Innovation for Finance - A Breakthrough!

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/

Tips from the Big Guys: Yahoo Shares Planning Architecture and EPM Strategies

With so much focus on Yahoo’s search advertising strategy and ongoing battles with Microsoft, a webinar that focuses solely on their internal planning and back-end processes is a welcome diversion, not to mention a fascinating education. The Yahoo EPM Webinar, sponsored by Star Analytics and Key Performance Ideas, provided insight into how one very large company deals with key performance management issues, including:

• Creating highly efficient planning systems
• Maintaining data integrity
• Improving corporate reporting standards

Bob Yau, a Director of Corporate Applications at Yahoo, walked through their Enterprise Performance Management strategy and architecture and discussed how they have successfully implemented a project to help Yahoo efficiently manage change in a highly competitive market.

Yahoo has created a technical architecture for managing and exporting Hyperion Planning and Essbase data that provides their global business community with 24x7 access to near real-time planning and reporting data. Data is scheduled and automatically exported frequently throughout the day from the Planning application and is (again, automatically) synchronized with their Oracle Data Warehouse, eliminating data latency. Other benefits (and key project requirements) include their ability to maintain corporate reporting standards and improve compliance.

While the webinar does get technical (that’s right, architectural diagrams and everything) Mr. Yau does an excellent job of focusing as much on the business requirements and user needs as the technical implementation. Mr. Yau finishes off the webinar with his ‘Top 10’ lessons learned from his implementation, which covers both technical and business experience. #10 – Partner with the business for success. Good advice. Thanks Yahoo for providing such an insightful view into some of your key processes that support your enterprise performance management.

View webinar

Enterprise software - hip again?

The previous post on finance innovators caught my attention. Early in my career, I helped document the journey of some of those same early adopters in BI and financial analytics—like Steve Beitler, former Controller at Sears, and his peers at companies like Blue Cross/Blue Shield of RI, Sealand (Maersk) and Lockheed Martin. I started reflecting on what helped their initiatives rise above the noise surrounding things like the Internet, AOL and cell phones in the '90s. Some argued BI, DW and financial systems lacked that cool factor back then, yet the enterprise solutions that startups were enabling for companies like Sears were grabbing headlines right alongside cool tools and gadgets.

It felt like déjà vu at a Red Herring magazine event this week. The entrepreneurs that converged on the soiree passionately described breakthroughs like wireless gas meters, on-demand Internet video TV without a PC (http://www.building-b.com/), mobile entertainment (http://www.mspot.com/) and a self-serve ecommerce site I like a lot called http://www.cafepress.com/. The energy and passion in the room brought me right back to my most recent stint at a venture-backed company that created collaborative technology for dynamic email applications.

Three prosciutto rolls later, I started to wonder…with all these hip ideas in new media and ecommerce, has enterprise software lost its cool factor? No sooner did conversations start to unfold with execs who are delivering interesting new enterprise solutions. Examples include a company that specializes in web-based task and project management (http://www.attask.com/), another that focuses on salesforce analytics (http://www.cloud9analytics.com/), and one that derives financial intelligence from data strewn across enterprise systems (http://www.staranalytics.com/, a company with whom I consult).


As the execs lobbed stories back and forth about their customers, it signaled that not only is innovation alive and well in the enterprise space, solutions are delivering real business value. Much like the time when Beitler and others made bold commitments to new platforms from startups, today's solutions are driven by customers who share their vision with vendors to help make their companies smarter and more competitive.

Conversations that evening helped me realize the tremendous impact and responsibility this community of entrepreneurs has during this unique moment in business. I walked away inspired by many promising young companies with solutions that aren’t just making our lives more enjoyable, our connections more meaningful and our contributions more lasting, they’re advancing technologies that help the corporations we work for, buy from and invest in operate more effectively based on timely, accurate information.

Now that’s pretty cool.