Happy faces at the end of the prophix seminar lunch in the Grand Millenium hotel Abu Dhabi.
I am grateful to the speakers for all their research and preparation. Some of the key messages they shared include:
- Adoption of formal CPM systems is a clear differentiator between successful businesses and laggards. Major reasons for this difference in bottom line results is the strategic empowerment of the Office of Finance, and the enhanced decision making of operational users who can access up to date information on their performance, get timely reports and can easily drill from dashboard kpi to the relevant level of detail by multiple criteria
- Choosing a system requires consideration of many factors:
- How will it really help the organisation?:
- Compliance and control without extra risk and cost
- Automation of non transactional finance processes: budgets, approvals, reports, consolidation
- Error reduction
- Faster and better informed decision making
- Cost reductions
- Value added – what can we do more or better with the time we save?
- Turning data into information- kpis, dashboards, trends, exceptions, visual workflows, drilldown and drill across, what of options, delta analysis: units, geographies, brands, time etc.
- Ease of use- will users resist or adopt does it make processes easier to follow or just add bureaucracy? Familiar technology, comments, favourites, templates, wizards, filters, etc.
- The right tool needs the right implementation scope and the right project and support team both internally and externally.
- How will others view such a system? Auditors. Financers? Regulators? Will improved planning and budget control encourage investors? Will a formal system add value to your balance sheet?
