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        Robert Kugel's Analyst Perspectives

        I’ve been using spreadsheets for more than 30 years. I consider this technology tool among the five most important advances in business management of the 20th century. Spreadsheets have revolutionized many aspects of running an organization. Yet as enthusiastic as I am about them, I know the limits of desktop spreadsheets and the price we pay if we fail to respect those limits. The essential problem arises when people use desktop spreadsheets for purposes beyond what they were originally...

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        Topics: Office of Finance, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Reporting, enterprise spreadsheet, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Intelligence, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Visualization, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), Risk, Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM), benchmark, Financial Performance Management

        Ventana Research recently completed an in-depth benchmark research project on long-range planning. As I define it, long-range planning is the formal quantification of the more conceptual strategic plan. It makes specific assumptions and expresses in numbers how a company expects its strategy will play out over time. Almost all (95%) of those participating in the research see a need to make improvements to their long-range planning process. The research shows that one useful improvement is ...

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        Topics: Big Data, Performance Management, Planning, Office of Finance, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Reporting, Business Analytics, Business Performance Management (BPM), CFO, Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM), CEO, Financial Performance Management, FPM

        A recent news release by Robert Half, a staffing company that specializes in accounting and finance personnel, covered what it sees as the most important attributes required for auditors in the 21st century. “7 Attributes of Highly Effective Internal Auditors” covers the people dimension of the profession and focuses on the non-technical requirements of the role, including relationship-building, teamwork, and diversity. No doubt these skills are a must for just about anybody working in a modern...

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        Topics: Fraud, Governance, GRC, Office of Finance, audit, Analytics, Business Analytics, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Business Performance Management (BPM), compliance, Financial Performance Management (FPM), Infor, Risk, HANA, Oversight Systems

        SAP recently announced its new Fraud Management analytic applications. Currently in “controlled” (limited) release, it’s a promising start for the product and a good example of the type of business process revolution that’s possible when companies can execute complex analytics on big data sets using in-memory and other advanced processing techniques. Over the next several years a wide swath of basic corporate processes will be transformed by the shift to in-memory processing and big data...

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        Topics: SAP, Fraud, Governance, GRC, Office of Finance, audit, Analytics, Business Analytics, Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC), Business Performance Management (BPM), compliance, Financial Performance Management (FPM), Risk, HANA

        One of the most important IT trends over the past decade has been the proliferation of ever wider and deeper sets of information sources that businesses use to collect, track and analyze data. While structured numerical data remains the most common category, organizations are also learning to exploit semistructured data (text, for example) as well as more complex data types such as voice and image files. They use these analytics increasingly in every aspect of their business – to assess...

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        Topics: Planning, Predictive Analytics, Customer, Human Capital Management, Office of Finance, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Budgeting, close, closing, Finance Analytics, PRO, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Cloud Computing, Business Performance Management (BPM), CFO, Financial Performance Management (FPM), Risk, costing, FPM, Profitability

        I’ve been using electronic spreadsheets for more than 30 years. I consider this technology among the 20th century’s top five most important advances in business management. Spreadsheets have revolutionized every aspect of running any organization. A spreadsheet (specifically, VisiCalc) was the original “killer app” that made business people feel the necessity to buy a personal computer.

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        Topics: Office of Finance, Operational Performance Management (OPM), Reporting, enterprise spreadsheet, Analytics, Business Analytics, Visualization, Business Performance Management (BPM), Customer Performance Management (CPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Applications (IA), Information Management (IM), Risk, Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Workforce Performance Management (WPM), benchmark, Financial Performance Management

        Profit Velocity Solutions’ PV Accelerator is an analytic application designed to enable capital-intensive companies to consistently achieve substantially wider margins and higher return on assets (ROA). Companies in industries such as specialty chemicals, building materials, integrated steel mills and silicon chip fabrication (to name just four) routinely fail to make the right decisions about pricing, production and sales management because they use analytic methods that, from an economic...

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        Topics: Performance Management, Sales, Human Capital Management, Office of Finance, Operational Performance Management (OPM), PV Accelerator, Analytics, Business Analytics, Cloud Computing, Business Performance Management (BPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Sales Performance Management (SPM), Supply Chain Performance Management (SCPM), Price Optimization, Profit Velocity, Profitability, Software, S&OP

        One of the important lessons company executives should have learned over the past 15 years is that it’s dangerous not to do contingency planning, a subject that I’ve written about before. By this I mean real, think-outside-the-box contingency planning (not just extrapolating), which is especially important when doing long-range planning. The past decade or so has been punctuated by periods of elevated volatility in financial and product markets, and there’s a good probability it will occur...

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        Topics: Big Data, Planning, Office of Finance, Reporting, Budgeting, contingency, currency, driver-based, Business Analytics, Business Performance Management (BPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Financial Performance Management, Integrated Business Planning

        IBM this week announced its pending acquisition of the Star Analytics product portfolio. Star Analytics is a privately held company that offers products designed to provide easy access to and integration with Oracle Hyperion data sources. While Star Analytics has a good product and solid references, it has lacked critical mass to support more effective sales and marketing efforts. Star Analytics’ strategic value to IBM lies in its ability to unlock data held in Oracle Essbase multidimensional...

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        Topics: Reporting, closing, Essbase, Hyperion, Analytics, Business Analytics, Business Collaboration, Data Integration, IBM, Oracle, Business Performance Management (BPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Information Management (IM), Financial Performance Management, Star Analytics, TM1

        The electronic spreadsheet is among the top five most important advances in business management to come along in the last hundred years. It revolutionized almost all aspects of running an organization. It was the original “killer app” that made it necessary for people to go out and buy a personal computer. Yet our recent benchmark research project Spreadsheet Use in Today’s Enterprise confirmed advice we have been giving for the past decade: Spreadsheets are a fabulous tool but they have...

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        Topics: Office of Finance, Reporting, enterprise spreadsheet, Analytics, Business Analytics, Visualization, Business Performance Management (BPM), Financial Performance Management (FPM), Risk, benchmark, Financial Performance Management
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