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        Robert Kugel's Analyst Perspectives

        SuiteWorld, the annual user conference from Oracle NetSuite, focused on three topics: artificial intelligence, a reimagination of the role NetSuite can play in managing an organization and emphasizing the value to existing customers of using more of what NetSuite has to offer.

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        Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Consolidate/Close/Report

        Because artificial intelligence is top-of-mind, Workday spent a great deal of time on the topic at its recent Workday Rising annual user group meeting in San Francisco. It was front and center in the general sessions, in the announcements made at the event and in the product roadmaps.

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        Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Purchasing/Sourcing/Payments, AI and Machine Learning

        I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Ventana Research 2023 Business Planning Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation categories that reflect the real-world criteria incorporated in a request for proposal to Office of Finance vendors supporting the...

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        Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning

        The 2023 Ventana Research Buyers Guide for Business Planning research enables me to provide observations about how the market has advanced. 

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        Topics: Office of Finance, Business Planning

        In accounting terms, working capital includes current assets (short-term items such as cash, money due from customers and inventory) and current liabilities (typically payments due to suppliers and loan amounts that must be repaid within one year). Working capital management is a prime function of the finance organization, designed to balance often-conflicting objectives related to revenue, liquidity, risk and profitability. The basics of working capital management date back to ancient clay...

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        Topics: Office of Finance, CFO, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Purchasing/Sourcing/Payments, Accounts Payable, Treasury, Accounts Receivable, Working Capital

        This title plays on the now-ancient meme from the 1990s: “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” which pointed to a challenge of anonymity posed by new technology. In this case, though, I’m using it to highlight an opportunity that generative artificial intelligence presents in streamlining routine business functions that require some level of individual skill and experience to handle. Ordinary contracts are just one example of work products that require humans to create, edit, analyze,...

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        Topics: Office of Finance, Digital Technology, digital finance, robotic automation, Generative AI, AI and Machine Learning

        Over the past three years, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (or PCAOB, sometimes pronounced “peekaboo”) has found an increasing prevalence of auditing deficiencies in its inspections of accounting firms. PCAOB was established as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in the wake of several major accounting scandals. The agency acts as the auditor of auditors with the objective of being a neutral arbiter of the quality of these inspections. It recently indicated that approximately...

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        Topics: Office of Finance, audit, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, virtual audit, Consolidate/Close/Report

        A century ago, the big breakthrough in telephones was the ability to dial your party’s number directly. Dialing became necessary when enough people had telephones to require a shift from people-assisted to fully automated connections. But direct dialing was only a local option – you still needed an operator to make long-distance calls. In the 1920s, commenting on their forecast for the expected growth of long-distance calling, the analysts at Bell Laboratories concluded that by midcentury, the...

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        Topics: Office of Finance, Analytics, Business Planning, AI and Machine Learning

        We added purchasing, sourcing and payments to our core Office of Finance focus areas this year to reflect new and important opportunities to use technology to gain effectiveness through greater efficiency. Technology continues to lubricate the wheels of commerce, aided by a financial services sector that is constantly innovating, responding to market-driven opportunities to reduce costs, increase demand or lower risk. Ventana Research asserts that, in many cases, technology makes new forms or...

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        Topics: Operations & Supply Chain, Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Purchasing/Sourcing/Payments, Continuous Supply Chain & ERP

        The six costliest words in managing a finance department are, “we’ve always done it this way.” Closing the books is 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 involves completing various tasks to ensure that all revenue, expense, and other financial transactions are properly recorded, accounts are balanced, and financial statements are prepared. Accounting processes are...

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        Topics: Office of Finance, ERP and Continuous Accounting, digital finance, Revenue, Lease and Tax Accounting, Consolidate/Close/Report, AI and Machine Learning
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        • Ventana Research’s Analyst Perspectives are fact-based analysis and guidance on business, industry and technology vendor trends. Each Analyst Perspective presents the view of the analyst who is an established subject matter expert on new developments, business and technology trends, findings from our research, or best practice insights.

          Each is prepared and reviewed in accordance with Ventana Research’s strict standards for accuracy and objectivity and reviewed to ensure it delivers reliable and actionable insights. It is reviewed and edited by research management and is approved by the Chief Research Officer; no individual or organization outside of Ventana Research reviews any Analyst Perspective before it is published. If you have any issue with an Analyst Perspective, please email them to ChiefResearchOfficer@isg-research.net

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