In a digital world, unlocking opportunities for today’s enterprise requires businesses to leverage financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting; consistently deliver workforce planning and budgeting; take advantage of sales planning with in-depth analysis; and monitor capital expenses planning – all while delivering financial consolidation and managing financial reporting. It sounds like a mouthful and looks like a tall order… but, thanks to modern business tools, it is, in fact, doable.
According to Paul Bouchier, Sales Director at iOCO, within iOCO Software Distribution, an Infor Gold Partner, “in today’s digital economy, enterprises need to have full visibility into the state of the business in order to make strategic and operational planning decisions.” He stresses that planning is critical, must be data-driven, and has to be coordinated across the enterprise.
When it comes to Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) many businesses still operate on spreadsheets. While these spreadsheets may be easy to use and highly accessible, they do present several challenges. “Modern users want EPM applications that can be owned and managed by the line of business. These applications must offer better visibility into the state of the business and reporting, allowing the business to report with confidence, instantly measure past and current performance, and forecast future activities. A spreadsheet simply cannot do this,” adds Boucher.
For these reasons businesses are turning to business intelligence tools. When the right tools are implemented correctly, the result is a complete, real-time view of their business performance. Add to this the use of tools that are delivered in a fully enabled, cloud environment, and users enjoy a whole new range of integrated features and benefits.
“Now fully integrated solutions for planning, budgeting, forecasting, and financial consolidation empower users to leverage enhanced performance management – a crucial success factor for virtually any business. With real-time data analysed and at hand, the business can link its strategy with operations, utilising performance management as a key driver for strategic planning in today’s uncertain, volatile, and dynamic business environment,” says Bouchier.
Key EPM advantages of these modern tools including the improvement of visibility into financial processes, the simplification and automation of financial consolidation, the elevation of operational planning and forecasting, the enhancement of workforce budgeting and planning, the power to leverage an unrivaled breadth of applications built on a modern technology architecture, the implementation of a foundation for innovation, and the driving of informed decisions with better insight.
“In short? Improved business performance,” concludes Bouchier.
