EPM – CPM – BPM: What’s in a Name?

Many practitioners and experts in the industry have positioned all of these labels as basically meaning the same thing. They see each as a process and software system designed to link strategies to plans and execution. Each includes the monitoring and managing of key performance indicators (KPIs). This then lets managers in various departments and divisions of an organization understand key market and business trends. Ultimately, it allows them to respond quickly to ensure they meet business objectives.

However, subtle differences actually exist between these terms and what they are intended to convey.

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The Role of Cloud-based EPM in M&As

At a recent CFO Leadership Council event that Host Analytics sponsored in New York City, an interesting panel discussion was held on the topic of “Post M&A Integration.” The panel included senior executives with M&A integration experience from Radius, Randstad Staffing, KPMG, and Pine Hill Group. Here’s a quick summary of the key points that…

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Collaborative BI

Even in their most optimistic moments, business and IT executives will confess that there are two things that consistently undermine their confidence in their organization’s ability to execute a business strategy: - Not having access to all the relevant facts needed to make the right decision, and - By the time the organization actually can execute that…

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Best Practices in Profitability and Cost Management

For most organizations, aggressive cost-cutting and management were critical to remaining profitable while top line revenue was flat or shrinking during the recession.

However, now many organizations taking a more “surgical” approach to profitability and cost management, by understanding which products, services, customers and channels are truly profitable and which ones are draining value from the business.

How does your organization analyze and manage profitability?

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EPM View: An Interview with John O’Rourke, Vice President of Product Marketing, Oracle Corporation

John O’Rourke, one of the most seasoned veterans of the EPM industry, offers his perspective in this candid interview with Susan Serven. John shares his views on the future of EPM, the merger of Hyperion and Oracle, the most common misconceptions of EPM, his advice for a company just starting to consider implementing a performance management system, why Balanced Scorecard may have fallen out of favor, and many other insights.

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Why CFOs Should Care About Big Data

The topic of “big data” clearly has reached a tipping point in 2012. With plenty of coverage over the past few years in the IT press, we are now starting to see the topic of “big data” covered in mainstream business press, including a cover story in the October 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

To help customers understand the challenges of managing “big data” as well as the opportunities that can be created by leveraging “big data”, Oracle has recently run and published the results of a customer survey, as well as white papers and articles on this topic.

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Progress Towards Integrated Financial and Sustainability Reporting

While over 2000 organizations already have registered sustainability reports with the Global Reporting Initiative(GRI), and more than 3000 organizations have submitted their environmental information to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), investors are pushing for more consistency and global standards in environmental and sustainability reporting and standards are being defined for integrating sustainability reporting with financial reporting.

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What CFOs Need to Know About the Cloud

“The Cloud” has become one of the hottest buzz topics in the industry this year, and what started out as a topic mostly of interest to IT executives is quickly moving to the radar screen of CFOs and Finance Executives.

Some of the advantages of cloud-based applications include improved time to value, reduced up-front costs, leveraging 3rd party skill sets and having a scalable environment to support future growth. Some of the considerations and risks include security, performance, integration of cloud-based applications with on-premise systems and long-term costs of ownership.

Find out more here.

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