CPM in a Changing Business Environment

Jon Kondo, CEO of Host Analytics explains the advantages of using software as a service to deliver corporate performance management.

“Having faster and clearer transparency into their business, along with the ability to quickly adjust their financial plans, allows companies to better weather the current market conditions”
-Jon Kondo, Host Analytics

In today’s turbulent economic environment it is critical for companies to remain agile in their financial performance management. Having faster and clearer transparency into their business along with the ability to quickly adjust their financial plans allows companies to better weather the current market conditions. Benchmarks are clear that CPM solutions help companies thrive in adverse conditions by better understanding the dynamics of their business and factoring in the potential market and economic threats. In these wild times companies who wait for situations to evolve never can get ahead of the market whereas companies who have robust CPM solutions in place can model and plan for unforeseen changes or events. A dynamic modeling and planning environment gives them the agility to both plan and even react quickly without being bogged down in Excel Hell.

The components of CPM
An integrated suite of CPM includes statutory financial consolidation, robust budgeting and planning, revenue planning, financial reporting and scorecards (designed to encapsulate the strategic plan). The scorecards serve as a tool for strategic management that is the capstone of CPM. But even if a company is not ready for a balanced scorecard, benchmarks are clear, companies that replace Excel as their budgeting and planning tool with a systemized approach to budgeting and planning perform better. Also, with revenue forecasting a company can better align their operational plans with their financial plans and a financial consolidation system frees up valuable resources from purely aggregating the numbers to actually understanding the numbers.

Host Analytics allows enterprises to reap all the benefits of world-class corporate performance management without the cost or long time to value of traditional on premise solutions. Host delivers this using a ‘software as a service’ (SaaS) methodology. This allows companies to see positive results quickly while allowing them to iterate multiple times to accommodate the changing business environment around them.

Using software as a service
SaaS implementations are designed to be implemented quickly, provide fast time to value, and can be implemented incrementally. Companies purchasing SaaS CPM don’t need to break the bank or be ready to implement across the organization immediately. This allows them to get ‘quick wins’ or pockets of success before they move to the layer or division.

From a purchase software perspective SaaS shifts the balance of power away from the software vendor and back to the customer. Because the customer is in essence paying for a service means that we the vendor have to ensure on-going success and satisfaction or risk having the customer go away. SaaS delivery also ensures continuous improvement to the product as we continually strive to improve our functionality and service through frequent upgrades. Because a customer doesn’t have to go through a long custom implementation we can get someone up and running in a fraction of the time it would take to do an on premise implementation.

A unique advantage
Host Analytics' solution offers a number of advantages. At a high level it is a complete product offering delivered via a software as a service delivery model. This means companies won’t out grow the solution as they go from implementing budgets to financial reporting and scorecards for strategic management.

As you drill down the depth and breadth of product offering provides for a unified database so all information is available across all applications. The consolidated numbers are available for both budgets/plans and scorecarding without a cumbersome dump/load process or complex metadata layer. Our modeling environment is meant to be driven by finance and does not require complex scripting or data copying/manipulation outside the application in Excel. Our consolidation environment is meant to be driven by finance and is rule based – organization rules, validation rules and consolidation rules – and as such does not require complex scripting. We also look to leverage ‘Excel in a browser’ for a familiar and flexible interface, which is also systemized and controlled.