ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

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

Oracle’s AI Agents Amplify Value for Finance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 26 June 2025

Oracle’s recent industry analyst summit demonstrated significant progress in embedding artificial intelligence in its business applications—including those for finance, HR and supply chain management. This amplifies the already broad and deep functionality developed over decades. Oracle also continues to expand and extend its collaborative efforts with financial institutions, a form of... Read More

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

OneStream Roadmap for AI and Agents

Posted by Robert Kugel on 12 June 2025

OneStream offers a platform designed to serve the needs of accounting and financial planning and analysis (FP&A) organizations. The software handles financial close and consolidation, planning and budgeting, analysis and reporting. OneStream recently held its annual user conference, Splash, in Nashville. In attending this meeting, my focus was once again on the progress the company has made over... Read More

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

Software Increases Productivity in the Record-to-Report Cycle

Posted by Robert Kugel on 22 May 2025

The six costliest words in managing a finance department are, “We’ve always done it this way.” The record-to-report (R2R) cycle describes the process of finalizing and summarizing the financial activities of a business for a specific accounting period—typically a month, quarter or fiscal year. It is important to note that R2R exclusively covers the activities between recording (keeping the books)... Read More

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

AI-Enabled Contingency Planning is More Accessible Than Ever

Posted by Robert Kugel on 20 May 2025

We live in a time of uncertainty, not unpredictability. Especially when a business finds itself on an undefined journey with an unclear destination—whether caused by internal events or the world at large—having plans to deal with a range of outcomes increases the odds of success. Or, at least enduring the least amount of damage. Managing an organization in uncertain times is always hard, but... Read More

Topics: Machine Learning, Office of Finance, Supply Chain Planning, Business Planning, Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, Artificial intelligence, digital finance, Generative AI

Gaining Financial Management Effectiveness in Midsize Enterprises

Posted by Robert Kugel on 15 May 2025

Doing more with less is the defining characteristic of finance and accounting departments in midsize enterprises, which ISG research defines as organizations with between 100 and 999 workers. One frustrating truth confronting executives in these organizations is that, once their company stops being a small business, it has many of the same challenges that large enterprises face but with fewer... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, natural language processing, Procure-to-Pay

Infor Shows off AI, Process Mining and MES Advances

Posted by Robert Kugel on 01 May 2025

Infor provides industry-specific enterprise software that enhances business performance and operational efficiency. These verticals and related micro-verticals include manufacturing, food and beverage, hospitality, healthcare, distribution and retail. Infor offers applications for enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, customer relationship management and human capital management,... Read More

Topics: ERP, Machine Learning, Office of Finance, Operations, Continuous Accounting, Supply Chain, AI

Kinaxis Demonstrates Accessible AI-Enabled Supply Chains

Posted by Robert Kugel on 23 April 2025

I recently attended Kinaxis’ annual user group meeting, Kinexions. The most important theme of the event was the trifecta of artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI (GenAI) and agents. Supply chain planning and execution software are the business software domains that are going to be major beneficiaries of AI and agentic AI automation. However, they also are going to be two of the more... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Supply Chain Planning, Business Planning, Supply Chain, supply chain management

Achieve a Faster Tax Provision Process for a Faster Close

Posted by Robert Kugel on 17 April 2025

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, ERP and Continuous Accounting, tax; tax provision; transfer pricing, digital finance, Consolidate and Close Management

Board Goes All-In for External Data and AI to Improve Performance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 15 April 2025

ISG Research recently announced the results of its Business Planning Buyers Guide for 2025. We rated Board Exemplary and a leader in customer experience and in reliability. Board recently launched two external data offerings that significantly strengthen the capabilities of its planning software. Its Board Foresight is designed to support more effective and potentially more accurate forecasting... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, digital finance, Consolidate and Close Management

Buyer Beware: The Evolution of Agentic AI in Business Software

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 March 2025

Agents and “agentic AI” are all the rage now, eclipsing last year’s focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI). They are a way to automate work almost effortlessly so that repetitive and boring tasks get done with the least amount of effort and perhaps, more consistently. In business software, a broad range of software providers are claiming agents to be a panacea that can... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Digital Business, AgenticAI

What Analysts Should Do When Anyone Can Analyze with AI

Posted by Robert Kugel on 12 March 2025

One of the promised benefits of artificial intelligence (AI), Generative AI (GenAI) and agents is that they can make everyone their own financial and business analyst. It’s true that these technologies can make it possible for everyone to access once hard-to-reach data (with suitable permissions), unleash agents to assemble the data into useful tables and charts along with commentary describing... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, AI, AI and Machine Learning

A Strategic Approach to Replacing ERP Systems for Modernization and AI

Posted by Robert Kugel on 27 February 2025

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are comprehensive software platforms designed to integrate and manage all the core processes of an enterprise while recording transactions and their financial consequences to support the accounting and finance functions. ISG Software Research recently completed our Buyers Guide™ for ERP systems, designed to help enterprises that are replacing their... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, AI and Machine Learning

Trintech Provides Reliable Record-to-Report Productivity

Posted by Robert Kugel on 25 February 2025

Trintech provides finance departments in larger and midsize enterprises with software to accelerate their accounting close processes while achieving hard and fast accuracy and compliance requirements with less effort. The financial records of an enterprise must be periodically reviewed and summarized to create financial statements that inform executives and interested third parties of the... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting

Prophix’s FP&A Plus Brings Higher Performance to Midsize Enterprises

Posted by Robert Kugel on 19 February 2025

While headlines tend to focus on flashier topics, arguably the biggest business impact from technology advances over the past two decades has been on helping midsize enterprises improve their performance. These organizations have the same requirements as larger ones but have fewer resources to address those needs. Prophix has been at the forefront of using technology innovation to close that gap... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning

Adapting to Higher Inflation Longer with Profitability Management

Posted by Robert Kugel on 05 February 2025

In anticipation of conditions that suggested accelerating price increases, I wrote in 2021 about how technology could be useful in an inflationary period, 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. Inflation may have abated from its highs throughout... Read More

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

ESG Management Software is Essential for Efficient Compliance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 28 January 2025

Enterprises have been investing in software to manage their environmental, social and governance (ESG) objectives and compliance requirements. The need to account for these considerations in parallel with financial accounting began growing early in the century and accelerated as governments and regulatory authorities began to require companies to measure and document activities and outcomes.... Read More

Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting

Intercompany Financial Management is Essential for Multinationals

Posted by Robert Kugel on 22 January 2025

ISG Software Research coined the term intercompany financial management to define a discipline for structuring and handling transactions within an enterprise and between its legal entities. IFM is designed to maximize staff efficiency and accounting accuracy while optimizing tax exposure, minimizing tax leakage and ensuring consistent tax and regulatory compliance. Technology has advanced to a... Read More

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