Dynamic words we are obsessed with: optimization, reduction, alignment, integration, operational execution, performance, flexibility, planning, forecasting, budgeting…
Wait, the last three words don’t really fit in the paradigm of the others. If we played a word association game, how can we link three dynamic critical applications - on which every finance department worldwide is focused, with the prior words which denote cohesion and a level of perfection in process that is only dreamed about? Until now, there was no way to link all these seemingly disparate concepts together. An army of consultants and programmers were your only hope of creating a single tightly coupled view of all your finance assets (even if you only purchased products from a single vendor). As of April 7, 2009 we are changing the game in Finance. Welcome to the true source of innovation in Finance. Today Star Analytics is launching the Star Finance Command Center. A breath of fresh air to the gloomy economic climate that has left us: devoid of manpower, riddled with gaps in availability from IT-delivered services, saddled with applications that have become lethargic and over-burdened with code fixes, data that seems inconsistent and stale, having to do business with vendors that merge and divest so fast it makes your head spin, and with the incongruous explicit need to be flexible, nimble and time-sensitive to drive profitability. What a conundrum.
The Star Finance Command Center delivers a technology platform imbued with a priori finance knowledge to provide a visual roadmap to your data and processes that drive the applications and reporting needs of the Office of the CFO. Any application from any vendor can easily be added as an ecosystem to share and process events and data to any other application. Applications such as global cash management, foreign exchange rates, strategic performance management, expense management, revenue costing, GAAP and IFRS reporting, and incentive compensation management can easily share data and integrate with the planning, budgeting and forecasting and consolidation applications which are the mainstay of finance.
Transforming code-based scripts and integrations into widgets and automations eliminates the need for technologically-savvy finance team members and reduces reliance on others from outside the department. We have customers with defunct and legacy applications, the latest releases, and one-off homegrown solutions simultaneously integrating and sharing data with Oracle, SAP, SAS, IBM Cognos, live data feeds and others. Most any data source one can imagine can be identified and named to help deliver laser-focused precision on defining a financial environment that drives your profitability.
The beauty of the system is that it can be deployed immediately in your current environment with little or no tailoring. Immediately you will see improvement in your business process and reduction in your operation’s costs. While implementing, you will be able to redeploy expensive manpower to other critical tasks. Your efforts with Master Data Management and Governance, Risk and Compliance initiatives will be supported out of the box and none of your previous work will be discarded or made obsolete until you choose. You can increase your level of sophistication with the Star Finance Command Center over time and take advantage of the finance-rich capabilities and simplify your existing code and integrations as you mature in achieving your goal to become a sleek, responsive, innovative and profitable organization.
This day marks the starting point of a new era of finance data integration and management. Welcome to Star Analytics and the Star Finance Command Center. http://www.staranalytics.com/
Showing posts with label Finance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Finance. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
2009 Finance System Resolutions: Hunker Down or Thrive?
I recently caught up with Rob Kugel of Ventana Research during a conversation with the executive team from Star Analytics. One of the most interesting parts of the discussion centered on how the economic meltdown is impacting senior executives in corporate finance departments and the ways technology can help.
Kugel mentioned, “Unfortunately, the financial meltdown has driven many senior financial executives to hunker down and focus only on survival tactics. It’s a shame because this is a great time to throw off organizational complacency and make important changes to how the finance department operates.”
The challenge, he says, is that people delay making changes in better times because they think they’re too busy, complicated by the tendency of people trained in accounting to reflexively answer “we’ve always done it this way” when asked about a policy or process.
“Now is the time to make changes because facing deep, persistent challenges, people are more willing to accept change and the results can be dramatic.”
Star Analytics CEO Trevor Hughes agreed, “From a technology perspective, we’re starting to see a shift this year as more finance executives look for ways their existing technologies can provide the slightest competitive advantage in this economy.”
Hughes remarked that the days of making decisions on yesterday’s data are long gone, and what’s emerging are continuous planning and forecasting environments and make it easy to adapt to uncertainty in the markets.
Hughes added, “The challenge is that financial data has been inaccessible in non-standard proprietary systems and beyond the immediate reach of the business decision makers. This is driving a surge of interest in simple and cost-effective solutions that allow IT and Finance to communicate and provide a stream of continuous data into the hands of everyone who needs it.”
The discussion surfaced a call to action for finance executives, with Rob outlining simple and cost effective ways Ventana Research believes they can drive change in 2009 and prepare to capitalize on an economic turnaround – both from an IT and business perspective. Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll reveal his top 10 “resolutions.”
Kugel points out, “Many of the ten resolutions are interrelated, and almost always there is a connection between the business and IT issues since the latter drives or heavily influences how well departments can do the former. Our research consistently shows companies misuse spreadsheets and consequently suffer from – for example – a longer than necessary closing cycle and ineffective business planning. It’s also not intended to be an exhaustive list.”
Resolution #1. Focus attention on more strategic activities and less on transactions processing.
For years CFOs have been advised to change the focus of finance departments from transaction processing to more strategic activities. Surveys show, however, not much has happened. The two biggest barriers to making this shift are people and IT. Sadly, too many finance executives love managing minutiae because it’s at the core of their comfort zone. Misusing technology contributes to the problem since not applying automation to rote functions or using spreadsheets inappropriately. There is a data dimension as well: frequently it is too difficult to bring together finance department data and data from business operations because companies are not using the right tools to reliably automate this process.
Is your company making headway in this area?
Kugel mentioned, “Unfortunately, the financial meltdown has driven many senior financial executives to hunker down and focus only on survival tactics. It’s a shame because this is a great time to throw off organizational complacency and make important changes to how the finance department operates.”
The challenge, he says, is that people delay making changes in better times because they think they’re too busy, complicated by the tendency of people trained in accounting to reflexively answer “we’ve always done it this way” when asked about a policy or process.
“Now is the time to make changes because facing deep, persistent challenges, people are more willing to accept change and the results can be dramatic.”
Star Analytics CEO Trevor Hughes agreed, “From a technology perspective, we’re starting to see a shift this year as more finance executives look for ways their existing technologies can provide the slightest competitive advantage in this economy.”
Hughes remarked that the days of making decisions on yesterday’s data are long gone, and what’s emerging are continuous planning and forecasting environments and make it easy to adapt to uncertainty in the markets.
Hughes added, “The challenge is that financial data has been inaccessible in non-standard proprietary systems and beyond the immediate reach of the business decision makers. This is driving a surge of interest in simple and cost-effective solutions that allow IT and Finance to communicate and provide a stream of continuous data into the hands of everyone who needs it.”
The discussion surfaced a call to action for finance executives, with Rob outlining simple and cost effective ways Ventana Research believes they can drive change in 2009 and prepare to capitalize on an economic turnaround – both from an IT and business perspective. Over the next few weeks and months, I’ll reveal his top 10 “resolutions.”
Kugel points out, “Many of the ten resolutions are interrelated, and almost always there is a connection between the business and IT issues since the latter drives or heavily influences how well departments can do the former. Our research consistently shows companies misuse spreadsheets and consequently suffer from – for example – a longer than necessary closing cycle and ineffective business planning. It’s also not intended to be an exhaustive list.”
Resolution #1. Focus attention on more strategic activities and less on transactions processing.
For years CFOs have been advised to change the focus of finance departments from transaction processing to more strategic activities. Surveys show, however, not much has happened. The two biggest barriers to making this shift are people and IT. Sadly, too many finance executives love managing minutiae because it’s at the core of their comfort zone. Misusing technology contributes to the problem since not applying automation to rote functions or using spreadsheets inappropriately. There is a data dimension as well: frequently it is too difficult to bring together finance department data and data from business operations because companies are not using the right tools to reliably automate this process.
Is your company making headway in this area?
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Innovation versus Inventive
“Why Accounting Can’t Keep Up with Financial Innovation,” a CFO Blog from 01/12/2009 written by Tim Reason,(http://www.cfo.com/blogs/index.cfm/l_detail/12922621) cites innovation as the perpetrator of evil undoings. It is unfortunate that the GAO chose to use the term “innovation” instead of using a less technologically associated term when referring to unique, pioneering or inventive financial malfeasance. While innovation does envision new and a more packaged offering and involves the “bright shiny object” paradigm, it also invokes an idea that technology was a component of the creation. The perception is that the innovation is one of disruption. In this case the disruption was more an effort to circumvent the basic rules instead of to introduce true innovation. Non-disruptive technology can be innovative without being speculative or corrosive to basic ethical principles and guidelines. Financial innovation should be the hallmark of any Office of the CFO or Controller who is fiscally responsible and actually altering their assumptions in their planning and budgeting process in the attempt to improve their cash and revenue instead of find less-than-acceptable means of generating paper profits. Maybe a new policing body should exist that prevents accounting rulemakers from accepting the use of any instruments that were designed by non-practitioners and applaud the use of technical innovation that supports and enforces legally acceptable processes. This is the heart of governance and compliance applied to innovation.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
BI Competency Centers: Do CFOs Help or Hinder?
Intelligent Enterprise Editor-in-Chief Doug Henschen moderated a webinar last week titled “Business Intelligence Competency Centers (BICCs): Many Choices, Many Pitfalls” sponsored by Forrester Research. With BI now considered “table stakes,” panelists Boris Evelson and James Kobielus of Forrester, BI consultant Claudia Imhoff and Capgemini’s Joe Moye discussed how enterprises can drive greater value from their BICC investments.
One recommendation was to cross-pollinate BICCs with other CCs in areas such as Business and IT Governance; Enterprise Architecture; Data Warehousing, Data Quality and Data Integration; ERP, CRM, Supply Chain Management, etc. While this makes perfect sense, doesn’t it seem ironic that we still need to encourage coordination after the costly lessons we (hopefully) learned from propagating BI application stovepipes?
Side note: With many of the CCs above revolving not just around competencies but applications and processes, it was interesting that James suggested BICCs be renamed BISCs (BI Solution Centers). We'll keep an eye on a Forrester report in queue on this topic for October.
The idea of coordinating CCs reminds me of conversations I’ve had with an aerospace and defense company that extended their BICC with specialized data integration technology for key applications. As a result of tapping into finance data, the company is supporting deeper BI analytics based on time-sensitive operational insights.
To boost synergy between CCs, one panelist suggested overlapping them and allowing personnel on the teams to create hybrid roles. This brings to mind the success story of a cosmetics company that adopted a war room approach to unite IT and line of business experts for projects.
The most interesting part of the discussion involved who should own a BICC: IT or line of business. Not surprisingly, opinions varied, with Evelson advocating for ownership by C-level business executives and Imhoff taking a more IT-centered approach. Evelson added that most of the successful BI environments he’s seen have had strong business ownership (for more check out his keynote at the Computerworld BI Perspectives conference Sept. 8th). Imhoff underscored the need for technical acumen beyond the skills of the business analyst – areas such as data integrity, data quality and database performance. (Rajan Chandras takes this a step further on his Intelligent Enterprise blog post, urging readers to explore the qualifications needed to influence BICC success)
Imhoff asserted that CCs should not report to the CEO’s or CFO’s offices, going so far as to suggest that CFOs may infuse too much of a finance or accounting flavor. It’s hard for me to imagine many business decisions that don’t impact profitability, competitive advantage or shareholder value, but since time ran out on the webinar, let’s open up that part of the discussion here.
What do you think? Are CFOs the best stewards of these BI centers?
One recommendation was to cross-pollinate BICCs with other CCs in areas such as Business and IT Governance; Enterprise Architecture; Data Warehousing, Data Quality and Data Integration; ERP, CRM, Supply Chain Management, etc. While this makes perfect sense, doesn’t it seem ironic that we still need to encourage coordination after the costly lessons we (hopefully) learned from propagating BI application stovepipes?
Side note: With many of the CCs above revolving not just around competencies but applications and processes, it was interesting that James suggested BICCs be renamed BISCs (BI Solution Centers). We'll keep an eye on a Forrester report in queue on this topic for October.
The idea of coordinating CCs reminds me of conversations I’ve had with an aerospace and defense company that extended their BICC with specialized data integration technology for key applications. As a result of tapping into finance data, the company is supporting deeper BI analytics based on time-sensitive operational insights.
To boost synergy between CCs, one panelist suggested overlapping them and allowing personnel on the teams to create hybrid roles. This brings to mind the success story of a cosmetics company that adopted a war room approach to unite IT and line of business experts for projects.
The most interesting part of the discussion involved who should own a BICC: IT or line of business. Not surprisingly, opinions varied, with Evelson advocating for ownership by C-level business executives and Imhoff taking a more IT-centered approach. Evelson added that most of the successful BI environments he’s seen have had strong business ownership (for more check out his keynote at the Computerworld BI Perspectives conference Sept. 8th). Imhoff underscored the need for technical acumen beyond the skills of the business analyst – areas such as data integrity, data quality and database performance. (Rajan Chandras takes this a step further on his Intelligent Enterprise blog post, urging readers to explore the qualifications needed to influence BICC success)
Imhoff asserted that CCs should not report to the CEO’s or CFO’s offices, going so far as to suggest that CFOs may infuse too much of a finance or accounting flavor. It’s hard for me to imagine many business decisions that don’t impact profitability, competitive advantage or shareholder value, but since time ran out on the webinar, let’s open up that part of the discussion here.
What do you think? Are CFOs the best stewards of these BI centers?
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Thoughts from ODTUG Kaleidoscope 2008
Kaleidoscope 2008 is getting into full swing, and I've already found some nuggets of wisdom from the speakers. Ron Moore, one of the first Essbase certified consultants in the world and founder of Marketing Technologies Group (http://www.mtgny.com/), is a speaker at Kaleidoscope this year. In conversation with him about blending analytic and relational data, he said that you:
"Just can't get by on a hammer or a saw - you need both."
From the perspective of corporate data, that just rings true. Companies can't simply rely upon cube data from their analytic applications in order to make the best business decisions, and they can't rely solely upon relational data – they need both. And to create a central data store requires cooperation between the business owners (of analytic data) and IT owners (of the relational data stores).
Many companies experience a disconnect between the Finance and IT groups, as their goals can appear to be at odds. While Finance teams often implement the business systems, it is IT who inherits the issues of compliance, maintainability, and governance for those systems. But in order to successfully integrate corporate data to provide a holistic information view, the project requires the cooperation of both groups.
In order to harness the value of the content in the cube data, we need to synthesize it within relational data sources. Ultimately, a standard rows and columns relational database is the only common ground to which every application available to the information technology industry can have ubiquitous access. Trying to achieve the bridge in the absence of relational technology creates the potential for a myriad of misinterpretation and eventually the value of the cube data would get lost in translation.
Once the cube data is exported into a relational structure, the infrastructure and data are in place to provide information access to stakeholder groups across the business. A potential next project step, incorporating data from other sources such as ERP or CRM systems or operational data stores, creates a centralized, single version of the truth for all stakeholders to work from, and provides a comprehensive, holistic view of the business that includes both operational and management data.
The benefits of this level of integration to a company are myriad. But as Ron Moore so succinctly put it, it takes both the hammer and the saw to make this kind of effort successful. Finding the tools and technologies that can help bridge the inherent gap between groups is imperative to success.
As Kaleidoscope continues through the week, I'm sure that I'll hear more about opportunities to create mutually beneficial projects between Finance and IT groups and the tools to support them. With technical and thought leaders from across the country here in New Orleans, I'm sure I'll find a few more nuggets of wisdom to share this week.
"Just can't get by on a hammer or a saw - you need both."
From the perspective of corporate data, that just rings true. Companies can't simply rely upon cube data from their analytic applications in order to make the best business decisions, and they can't rely solely upon relational data – they need both. And to create a central data store requires cooperation between the business owners (of analytic data) and IT owners (of the relational data stores).
Many companies experience a disconnect between the Finance and IT groups, as their goals can appear to be at odds. While Finance teams often implement the business systems, it is IT who inherits the issues of compliance, maintainability, and governance for those systems. But in order to successfully integrate corporate data to provide a holistic information view, the project requires the cooperation of both groups.
In order to harness the value of the content in the cube data, we need to synthesize it within relational data sources. Ultimately, a standard rows and columns relational database is the only common ground to which every application available to the information technology industry can have ubiquitous access. Trying to achieve the bridge in the absence of relational technology creates the potential for a myriad of misinterpretation and eventually the value of the cube data would get lost in translation.
Once the cube data is exported into a relational structure, the infrastructure and data are in place to provide information access to stakeholder groups across the business. A potential next project step, incorporating data from other sources such as ERP or CRM systems or operational data stores, creates a centralized, single version of the truth for all stakeholders to work from, and provides a comprehensive, holistic view of the business that includes both operational and management data.
The benefits of this level of integration to a company are myriad. But as Ron Moore so succinctly put it, it takes both the hammer and the saw to make this kind of effort successful. Finding the tools and technologies that can help bridge the inherent gap between groups is imperative to success.
As Kaleidoscope continues through the week, I'm sure that I'll hear more about opportunities to create mutually beneficial projects between Finance and IT groups and the tools to support them. With technical and thought leaders from across the country here in New Orleans, I'm sure I'll find a few more nuggets of wisdom to share this week.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Instant Continuous Planning: Just Add Water (Part 2)
In the previous Continuous Planning post, we discussed the evolution of management processes from a lagging to leading view of the business and examined the business processes needed to support the continuous planning cycle.
Defining and evolving management processes requires the confluence of data across and between all stakeholders within the business environment, including customers, supply chain, and organizational groups such as Finance. For the Finance department, this means providing the means for continuous planning and the ability to consolidate these digested results with the organization's other data. To support this, there are a number of technologies that must be in place within the organization:
The architectural framework required to support a continuous planning cycle includes:
But companies are now accomplishing this efficiently and cost-effectively, with a significantly lower cost of maintenance. With the availability of comprehensive, standards-based data integration solutions and management teams establishing best practices around their planning cycles, the transition from a lagging to a leading planning process, with accurate, near real-time views into operations, is a realistic goal for any organization. The return on this investment is the creation of an innovative, flexible, and dynamic planning cycle that allows your company to quickly recognize changes in the competitive landscape, the ability to model changes quickly, determine the best alternatives, implement, and measure results.
Defining and evolving management processes requires the confluence of data across and between all stakeholders within the business environment, including customers, supply chain, and organizational groups such as Finance. For the Finance department, this means providing the means for continuous planning and the ability to consolidate these digested results with the organization's other data. To support this, there are a number of technologies that must be in place within the organization:
- Planning application
- Analytic application (OLAP database)
- Financial & operational data stores
- While not necessary, performance management tools such as scorecards and dashboards provide a feedback loop
- 100% uptime of the planning application. This is particularly important for global enterprises where teams in various geographies are accessing data; no group can be shut down.
- Near real-time reporting. Incremental data updates and calculations provide near real-time reporting against plan data.
- Integration with operational and business data. Access to operational data provides necessary planning context; as well as instant feedback and adjustments to the plan. Availability of other data such as supporting detail or plan assumptions is integral within the reporting environment.
- Consistent performance. Ensuring fast and consistent performance is crucial during the planning cycle.
Architecture to Support Continuous Planning Cycle
The architectural framework required to support a continuous planning cycle includes:
- Change Data Capture. The planning application collects data and performs value-adding multidimensional calculations upon the data, but does not aggregate it. Through an intelligent backup process, only changed data is backed up and extracted from the application.
- Financial Data Store. At an established rate (every 2 minutes, for example), changed data is extracted from the planning application and is automatically loaded, with associated metadata and security, into the central repository. The shared data enables the ability to quickly digest and present data to the analytic applications.
- Load into the Analytic Reporting Application. From the financial data store, the financial assets are loaded into the reporting analytic application, where consolidations can be completed on-the-fly.
- Reporting from Analytic Applications. The reporting application should be easily accessible from a wide range of tools – including performance dashboards, scorecards, report writers, spreadsheets, and any other common reporting tools used within the organization.
- Alternative Architectural Options. Flexible reporting strategies can be a valuable extension of this architecture. For example, a planning cube can contain few dimensions and limited granularity. The reporting cube can have additional dimensions and a deeper level of detail to support robust reporting needs.
But companies are now accomplishing this efficiently and cost-effectively, with a significantly lower cost of maintenance. With the availability of comprehensive, standards-based data integration solutions and management teams establishing best practices around their planning cycles, the transition from a lagging to a leading planning process, with accurate, near real-time views into operations, is a realistic goal for any organization. The return on this investment is the creation of an innovative, flexible, and dynamic planning cycle that allows your company to quickly recognize changes in the competitive landscape, the ability to model changes quickly, determine the best alternatives, implement, and measure results.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Insight on the Gartner BI Conference in Chicago
As a long time attendee of the various Gartner events, my favorite has always been the more intimate setting of the BI summit - typically held in Chicago. Boy, was I surprised at the 1200+ attendees of this year's conference and the expectation of bigger growth to fuel a move to Washington, DC in 2009. Last year’s event pales in comparison. BI advocates, typically a cross-over role between Finance and IT, have made a rather dramatic transition into the IT camp for this conference. Many of the sessions were educational and entry-level in scope and oriented to the first time architect and supporter of Business Intelligence environments. The event has clearly moved away from the user of past years.
Also notable was the absence of discussions on the relative cost savings in deploying a BI environment for better business planning and analysis. Other than the one rather cheeky session on how to negotiate a good deal with your BI vendor, I expected to hear more about cost cutting and using BI data to enable efficiencies and identify cost-prohibitive inefficiencies. The market picture has been doom and gloom and the "R" word blatantly used. Instead I heard a great deal about enabling integration and the expansion of analytic applications.
I think this is great news! Clearly the message was to expand the BI footprint and make use of the technology that can drive profitability, not focus on doing more with less. I had conversations with luminaries such as Howard Dresner and Ron Powell, but I also spoke with a number of vendors and implementers such as IBM GBS and Palladium, who had similar messaging of exploiting the existing technologies and refining processes to drive revenue and deliver data on a more continual basis to the employees who can make the right decisions in real-time. This to me is a message of expansion and focus, rather than retrenchment and limitations. I heard a great deal about the continual need for data, an almost real-time need to do continuous planning and report on finer levels of granular information in a more automated fashion. The message was clear. BI is tops in priority and destined to gain more mindshare of senior IT executives as the business expands and focuses their growth. To grow and expand you always need Innovators who can do more with less, but also the visionaries who can see the gold amongst the rock.
Also notable was the absence of discussions on the relative cost savings in deploying a BI environment for better business planning and analysis. Other than the one rather cheeky session on how to negotiate a good deal with your BI vendor, I expected to hear more about cost cutting and using BI data to enable efficiencies and identify cost-prohibitive inefficiencies. The market picture has been doom and gloom and the "R" word blatantly used. Instead I heard a great deal about enabling integration and the expansion of analytic applications.
I think this is great news! Clearly the message was to expand the BI footprint and make use of the technology that can drive profitability, not focus on doing more with less. I had conversations with luminaries such as Howard Dresner and Ron Powell, but I also spoke with a number of vendors and implementers such as IBM GBS and Palladium, who had similar messaging of exploiting the existing technologies and refining processes to drive revenue and deliver data on a more continual basis to the employees who can make the right decisions in real-time. This to me is a message of expansion and focus, rather than retrenchment and limitations. I heard a great deal about the continual need for data, an almost real-time need to do continuous planning and report on finer levels of granular information in a more automated fashion. The message was clear. BI is tops in priority and destined to gain more mindshare of senior IT executives as the business expands and focuses their growth. To grow and expand you always need Innovators who can do more with less, but also the visionaries who can see the gold amongst the rock.
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