Nucleus Reports Infor EPM Improves Financial Productivity by 20 Per Cent

Nucleus recently interviewed Infor EPM users to gain insights into their experience with the solution. These results are highly positive. Benefits gained included improved operational efficiency, cost savings, and better financial planning and reporting.

On average, users reported a 20 per cent boost in financial process productivity and an impressive over 30x increase in processing speeds for roll-up models. 

Read more: A Quick Guide to Market-Leading EPM Software

Contents

• What is Infor EPM?
• Benefits of Infor EPM experienced by customers

What is Infor EPM? 

Infor EPM is a versatile Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solution capable of handling a variety of financial processes, such as budgeting, forecasting, financial reporting, consolidation, and sales and operational planning. 

What do you need to know about Corporate Performance Management (CPM)?

CPM is a strategic approach that helps organisations align their goals, strategies, and execution to achieve optimal performance. It involves a set of methodologies, processes, and systems used to monitor and manage various aspects of a business, including: 

• Planning and budgeting: Developing comprehensive plans and budgets for different departments and functions. 

• Forecasting: Predicting future performance based on historical data, trends, and assumptions. 

• Reporting: Providing timely and accurate reports on key performance indicators (KPIs) to track progress and identify areas for improvement. 

• Analysis: Using data analytics to gain insights into business performance, identify trends, and make informed decisions. 

• Consolidation: Aggregating data from different departments and systems to get a unified view of the organisation's performance. 

The latest Infor EPM version

The latest version of Infor EPM is cloud-based and supports third-party integration through data injection and ETL functionalities. The solution is compatible with Infor Data Fabric and Data Lake for seamless data access and integration, enabling data write-back to third-party systems and applications like Infor Birst.

Infor Application Studio

With Infor Application Studio, users can automate processes and enhance Infor EPM's functionality, improving analytics, the user experience, and meeting specific planning and reporting needs. 

Beyond budgeting and planning, Infor EPM manages product and investment forecasts, workforce, and supply and demand planning. It offers industry packages with ready-to-use templates, reports, and calculations, speeding up deployment and aligning with Infor's tailored industry solutions. 

Infor EPM eliminates the need for spreadsheets by providing a centralised platform for all your budgeting data, allowing you to get the right information to the right people at the right time. This ensures everyone can work with a single version of the truth to minimise errors, improve collaboration, and make more informed decisions. 

OLAP technology  

Infor EPM uses OLAP technology, which is specifically designed to analyse large volumes of multi-dimensional data. While traditional relational databases have served us well for many years, they can become a hurdle due to their complexity when dealing with large amounts of datasets. 

Moreover, users often need IT support for tasks such as generating ad hoc reports, which can slow down the response to management's needs. 

OLAP organises data into hypercubes, enabling the storage of information in a single cell and its easy access across multiple dimensions. Each dimension contains a set of similar information.

Read more: OLAP Technology: Handling Big Data in the Hotel Industry

For example, each dimension of the OLAP cube can include details like customer names, product names, and order times. Each cell within the cube represents a distinct combination of elements from the dimensions. Additionally, a dimension can be structured as a hierarchy for easy navigation and analysis.

One noteworthy advantage of this system is that it allows finance users to generate and present data independently instead of relying on data specialists or IT support as there is no complex SQL table joining and indexing. 

You can also use OLAP to explore various "what-if" scenarios. For example: 

• What if we increased marketing spending for a specific product category in a certain region?  

• How would a potential price increase for a specific jacket affect sales in different customer segments?  

You can analyse the potential impact of these changes on your budget with OLAP technology in Infor EPM.  

In-context business intelligence 

Infor EPM allows you to explore data from multiple perspectives, identify trends, and uncover the root causes of variances within your budget. Using a variance report allows the organisation to uncover problems with actuals and budgets. Users can then drill into a detailed report giving the information required to identify the business problem.  

For example, if you see an overall budget overrun, you can drill down to see if it is specific to a particular department, product line, or location.  

There will be no more data silos, as all the information you need is readily available for a holistic view. 

Read more: Automating Financial Forecast for Hotels with Cloud Systems 

Interested in learning about Infor EPM more in-depth? Check out our on-demand webinar where our solution expert dissects the software. Watch the full recording, complete with an insightful demonstration session, at your convenience right here. 

Benefits of Infor EPM experienced by customers 

In a recent interview with Infor EPM users from three distinct sectors, Nucleus finds that "Infor EPM improves financial process productivity by 20%" in addition to streamlined efficiency and costs to enhanced financial planning and reporting. 

Below is a summary of the benefits experienced by each customer group. 

American Food & Beverage provider 

The American Food & Beverage Provider faces challenges with their outdated ERP system lacking capabilities for advanced reporting and cloud operations. As a company with over $1 billion in revenue and 2,000 employees, this hindered their ability to access data and analyse financial performance.  

By migrating to the cloud-based Infor EPM solution, they expected to upgrade outdated ERP with a modern, integrated system that supports advanced data analysis, reporting, and cloud-based operations. They also aimed to address previous shortcomings in dashboarding capabilities. 

As a result, this American Food & Beverage Provider achieved substantial cost savings from eliminating internal servers, which alone accounted for over 75% of the migration’s total ROI. Infor EPM also improved the efficiency of their planning processes. The solution helps reduce time spent on monthly forecasting and enhance data accessibility and user productivity across various roles. 

Overall, the transition to EPM represents a major step forward that has streamlined their operational efficiency through a modern integrated platform. 

Read more: Automating Reporting in the Financial Services Sector: a Case Study 

Wine & Spirits manufacturer 

The Wine & Spirits Manufacturer generates over $5 billion in revenue annually and a workforce of more than 5,000 employees. In the past, they depended on different local forecasting tools that were not only difficult to scale but also overly complicated, needing significant local expertise. 

They opted for Infor EPM to streamline and standardise their practices on a global scale. Since its implementation, the system has been a key enabler in their expansion into exciting new markets such as Germany, the UK, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Spain, with an eye on Japan next. This international rollout showcases the system's remarkable scalability and its ability to unify forecasting practices across its worldwide operations. 

A recent major upgrade has made the system even more scalable and reliable as the manufacturer continues to expand into new countries. This upgrade also boosted performance, leading to a significant improvement of up to 20% in financial operations across various markets. By centralising planning across business units and incorporating key data dimensions, Infor EPM plays a crucial role in supporting the company's global growth ambitions. 

Machinery manufacturer 

The Machinery Manufacturer, producing specialised industrial machinery with over 1,000 employees and $200 million in revenue, needed to replace their ageing on-premises EPM solution and enhance reporting capabilities.  

By moving to the cloud-based Infor EPM, they experienced significant improvements, especially with processing speeds increasing by more than 30 times. This boost in speed greatly enhanced the productivity of team members working on developing and testing new reports. 

The organisation leverages Infor EPM primarily for external reporting, unifying data from its smaller subsidiaries. This approach ensures consistent and standardised reporting across its global operations. 

Additional perks included a smoother user experience, seamless Excel integration, and the capacity to conduct more sophisticated and intricate financial analyses. Infor EPM delivered the updated platform necessary for streamlined and effective reporting, catering to both internal teams and external partners. 

Why not discover the true potential of Infor EPM for yourself? Arrange a demo today and witness its capabilities firsthand!