The traditional IT vs. Finance gap and why it is essential to overcome that for EPM success.
Everyone loves a rivalry, at least when it comes to sports teams. It seems that the bitterer and longer running the rivalry, the better. When it comes to corporate politics, there can be few rivalries as legendary or potent as that between IT and Finance.
No one knows when it all started, but make no mistake, this can be trench warfare that started long before computers were even used in business. I can imagine the conflict raging so long, that there may have been a dialog like this in ancient times, “I simply can’t let you operate the wheel on your own, you don’t have the technical skills. Why don’t you tell me what you need the wheel to do, and I will operate it for you…just so there aren’t any mistakes?” “What? It’s just a stupid wheel; surely I am qualified to figure this out. Let me try it and we’ll see how it goes.”
Topics:
Best Practices,
Process Improvement,
Thought Leadership,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Financial Information Management
Access to Advanced Training
Before being allowed to drive a vehicle unaccompanied, we are required to undergo training on both the theory (stopping distances, speed restrictions, road signs, etc.) and practice (actually handling a car) of driving, as well as passing a number of tests.
Topics:
Best Practices,
Process Improvement,
Training,
BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)
1. Landscape Design
I have been working with the BPC product since its inception in 2000. I am always surprised when clients have skipped or are not interested in what we refer to as a System Landscape Design. We take the functional design and/or what you are currently doing in the product to properly size the servers and client machines for the future use of BPC. If you skip this step, I believe there is no way you will get good performance!
Topics:
Best Practices,
Process Improvement,
Thought Leadership,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Performance,
Microsoft,
BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)
For many companies, its getting to be that time of year again. No, I am not talking about getting ready for Christmas decorating contests in the office...although that is not far off. I am talking about getting ready for the big annual plan.
Topics:
Process Improvement,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Project Management
I was reading the newspaper recently and came across a story about a Spanish submarine that was constructed 70 tons too heavy. Officials didn't discover the problem until the submarine was nearly complete. Now they fear if they launch the sub it would be too heavy to resurface! How did this happen? The problem can be traced to a miscalculation — someone apparently put a decimal point in the wrong place. Ouch! Something as simple as a keying error resulted in a $2.7 billion dollar paper weight. Fortunately, engineers think they can enhance the sub to make it seaworthy but this story illustrates how costly user errors can be. Segue to the world of finance where roughly 70% of companies rely solely on Excel for planning, budgeting and forecasting and the stories of user error and resulting time loss may not be as astounding as an overweight submarine but are just as prevalent.
Topics:
Best Practices,
Process Improvement,
Roadmap
The question of how to perform change management for BPC NetWeaver comes up often from customers. With three ways to move items between landscapes this leaves customers with the question of what is the best method? We’ll go over the pros and cons of each method.
Topics:
Process Improvement,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
NetWeaver,
Performance,
Microsoft,
BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)
In a previous blog I examined the trend away from the traditional annual budget and periodic reforecasting regime and towards the rolling forecast. I’d now like to examine the particular factors which are driving companies towards rolling forecasts and the implications that this has on the required tools and methodologies.
Topics:
Best Practices,
Process Improvement,
Excel,
Thought Leadership,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Financial Information Management,
BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation),
Forecasting
It’s natural to assume that your large customers, who unquestionably are the source of most of your revenue, also deliver the major part of your profit. The Pareto Principle suggests that 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers and assumes that the 20% are represented by the largest customers.
Topics:
Process Improvement,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Financial Information Management,
Performance,
Value
This is Part 2 of 2 dealing with EPM Integration and Financial Information Management. If you have not read Part 1 discussing Installation, please read it first. For me, there are two components to configuration. First there are systematic configurations to bring the environment up and running. And then there is usability configuration to setup user & groups (although it’s part of environment configuration...), but most importantly creating and configuring data store connections.
Topics:
Process Improvement,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Cloud,
Financial Information Management,
BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)
At some point all software will be upgraded to take advantage of new features, new technology, and/or to keep in synchronization with other software which has been upgraded. I’ve assisted a number of companies with BPC software upgrades. Some have been very quick and efficient while others were not as efficient as they could have been.
Topics:
Process Improvement,
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM),
Performance,
BPC (Business Planning & Consolidation)
David Den Boer
Martin Lloyd
Charles Dagaev
David Meharry
