An Overview of Infor EPM (Enterprise Performance Management)

Did you know that financial professionals typically spend 70% of their time collecting and validating data, and the lack of collaboration and visibility has turned forecasting and budgeting into an "educated guessing game"? 

Stop wasting your time or repeating the same old mistakes! Infor EPM can help you gain a competitive advantage and prepare you to face market complexity head-on. This could be the only financial performance management software you ever need.

Let's explore how this robust and agile platform can help your organisation thrive.

Contents

• What is Infor EPM?
• Key features and capabilities
  • Data analytics
  • Financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting
  • Financial reporting
  • CAPEX planning
  • Risk and compliance 
  • Dashboards
• How can Infor EPM help improve your business' performance?

What is Infor EPM?

Infor Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) is a comprehensive solution suite designed to enhance the financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, and performance analysis processes, thereby eliminating spreadsheets. 

It layers world-class in-context business intelligence, financial performance management, and risk and compliance monitoring, empowering you to make more impactful decisions, report with confidence, and forecast the future based on relevant, real-time insights.

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Why do organisations need enterprise performance management software like Infor EPM? 

Simply put, you can handle all the complex activities associated with planning, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting, in addition to consolidating and finalising financial performance, using one single solution – Infor EPM.

This next-generation platform provides a holistic view of your business' performance. It allows you to assess historical and current performance metrics and empowers you to anticipate and strategise for future endeavours with precision and foresight.

This forward-looking capability enables you to proactively adapt to market trends, identify potential risks, and seize growth opportunities while staying ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving business environment.

Read more: Automating Financial Forecast for Hotels with Cloud Systems

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I can do it with spreadsheets. Why do I need the Infor EPM?

At the end of the day, what we generate is a lot of data. The endless array of spreadsheets, word documents, presentations, etc. from different sources and departments are incredibly overwhelming to process, not to mention analyse and extract meaningful insights. So forget about ensuring the accuracy and reliability of this data.

This chaos is what you see around the decision-support framework in most companies. All these different user interfaces and disparate systems, platforms, etc. result in us and key decision-makers sitting on different versions of the truth, hindering us from taking advantage of things like mobility, big data, or advances in in-memory computing.

Not to mention, spreadsheets rely heavily on manual input. Once data is rolled up, top executives can hardly drill down the numbers to the detail levels to gain a more in-depth view of the financial history. Not to mention, spreadsheets are susceptible to human errors, rigid, time-consuming, and have the potential to create silos.

Read more: 7 Worst Financial Fiascos Caused by Excel Errors

So imagine that you have these multiple data sources from your ERP, WMS, or CRM systems. When an event occurs (e.g., an order is updated, an item is created, an inventory status is changed, etc.), the system automatically updates the information. You are also able to view, monitor, and manage your KPIs through an intuitive, role-based, visualised dashboard and generate reports according to your industry standards.

All this can happen via a unified, user-rich, clean, and intuitively designed user interface, allowing users to work the way they live.

That is what you get with Infor EPM. In short, the solution is the perfect alternative to spreadsheets. 

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Key features and capabilities

You can deploy Infor EPM on-premises or in the cloud. Either way, Infor EPM can be integrated with Infor OS to deliver a wide range of powerful digital tools to streamline financial processes and drive business performance.

Data analytics

Infor EPM utilises an analytical platform with in-memory technology, enabling instant data consolidation and real-time insights into business and financial plans. This advanced contextual analytics capability enhances decision-making accuracy across the organisation.

Moreover, leveraging EPM's deep and predictive analytics combined with compliance tools enables you to increase the accuracy of your strategic, tactical, and operational plans. 

You are also able to monitor and review the performance while on the go—while visiting clients, discussing with workers down at the warehouse, or attending a trade show—via any mobile device of your choice.

Read more: How American Express Differentiates Core Services with Infor Birst BI

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Financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting

Integrate planning, budgeting, and forecasting into one single system for maximum visibility and efficiency. Simplify budgeting by bringing budgets and actuals together in a solution designed according to financial best practices. Consolidate multiple sets of books seamlessly, process elimination entries, and generate a single set of financial statements.

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Financial reporting

Leverage highly structured and adaptable self-service reporting capabilities to enhance decision-making within your organisation. Benefit from fully customisable dashboards and reports that feature clear and user-friendly graphs and charts, allowing you to identify trends and key insights easily up to the minute, even while on the go.

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CAPEX planning 

Manual data gathering for capital expenditure planning is a time-consuming task. This process is automated by Infor EPM, which integrates with existing systems to automatically pull relevant data.

Moreover, the solution allows users to create and test different scenarios for capital expenditures. This enables you to assess the financial impact of various options and make more informed choices.

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Risk and compliance 

When combining Infor EPM and Infor Risk and Compliance, you have in your hands one of the most extensive toolsets that empower users to gain a holistic view of data and user access across multiple business units. 

The ability to proactively and automatically monitor performance and compliance helps you mitigate security breaches, violations, and fraud, thus promoting consistent compliance and reinforcing regulations and requirements across the entire organisation.

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Dashboards

Infor EPM dashboards provide real-time access to critical financial metrics, KPIs, and trends. This eliminates the need for generating static reports and allows for more informed, up-to-date decision-making.

You can personalise their dashboards to display the information most relevant to your specific roles and responsibilities. This empowers you to quickly identify areas needing attention and track progress towards financial goals.

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