CPM: The Key to Better Business Operations
Supporting financial budgeting, planning and forecasting, a Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solution helps leaders manage strategy while tracking an organisation's financial health against goals.
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With a lot of industry-specific terms and solutions available to support business intelligence gathering and strategy management, let's explore the drivers behind CPM implementation and some of the important factors to consider when selecting a platform of choice.
There are typically three key reasons why an organisation will look for a CPM solution:
The pain of manual reporting or budgeting in spreadsheets is becoming a major burden on the finance team.
Management sees a strategic advantage in automated reporting, planning and analysis tools to drive better and faster decisions than competitors.
The company is migrating to a cloud ERP system and also wants to update reporting and budgeting to a best-of-breed cloud solution.
There are many options, features and capabilities to take into consideration when selecting a Corporate Performance Management solution:
Scope of Functionality
As you evaluate CPM solutions, consider your current needs or an existing business challenge but also what the organisation may need in the future and the ability to add functionality with ease.
Reports
Producing and automating accurate, visual and detailed financial management and operational reports is one of the greatest advantages to implementing a CPM solution. In addition, an integrated CPM system allows for dashboards and scorecards that capture critical views of your business performance at a glance.
Budgeting, Forecasting, Simulation Modeling, What-if Analysis and Strategic Planning
CPM provides the ability to create either simple or very complex future scenarios to improve business analysis, respond to risks and opportunities, provide agility, gain efficiencies, and drive creation of business value. Rather than uploading budget data into the general ledger to automate reporting and variance analysis, actual results are downloaded from the general ledger and all other operating systems into CPM to automate all reporting and comparative analysis.
User Experience
The easier it is to navigate the software, the more likely adoption will be quick and smooth. Leading vendors are focused on the end user to deliver an experience similar to consumer applications.
On-premise, Cloud or Hybrid Implementation
Consider how your organisation prefers to access data if it is cloud-based, on-premise or a hybrid of both options. There can be a debate on the merits of these implementation strategies, but having the choice allows you as a customer to implement seamlessly with current infrastructure, reduce implementation time and realise the return on investment.
If you would like to learn more about CPM, check out our case study with Kepak or contact an experienced team member today for more information. You can
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