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 final 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/.)
#7: Not enough freely available vendor independent information to help Financial Systems Managers to make informed decisions.
There is an abundant amount of information available from both individuals and consulting companies around technical Oracle EPM topics. Most of this information is directed at more of a technical audience. I use this information every day. However, when I worked as a Financial Systems Manager I needed an entirely different kind of information. I needed information that would tell me in advance what the decision points were that I would be faced with for an EPM implementation and what my best options were for each decision. I needed information on tool selection, infrastructure selection, support options, off shoring, etc. I needed management advice around EPM so that I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel for 80 hours each week. There is a lot of information out there in this area, but a lot of the bigger consulting companies who have this information are not as generous with their ideas and experience as the technical folks are.
Hopefully more individuals in the industry will see the value in sharing their EPM management experience over time. In the meantime, check out the ClearLine Thought Leadership Library. I have spent quite a bit of time creating EPM management documentation from my own experience rolling out and supporting very large Oracle EPM solutions. I hope it helps.
By Paul Mack, from: http://www.clearlinegroup.com/moving-beyond-seven-common-epm-frustrations/