ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

Fix Sales and Operations Planning to Improve Financial Efficiency

Posted by Robert Kugel on 10 December 2021

Several years ago, I noted the importance of gaining resilience in managing supply chains. The world had entered a new era of trade following the financial crisis of 2007, as multilateral relationships were steadily fragmenting. For decades, sourcing and supply chain management was focused almost exclusively on achieving the lowest cost, and the world’s trade environment supported this approach....

Topics: Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, Business Planning, Operations & Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, continuous supply chain

Evolving ERP Systems Redefining Office of Finance Operations

Posted by Robert Kugel on 03 December 2021

Over the past decade, how organizations manage processes and record data related to transactional events captured by an enterprise resource planning system has undergone a significant evolution. Some of the more recent changes have been the result of a steady migration to the cloud, since these systems are typically updated frequently, require less maintenance, have better performance and are...

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

Digitally Transform Purchasing to Improve Performance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 05 November 2021

Digital transformation of the Office of Finance has been a recurring theme for several years, but adoption accelerated when offices were locked down and organizations had to collaborate remotely. It involves shifting manual work, often completed via spreadsheets circulating in emails, to software and systems for improved performance.

Topics: Performance Management, Office of Finance, Digital transformation

Digitize Tax Departments for Increased Strategic Value

Posted by Robert Kugel on 26 October 2021

Managing corporate income taxes is a challenge for chief financial officers. 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. Today, the worldwide trend to higher taxes and growing tax code complexity is increasing the payoff for...

Topics: Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Revenue, lease and tax accounting

BillingPlatform Bolsters the Rise of Subscription Services

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 22 September 2021

Subscription management and billing services help organizations offer unique benefits and enhance delivery to customers. By making services more personalized, organizations can acquire – and retain – more customers.

Topics: Sales, Office of Finance, Continuous Planning, embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Planning, Product Information Management, Digital Commerce, Operations & Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, natural language processing, revenue and lease accounting, continuous supply chain, Subscription Management, partner management, Process Mining, Streaming Analytics, Supplier Relationship Management, AI and Machine Learning

Managing Price Inflation Effectively with Technology

Posted by Robert Kugel on 21 September 2021

A looming challenge for companies in the developed world is price inflation, an issue periodically fretted over – but not experienced at a macroeconomic level in most developed economies – over the past four decades. Price inflation has been a frequent bugaboo that never emerged because of persistent disinflationary forces in the world economy over the past forty years. It remains to be seen to...

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

Essential Technology for Continuous Planning

Posted by Robert Kugel on 14 September 2021

As a result of the rapidly changing business landscape in 2020 and the need to quickly – and intelligently – change business plans and budgets, many more companies have been deciding to adopt a continuous planning approach to be able to add speed and flexibility. Transforming how organizations plan and budget has become a top-of-mind issue for CFO and even CEOs. Ventana Research has been...

Topics: FP&A, Office of Finance, budget, CFO, financial planning

Meet the Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) Reporting Challenge

Posted by Robert Kugel on 30 August 2021

Environmental, social and governance reporting by public corporations has become a top-of-mind issue for senior executives and boards of directors as countries increasingly consider or mandate its implementation in some form. The fundamental rationale for ESG reporting is rooted in the inability of purely financial measures to capture externalities (such as greenhouse gas emissions) or provide...

Topics: Human Capital Management, Office of Finance, Business Intelligence, Data Governance, Data Preparation, Data, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting

Moovila Earns Digital Business Innovation Award for 2021

Posted by Mark Smith on 26 August 2021

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations to advance business and IT.

Topics: Customer Experience, Human Capital Management, Marketing, Office of Finance, Operations & Supply Chain

Zuora Earns Office of Finance Digital Innovation Award for 2021

Posted by Robert Kugel on 19 August 2021

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations to advance business and IT.

Topics: Sales, Office of Finance, Digital Commerce, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Subscription Management

Finance IT Improves Departmental Performance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 06 August 2021

A year of business uncertainty, lockdowns and operational disruptions forced finance and accounting organizations to adapt and change in many ways that are proving to be permanent. The need to operate virtually resulted in some organizations accelerating their adoption of technology, bringing them closer to achieving a transformation of the finance and accounting function: reshaping the...

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Intelligence, Data Governance, Data Preparation, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, blockchain, robotic finance, Predictive Planning, AI and Machine Learning

Palantir Earns Overall Digital Innovation Award for 2021

Posted by Mark Smith on 04 August 2021

The annual Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards showcase advances in the productivity and potential of business applications, as well as technology that contributes significantly to the improved processes and performance of an organization. Our goal is to recognize technology and vendors that have introduced noteworthy digital innovations to advance business and IT.

Topics: Customer Experience, Human Capital Management, Marketing, Office of Finance, Voice of the Customer, Continuous Planning, embedded analytics, Learning Management, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Collaboration, Data Governance, Data Preparation, Information Management, Internet of Things, Business Planning, Contact Center, Data, Product Information Management, Sales Performance Management, Workforce Management, Financial Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, Digital Technology, Digital Marketing, Digital Commerce, Operations & Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Revenue, blockchain, natural language processing, data lakes, Total Compensation Management, robotic finance, Predictive Planning, employee experience, candidate engagement, Conversational Computing, Continuous Payroll, collaborative computing, mobile computing, continuous supply chain, Subscription Management, agent management, extended reality, intelligent marketing, sales enablement, work experience management, robotic automation, AI and Machine Learning, lease and tax accounting

Controllers: Always Be Closing

Posted by Robert Kugel on 29 June 2021

These days it strikes me that the motto of successful salespeople – "ABC: Always Be Closing!" – should apply equally to corporate controllers, albeit in the accounting sense. This is a reference to an approach to managing the finance department that I have been advocating, which I call "continuous accounting." It is a holistic way of managing the accounting function that, in large part,...

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

Sales Forecasting: Have the Process and Technology for a True Revenue Forecast?

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 22 June 2021

There has been a lot of market activity around vendors offering sales-forecasting products (or functionality to address sales forecasting) as part of a wider technology offering for sales and revenue management. As I have discussed in my Analyst Perspective: The Art and Science of Sales from the Inside Out, the pandemic accelerated the prior trends that are now forcing sales leaders and sales...

Topics: Sales, Office of Finance, Analytics, Business Planning, Sales Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, AI and Machine Learning

Digital Process Reengineering Improves Business Performance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 28 May 2021

Business process reengineering (BPR) was a consulting fashion in the early 1990s that spurred many companies to purchase their first ERP systems. BPR proposes a fundamental redesign of core business processes to achieve substantial improvements in market and customer responsiveness, productivity, cycle times and quality. Those early ERP systems provided a platform to manage cross-functional...

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, robotic finance, Predictive Planning, lease and tax accounting

Reduce Risk and Improve Departmental Effectiveness with Intercompany Financial Management

Posted by Robert Kugel on 24 May 2021

Ventana Research defines intercompany financial management as a discipline for structuring and handling transactions within a corporation 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. Today, IFM is an obscure topic, but I assert that...

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Revenue, robotic finance, lease and tax accounting

Integrated Business Planning Uses Zero-Based Budgeting to Improve Performance

Posted by Robert Kugel on 21 May 2021

The objectives of zero-based budgeting are well aligned with what I call integrated business planning, a technology-enabled approach to managing the forward-looking activities of a corporation including forecasting, planning and budgeting. IBP enables every business unit to plan their business in a way that makes sense to them but also makes the numbers in those plans available for company-wide...

Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, robotic finance, Predictive Planning

Subscription Pricing Changing for Sustained Customer Growth

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 20 May 2021

Subscription pricing models are no longer new. Many companies have experience with this pricing model even if there has not been complete adoption across their entire product and service offerings. Companies that use this model, or have spent time looking at the approach, understand the approach of a recurring revenue stream based on a repeating flat fee.

Topics: Performance Management, Sales, Customer Experience, Marketing, Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, Digital Commerce, Predictive Planning, Subscription Management

Unit4 Democratizes Agile, Data-Driven Decision-Making

Posted by Robert Kugel on 17 May 2021

Unit4’s Financial Planning and Analysis (formerly Prevero) is a planning and budgeting application designed for the requirements of midsize corporations and the public sector. These organizations are challenged in buying software because they have almost all the requirements of larger enterprises but have a smaller budget and limited technical resources.

Topics: Office of Finance, embedded analytics, Analytics, Business Intelligence, Business Planning, Financial Performance Management, Price and Revenue Management, Digital Technology, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Predictive Planning, collaborative computing, AI and Machine Learning

FourQ Builds Confidence and Trust in Intercompany Financial Management

Posted by Robert Kugel on 23 April 2021

FourQ is an intercompany financial management (IFM) Solution-as-a-Service provider. IFM is a discipline for structuring and handling transactions within a corporation and between its legal entities, and is designed to maximize staff efficiency and accounting accuracy while optimizing tax exposure, minimizing tax leakage and ensuring consistent tax and regulatory compliance. Today, IFM is an...

Topics: Office of Finance, Financial Performance Management, ERP and Continuous Accounting, Revenue, robotic finance, lease and tax accounting