Finance 360 Degree Insight Survey
EPM Channel recently completed a 360 degree survey of the Finance function in both large- and mid-sized companies, with 40% […]
EPM Channel recently completed a 360 degree survey of the Finance function in both large- and mid-sized companies, with 40% […]
Whether it is outsourcing a function, engaging a consultant or consulting firm, chopping up work into small projects or using freelancers, retired employees and even crowd sourcing, companies just don’t need as many employees as they did 5 years ago. The new workforce model in business today includes a percentage of the workforce comprised of consultants, contractors and freelancers. Many companies consider as much as half of their workforce as “non-employees.”
Is this movement a fad? - or a true structural shift?
From major overhauls to specific process improvements, organizations featured in APQC’s 2012 Financial Management Best Practices Report are boosting both […]
A growing number of CFOs and finance directors are now turning their attention to the close-to-disclose process, which involves all […]
Only 5% of respondents say their Finance organization is delivering Game Changing Value today? What’s that about? Please visit http://www.apqc.org/knowledge-base/documents/financial-planning-and-analysis-urgent-need-new-skills-2012-october-fm-comm to receive (free) access […]
The emergence of the Software as a Service (SaaS) model has necessitated new relationships between the service provider and the consumer with respect to service availability, service performance and response times. The Service Level Agreement (SLA) has evolved to become a useful tool which governs both service expectations and the consequences of failure to meet
these agreed upon metrics.
Best-practice financial planning and analysis (FP&A) teams are looking for ways to venture beyond the traditional job scope. Previously, the typical FP&A team spent the bulk of its time reporting on how well the organization had performed during a given period versus pre-set targets. The team may have also helped to develop contingency plans in the wake of performance short-falls. Today, more FP&A teams want to do more than keep score. They want to engage in predictive analysis, which anticipates fluctuations in customer demand, revenue flows, and costs over the course of upcoming periods. They also want to support decision makers with analysis-driven contingency plans that can be implemented if and when conditions in the marketplace shift.
It is no longer sufficient for an organization to be lean, agile and efficient. Its entire supply chain must also perform as the company itself does. If some of its trading-partner suppliers and customers are excessively high-maintenance, those suppliers and customers erode profit margins. Who are these troublesome suppliers and customers, and how much do they drag down profit margins? More importantly, once these questions are answered, what corrective actions should managers and employees take?
The balanced scorecard, the methodology developed by Drs. Robert S. Kaplan and David Norton, recognizes the shortcoming of executive management’s excessive emphasis on after-the-fact, shortterm financial results. It resolves this myopia and improves organizational performance by shifting attention from financial measures and managing nonfinancial operational measures related to customers; internal processes; and employee innovation, learning, and growth. These influencing measures are reported during the period when sooner reactions can occur. This in turn leads to better financial results.
There is confusion in the marketplace about the term performance management. Just Google the term and you will see what I mean.
The confusion begins with which phrase we should use to refer to performance management. This confusion in part is due to semantics and language. We often see in the media the acronyms BPM for business performance management, CPM for corporate performance management, and EPM for enterprise performance management. But just as the words merci, gracias, danke scho¨n, and thank you all mean the same thing, so do these acronyms. Fortunately, information technology (IT) research firms like IDC and Gartner are accepting the short version, and simply calling it performance management.