels of approvals. These include... Read More

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

Optimizing Subscription Management for Finance and Accounting

Posted by Robert Kugel on 24 January 2023

The subscription and recurring revenue business models became a significant part of the economy this century with the advent of streaming services for entertainment and software as a service. They have grown in popularity because they enhance customer lifetime value by evolving what had previously been a one-time-sale relationship into a delivery of ongoing services which can create a more loyal... Read More

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

Office of Finance 2023 Market Agenda: A Brave New World

Posted by Robert Kugel on 19 January 2023

Ventana Research recently announced its 2023 Market Agenda for the Office of Finance, continuing the guidance we have provided since 2003 on the practical use of technology for the finance and accounting department. Our insights and best practices aim to enable organizations to operate with agility and resiliency, improving performance and delivering greater value as a strategic partner. We craft... Read More

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

Professional Services Automation Increases Efficiency

Posted by Robert Kugel on 17 January 2023

A professional services automation application marries front- and back-office functions, helping services organizations address core business challenges by ensuring that: Projects are optimally staffed by those with the right skills. Individual professionals are as productive as possible by maximizing their billable time within constraints (such as time required for improving their skills) as... Read More

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

Workiva Simplifies ESG Reporting

Posted by Robert Kugel on 28 December 2022

Workiva offers an environmental, social and governance application that enables organizations to manage the highly distributed tasks necessary for reporting to regulators and stakeholders on ESG matters. ESG issues have grown increasingly pressing over the past few years as investors and government entities urge organizations to measure and disclose relevant metrics. I’ve already covered the... Read More

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

The Data Pantry Accelerates Actionable Analytics for Decision-Making

Posted by Robert Kugel on 22 December 2022

Ventana Research uses the term “data pantry” to describe a method of data storage (and the technology and process blueprint for its construction) created for a specific set of users and use cases in business-focused software. It’s a pantry because all the data one needs is readily available and easily accessible, with labels that are immediately recognized and understood by the users of the... Read More

Topics: Continuous Planning, Business Intelligence, Data Management, Business Planning, Data, Financial Performance Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, continuous supply chain, data operations, Streaming Data Events, Analytics and Data, AI and Machine Learning

Accelerate Closing with a Faster Tax Provision Process

Posted by Robert Kugel on 07 December 2022

Managing corporate income taxes is a challenge for chief financial officers and their tax department professionals. Tax codes are often complex, so tax accounting as well as the data required for tax provisions and tax compliance are different enough from statutory accounting to create significant workloads for the tax department. The provision for income tax expense and, for public companies,... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management

Vena Provides Practical Support for Integrated Business Planning

Posted by Robert Kugel on 30 November 2022

Vena Solutions offers organizations a platform for financial planning, analysis and reporting as well as software to manage accounting consolidation and close processes. From the start, Vena has designed its applications to meet the needs of midsize organizations, which typically have the same requirements as large enterprises but with significantly fewer resources to acquire, manage and maintain... Read More

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

Technology Puts the ‘A’ Back in FP&A

Posted by Robert Kugel on 22 November 2022

The starting point of an era is never precise and rarely conforms to neat calendar delineations. For example, the start of the 20th century is associated with the outbreak of war in 1914. So I expect that decades from now, the consensus will hold that what became known as the 21st century began in the year 2020, with the pandemic serving as a catalyst that accelerated already existing trends and... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Intelligence, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, AI and Machine Learning

IBM Planning Analytics Enables Agility Based on Insight

Posted by Robert Kugel on 18 November 2022

IBM Planning Analytics with Watson is a comprehensive, cloud-based business planning application that supports what Ventana Research calls integrated business planning. We coined this term in 2007 to describe a high-participation approach to business planning that integrates strategy, operations and finance. Our Next Generation Business Planning Benchmark Research demonstrated the value of IBP:... Read More

Topics: Predictive Analytics, Office of Finance, embedded analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, Watson, Digital transformation, AI and Machine Learning

Planning for a More Uncertain World with Board International

Posted by Robert Kugel on 15 November 2022

The door opened to a new world in 2020, one that renders old assumptions suspect and future outcomes more varied and uncertain. It’s likely that the transition to what’s next will be bumpy, which makes planning more effectively that much more strategic. Board International offers a platform that enables financial planning and analysis groups to forecast, plan, budget, analyze and report, using a... Read More

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

Prophix’s Finance Platform Boosts Midsize Departments’ Effectiveness

Posted by Robert Kugel on 10 November 2022

Prophix offers cloud financial software for planning, budgeting, reporting and statutory financial consolidation designed to meet the requirements of midsize organizations and divisions of larger corporations. The company was one of the first to offer a planning platform capable of bringing together a company’s diverse planning processes and financial planning and budgeting. Its consolidation and... Read More

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

A New Approach to ERP for a More Effective Finance Department

Posted by Robert Kugel on 04 November 2022

ERP systems have been a fixture of organizational process management and record keeping for so long (more than three decades) that it is likely that few who use the software are aware that ERP is an acronym for Enterprise Resources Planning. Its smooth and uninterrupted functioning is essential to an organization’s accounting and finance processes. In manufacturing and distribution, ERP manages... Read More

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

A Finance Department Data Strategy for ESG Compliance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 31 October 2022

Sensitivity to environmental, social and governance issues – or ESG – has grown over the years and with it, increasing attention by some investors and government entities urging organizations to measure and disclose ESG metrics. The discussion about ESG reporting is now focused on high-level issues such as what data to gather, how to use it in reporting, and perhaps how to manage the disclosure... Read More

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

The Rising Expectations for Finance Analytics

Posted by Robert Kugel on 26 October 2022

It’s likely that finance analytics trace back to when people first began to record transactions on clay tablets. Financial analytics were given a boost with the codification of double-entry bookkeeping, an elegant system for recording transactions that facilitate the assessment of the performance and health of an organization. Further advances were achieved with the first mechanical – and then... Read More

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

Planful Acquires for Marketing Performance in Planning Suite

Posted by Robert Kugel on 19 October 2022

Planful recently acquired Plannuh, a marketing-performance management application, to integrate into the Planful platform so that organizations can connect their marketing planning and analysis group with the finance department. There’s the old story of a CEO who said, “I know half my marketing spend is wasted, I just don’t know which half.” Plannuh is designed to answer that question. Since... Read More

Topics: Marketing Performance Management, Office of Finance, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, intelligent marketing

Profitability Management Conquers Inflationary Pressures

Posted by Robert Kugel on 11 October 2022

A year ago, I wrote about how technology could be useful in an inflationary period, correctly anticipating the world we live in now. Responding effectively to changes in costs is always challenging, but even more so because of the choppy and chaotic nature of the current environment. Many organizations have a limited or no ability to raise prices, and are forced to find ways to minimize the... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management, Revenue Performance Management

Building a More Predictive Finance Department

Posted by Robert Kugel on 05 October 2022

A predictive finance department is one that can command technology to be more forward-looking and action-oriented while still fulfilling its core role of handling the financial elements of its organization including accounting, treasury and corporate finance. Beyond just automating rote tasks, technology also facilitates a shift toward becoming a predictive finance organization. Greater amounts... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Intelligence, Data Management, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, AI and Machine Learning

1
2
3
4
5

Browse by Analyst

Mark Smith

Mark Smith

Robert Kugel

Robert Kugel

David Menninger

David Menninger

Jeff Orr

Jeff Orr

Keith Dawson

Keith Dawson

Matt Aslett

Matt Aslett

Matthew Brown

Matthew Brown

Barika Pace

Barika Pace

Posts by Topic

Posts by Month