financial reporting software Archives

Top CPM Software Drives Faster and Better Business Decisions

Blog, Corporate Performance Management Partner

Does your accounting and finance department waste valuable time with manual monthly reporting tools? Do you have too many Excel spreadsheets to keep track of? Is your budget process slow and painful? With Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software you can lead a transformation of the office of finance in your business �� and as a result help enable your management teams with faster and better decisions.

In this blog, we will look at the benefits of CPM software and how it can transform your business.

What Is CPM Software?

Modern Corporate Performance Management software uses cloud platforms that enable a single version of the truth with automated and self-service financial and operational reporting. It also manages the entire budget process as well as forecasting tasks that drive more accurate year-end estimates. Using CPM software enables process improvements, reduces mistakes, minimizes dependency on manual spreadsheets, and speeds up analysis.혻

CPM software also enhances and extends the reporting and planning capabilities of ERP systems. While popular ERP solutions from vendors like Microsoft, Sage, SAP, and Acumatica always offer basic financial reporting and budgeting functionality, customers typically grow out of these tools. They then either end up with manual Excel spreadsheet models or they bolt a CPM solution on top of their ERP system to make sure their teams have best-of-breed solutions both for accounting needs as well as planning and reporting.

Spreadsheets Are Flexible, but��.

Most companies, nonprofits, and government organizations are still relying on manual Excel spreadsheets in various areas of their reporting and planning processes. Chances are that you are too!

Below are some of the typical issues with spreadsheets. The resulting pain can go from overworked staff that quits to finance managers that get fired because of inaccuracies or direct negative impact on a company�셲 ability to drive efficiencies and to grow:혻

Inaccurate output due to formula mistakes
Broken or outdated links to data sources or other files
Lack of efficient collaboration, multiple users cannot access and update files simultaneously
Insufficient controls with no approval process or workflow due to the nature of Excel files
No real-time reporting during budgeting and forecasting process to assess progress or catch errors
Inability to dynamically refresh models with the latest actuals혻
No audit trail to track when individual changes were made
Lack of documentation and support due to proprietary models
Dependency on Excel gurus to fix issues or make changes
Slow monthly reporting process
Slow budget and forecast processes
And more��

However, despite the potential issues of relying too much on spreadsheets for your financial reporting and planning, they also have many advantages, such as:혻

Almost all financial staff are familiar with Excel
Spreadsheets are incredibly flexible and have great graphics and layout capabilities
Models can be designed quickly to solve various information needs

As a result, many organizations rely on CPM tools as their core reporting and budgeting solution and supplement with Excel models for various ad-hoc tasks that are not worthwhile to design into the CPM solution.

Where does CPM Software fit in?

So, which tasks are most suitable for Corporate Performance Management software? CPM solutions take you beyond Excel models and enable a business to build a reporting and planning platform that drives efficiency, enables faster and more reliable information, and provides a tool that can scale with the growth of an organization. With CPM software, financial professionals can:

Gain the organization-wide visibility needed to effectively monitor and measure performance
Easily combine data from the ERP system as well as other key information sources
Enable a collaborative, secure cloud platform for reporting and planning
Automate repetitive tasks in the budgeting and reporting processes
Quickly generate forecasts and create what-if scenarios during times of uncertainty
Manage cash flows to predict future needs and ensure solvency
Give users a self-service, on-demand platform, with tools tailored to their specific role
Improve data accuracy with strong controls and reconciliation tools
Shorten the cost and time for tasks such as annual budgeting and monthly reporting혻
Gain better prediction through efficient driver-based models that can be quickly updated
Simplify multi-company consolidations, including eliminations and currency conversion
Enable the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning
Drive faster and better decisions with a single version of the truth
And so much more

As companies grow out of Excel spreadsheets for essential financial and planning processes, they can deploy CPM platforms to streamline budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting, and consolidations processes. It should be noted that some of the leading CPM solutions are popular among finance users exactly because they tightly integrate with Excel. This can be thought of as an architecture that takes the best of Excel and the best of a cloud platform and marries the two.

With automation also comes the opportunity to reduce the cost of manual labor and increase accuracy and the time it takes to deliver essential information to decision-makers. What used to take weeks or months with spreadsheets can be reduced to days or hours with modern cloud-based CPM solutions.혻

Benefits of CPM Software

A popular notion in recent years is that data is the new gold. While homegrown spreadsheet models can burst at the seams if you try to store too much data, it also quickly turns into a security risk.혻

Corporate Performance Management software significantly eliminates these problems by using scalable cloud databases to store data, including from many different data sources. Detailed, menu-driven user administration with single sign-on and multi-factor authentication ensures that reports and budgets are only accessible to the right team members and for the assigned business areas.

As the number of data sources and the actual transaction volume grow, the complexity in spreadsheet models grows exponentially. Similarly, as the number of end users entering data and sharing Excel files grows, formula errors and data entry mistakes become rampant.혻

CPM platforms eliminate or significantly reduce such issues by connecting directly to the APIs of your data sources to load historical data on a scheduled basis, enabling power users to deploy (and update!) dashboards, financial reports, and budget models directly to end users in their web browsers.

As a result of the process and quality improvements to planning and reporting activities, the migration from spreadsheet models to a CPM platform will, in a clear and visible way, drive faster and more informed financial and operational decisions.

With modern, cloud-based CPM software you and your staff can focus more on managing the business and stop spending time maintaining complex spreadsheet models. A popular statement related to benefits of CPM platforms is that you will go from spending 80% of your time managing spreadsheets and data and leaving only 20% of your time for analysis, to spending 20% of your time on managing your CPM solution and 80% of your time will be available for analysis.

CPM as an Integrated Cloud Platform

Corporate Performance Management software started becoming popular in the 1990s. The software category matured and a number of CPM offerings for smaller, midsize, and enterprise organizations arrived between 2000 and 2020. Many of these solutions were originally built for on-premises deployment, and they could also be hosted as individual instances in third-party server farms, often referred to as hosting providers.

From 2020 and onward, all modern CPM vendors have built or re-written their solutions to be public cloud, multi-tenant solutions hosted and updated by the vendors themselves.혻

Somewhat tedious annual upgrades or patches done by consultants or your IT department have been replaced by automated monthly cloud updates that arrive in your browser with new features and improvements next time you log in.혻

In a similar fashion, what used to be a significant upfront purchase followed by annual maintenance fees now have become cloud subscriptions with a once-a-year renewal. Beyond pricing and automated, frequent updates there are other benefits with modern, cloud-based CPM software, such as pre-built connectors to your data sources and marketplaces with pre-built reports, dashboards, and budget templates.혻

Combined with the complete elimination of the need to buy and maintain local hardware servers with related electricity costs and database licenses, ROI calculations (free tool here) show that cloud CPM solutions provide significantly better return on investments than the classic on-premises offerings, and they are easier for vendors to support than thousands of local installations at customers�� offices.혻

Rapid CPM Deployment Drives Quick Time to Value

Top CPM vendors have taken the CPM experience to the next level by innovating the initial deployment experience to offer almost immediate use of their product. Two such innovation examples are Solver�셲 QuickStart and Template Marketplace.혻혻

The underlying technology uses pre-built data source connectors, setup wizards and ready-to-use reports, dashboards, and budget forms to enable as quick as single-day mini-implementations that later can be expanded with custom report writing and other tailoring. That is a vastly quicker time-to-value than classic implementations where you start with an empty CPM box and it often takes 2-3 months of implementation before you get practical use of your new system.혻

Here are some important functionality trends and best practices delivered by modern CPM providers:

PRE-BUILT INTEGRATIONS TO ERPS AND OTHER DATA SOURCES

Integrating your transaction data sources to a CPM solution can be a tedious task, often with technical integration consultants involved for days if not weeks. However, with many CPM vendors partnering up with ERP firms, it is increasingly normal that CPM vendors create specific integrations to each popular ERP system, sometimes even with the fields in each system coming pre-mapped.혻

혻MARKETPLACES WITH OUT-OF-THE BOX TEMPLATES

In the old days, CPM solutions were sold as empty boxes and implementations started from scratch with no budget forms, reports, or dashboards. Nowadays, CPM vendors have realized that customers want quick time to value, and as a result the trend is toward in-app marketplaces where users with a few clicks can select and download templates for immediate use. These templates are typically modifiable so users can change colors, add columns, etc. to tailor them to corporate standards.

SELF-PACED ONLINE TRAINING ACADEMIES

Pre-COVID it was still relatively normal to have physical in-class training to learn a new enterprise software. However, with modern training portals, most vendors now offer self-paced academies where users can learn the CPM software through videos and tutorials and earn certifications from the comfort of their own home.

CRAWL-WALK-RUN

Lengthy big-bang implementations were the standard of CPM projects in the past. It led to higher-risk projects as numerous architectural decisions had to be made, often with required input from users who still did not fully understand how the system would work with their own data.혻

With modern rapid deployment options, users can almost immediately start using standard reports, dashboards, and budget forms, which significantly enhances their ability to make smart and informed decisions for later tailoring and expansion of the system. This approach is often described with popular terms such as crawl-walk-run, quick win, MVP (minimum viable product), or rapid deployment.

MAKE BETTER DECISIONS

While a primary goal for CPM software is to automate financial reporting and planning processes, even more important is how it will support faster and better decisions. Timely information available in the right format and to the right manager can have a direct impact on the company�셲 top and bottom line, whether it drives revenue maximization or cost control.혻

Furthermore, and especially during uncertain times, the planning capabilities often become the core value of a corporate performance platform, allowing users to quickly modify drivers and create new budget and forecast scenarios that managers can use for their human capital planning and other essential strategies and tactics.혻

The key is to use the CPM solution to free up time for analysis and decisions by automating otherwise tedious data collection, consolidation, reconciliation, and presentation preparation.혻

Is Now the Time for Integrated Financial Planning and Reporting With CPM?

One of the key benefits of modern Corporate Performance Management solutions is to streamline planning and reporting processes and at the same time enable your business with a secure cloud platform that consistently produces one version of the truth compared to what you can do with homegrown spreadsheet models, multiple report writers, etc. So, if you have arrived at this conclusion, what are the typical next steps?

Document What Constitutes Success

Meet with executive sponsors and key users to document the desired business outcomes of the CPM project from their point of view. These should be presented to the CPM vendors you are going to evaluate to ensure that they feel comfortable that their solution can deliver these outcomes. The outcomes should also be brought up during and at the end of the project to ensure alignment.혻

Create a list of open-ended questions
Interview executives and key users
Reconcile answers and document them in a clear bullet point format혻혻

Define Your Needs

By creating a clearly defined list of your planning and reporting needs and pains, you will be able to communicate relevant requirements to the CPM vendor when the evaluation process starts.

Document current as well as desired planning and reporting processes
Document the data sources that will be feeding the CPM system혻혻
Quantify time currently spent on such processes
Describe critical and required functionality혻
Estimate cost of inefficiencies and inaccurate data

Select the CPM Solution With the Best Fit

The good news is that a number of good Corporate Performance Management solutions are on the market. Usually these are optimized for smaller, medium, and large organizations, and pricing and complexity are closely related to your company size and user count. Here are suggested steps to help find the best CPM solution for your needs:

Use a software evaluation tool like G2 to build a shortlist of CPM vendors
Contact the vendors and provide your documentation from #1 and #2 above
Perform vendor interviews and get product demonstrations
Compare functionality and cost for each solution

Make final selection with input from users and any third-party experts

You can use this CPM software vendor comparison and ROI tool to assist you in finding the best CPM solution for your needs.

Implementation and Go Live

Even the best software can be implemented poorly, resulting in a subpar outcome. For this reason, you want to carefully verify that consultants and your own team that will be helping with the implementations have the right experience and track record.혻

Define the joint consultant/employee implementation team.
Create a good project plan with clearly defined phases, timelines, and responsible person(s).
Be willing to think new based on functionality in the chosen CPM platform (i.e., �쐓quare peg in a square hole��) as well as suggestions to make improvements over your old planning and reporting models.
Identify areas that can deliver quick wins that enable part of the solution to be used right away. This can often be achieved with pre-built connectors and out-of-the-box or sample templates from the vendor.
Communicate well and often and encourage the team to drive innovation and improvements.

With proper planning and execution, you have a high likelihood that your new CPM solution will help take your organization to the next level. Your finance and accounting team will spend less time maintaining old models and have more time for analysis and decision-making.

If this is the right time for you to look at a CPM solution, take a look at the Solver tour and contact our team at any time to tell us about your needs. With Solver�셲 QuickStart integrations and pre-built templates, you could be on your way in as little as one day!

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The Benefits of Budgeting with Budget Templates Part 1

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This article focuses on the importance of budgeting with a corporate performance management solution.

Budgeting is a topic that is not very popular in many organizations. It can be an extremely time-consuming project for many employees.혻This is why it is important to communicate the significance of a budget to all employees so they take pride and ownership of it. Don’t make complex templates as the goal in estimating for the coming year.혻If employees can�셳 have small variances, then they will make decisions that only impact their results against the budget and not what is in the best long-term interest of the organization.
Your budget should should be an approximate estimate of how the company will do in the coming year. Provide information on how investment money can be spent. This is based on the strategies and initiatives of the company.혻The goal should not be to budget down to each dollar.
For example, one company budgeted down to an employee cost of $6.52 per month per employee.혻The company was asked whether the cost could be estimated as a total for each department, but they claimed they needed it down to the dollar. However, budgeting at the department level and allowing a five percent variance would have had no impact on the decisions that the company made.혻Another important item to ask yourself is �쐗hat is an acceptable variance for an organization?�� For instance, if there is a five percent variance in the revenue, then would this impact the decisions that the company will make in the coming year?

Personnel Budgeting Template

Personnel budgeting has an immense impact for organizations due to the high proportion of costs of an organization.혻A personnel budgeting template has similarities across all companies. There are many variables to consider, such as the type of raise, how many raises, overtime, bonuses, commissions, taxes, benefits, and IT costs to name a few.혻It is also important to know whether to budget by employee or by position.
Budgeting by position enables an organization to ignore employee names, terminations, and having to hire employees to replace a terminated employee.혻It also allows budgeting by multiple employees.혻As an example, a template can allow a manager to input how many accountants should be employed, what the average salary is, and what the average raise would be.혻If a company is budgeting by employees then each accountant should be listed. The employee�셲 exact salary, his/her expected raise, and all other information specific to each employee should be included as well.혻Budgeting by employee will be more accurate if there is little employee turnover, but it also requires more work.
Other items to keep in mind with personnel is how to allocate monthly salary, which impacts tax and benefit calculations.혻Allocate salary evenly by work days, by calendar days, and by pay periods. There are other ways as well. Another item to consider is separating out full-time and part-time employees, as there may be differences in the benefits that are allocated to part-time employees, such as overtime and 401k.혻These are all calculations that must be built into the payroll form.

Assumptions Template

A great first step is creating an assumptions template, which allows an administrator to enter data. This will impact the calculations of many templates, and it does not have to be hard-coded into the templates themselves.혻This data will flow from the form into all other templates. An assumptions template should include payroll tax rates, a worker�셲 compensation rate, and a benefit rate. The number of days in each month also matter.
The data from the assumption form will then flow into the payroll form.
There may also be a need to allocate an employee across multiple departments.혻In this case, there are two options: 1) Budget every employee to a �쐂ummy�� department and then allocate the salaries, taxes, and benefits in new template. 2) Upload the employee information into each department and enter the number of hours allocated to each department. This ensures there is an administrator report that checks to verify that an employee does not exceed 2,080 hours a year.
Many companies use another template called the capital expenditures template.혻This particular template allows users to enter capital expenditures that are projected into the coming year. This also calculates depreciation, typically on a straight-line basis.혻The asset type is typically chosen because each asset type has a specific life.혻A capital expenditures template should include asset type, department, purchase description, purchase month, purchase price, and quantity.혻The capital expenditures and the monthly depreciation are summarized at the bottom of the template.

More information

If you would like to get a better understanding of the budgeting templates above, you can download the free ebook here. Beyond using the right templates, it is important to have the right team and infrastructure in place to implement a successful budgeting strategy. Take the time on the front end to set budgeting goals that line up with your overarching organizational goals.
We also recommend to ask for help! By asking for help within the right channels, you can ensure the right sounding board that can guide you through the process with minimal time wasted and designed for maximum efficiency. At Solver, we have a team of experience professionals that have taken on countless projects like this one. Between the power of BI360 and their expertise, you have all you need to set yourself up for success.
Solver enables world-class decisions with BI360, a leading web-based CPM suite made up of budgeting, reporting, dashboards, and data warehousing, delivered through a web portal. Solver is reinventing CPM with its next generation solution. BI360 empowers business users with modern features including innovative use of Excel in the model design process. If you�셱e interested in learning more, our team is excited to hear about your organizational needs and goals.