Enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions are redefining how organizations manage and grow business. New technologies have exploded and the possibilities must seem endless to those in charge. In a recent SAP Game-Changers radiocast, panellists Steve Sussman, VP of sales and marketing for Column5; Michael Svolos, senior director of TekLink; and Karuna Mukherjea, senior director of product marketing on the SAP solutions for EPM team, offer insights into three main areas: enterprise mobility, cloud, and social and beyond.
Determine the value of your enterprise mobility processes
Moderator Bonnie Graham quotes Mukherjea as saying that “mobility is core to a successful EPM solution workforce.” Mukherjea asserts that EPM processes have gone mobile, giving users the ability to provide real-time input while on the job.
Mobile solutions are helping companies expand and accelerate EPM advancement, but, as Sussman cautions, “without doing the hard work up front of rethinking the process, they are putting themselves at risk of actually seeing any value from that investment in the project.”
He continues, “The big challenge sometimes is to convince the organizations not to just apply the technology to the existing process but to really use that as an option to rethink the process and how it currently operates today.”
Svolos echoes, “It’s important not to fall in love with what you are doing but rather understand why you are doing it.” This is the kind of distinction that makes the difference between surviving and thriving.
Accelerate innovation through cloud adoption
Svolos explains that many of his larger customers – Fortune 500 companies – are not adept at quickly shifting technology. With the cloud, however, they’re able to quickly see results such as proof of concept – enabling them to take their data, try it out on a cloud-based system, and achieve the ROI that they are expecting.
Mukherjea adds that cloud “has not only reduced the barrier to entry into organizations as we develop new solutions… but more importantly it’s about agility.” Svolos agrees that part of the allure of cloud is the predictability of cost to implement and support the platform over time.
Get ready to go “mocial”
And get ready for another industry buzzword. According to Mukherjea, the terms mobile and social have formed the amalgam “mocial,” referring to social collaboration that promotes work-life balance.
Many new technologies, such as the SAP Jam social software platform, foster real-time collaboration within a small network. Integrated with EPM processes, such platforms can greatly simplify and accelerate problem solving or keep problems from cropping up in the first place.
So where can all these innovations take EPM and finance? The panellists foresee a new title called “Chief Financial Technology Officer (CFTO)” coming into the mix to more seamlessly handle the new technologies that will define EPM.
To learn more, listen to the full radiocast.
By David J. H. Jones, from: http://cfoknowledge.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/is-your-finance-organization-thriving-or-merely-surviving/
Leave a Reply