What Frustrates Me About the EPM Industry and How It Can Be Made Better

I recently read an article on entrepreneurship that featured Richard Branson. In the article, Branson was quoted as saying that the “real opportunity in business is the ability to identify the frustrations in a particular area and have real solutions to remedy those frustrations.”

That started me thinking about the common frustrations that I have seen while working in the Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) industry for the last 15 years. Here are seven common frustrations that I see frequently along with some recommended solutions.

(This is the third of 7 articles discussing frustrations with the EPM industry. To be sure you don’t miss out on any articles of interest, please sign up for our weekly newsletter at http://www.epmchannel.com/register-for-our-weekly-digests/.)

#3: Lack of Vision around Enterprise architecture.

It is surprising to me that organizations continue to move forward with [various] implementations without looking at all the capabilities that [vendors] offer. [Many times product conflicts occur]  because all too often two different groups are charged with implementing and supporting each of two different solutions.

Companies waste valuable resources on redundant support efforts. Meanwhile users waste valuable time bouncing between redundant systems. Users end up needing multiple versions of Smart View (or the Essbase Add-In), chart of account and organization hierarchies are slightly different, the same data between multiple systems is not directly comparable, and users still need to merge data from multiple sources in Excel for planning and reporting purposes.

What needs to change…
The business and IT groups that support EPM within an organization need to gain a holistic view of the collective user experience with all corporate financial systems. That user experience should be the central focus of all forward thinking around EPM architecture. Move away from thinking such as, “We need a new implementation of HFM, Planning, Essbase, HSF, etc. in order to accomplish these department goals.” You really should be thinking more about how to build an EPM System that collectively helps your organization achieve its strategic goals. HFM, Planning, Essbase, HSF, etc. are best thought of as specialized modules in that system. What your users are looking for is one stop shopping for consolidations, financial planning, operational planning, strategic planning, management reporting, and legal reporting.

By Paul Mack, from: http://www.clearlinegroup.com/moving-beyond-seven-common-epm-frustrations/