Financial forecasting can make or break an organisation's strategic decisions. However, even the most seasoned finance professionals can fall prey to common forecasting errors. This blog post aims to shed light on these pitfalls and ways to avoid them, helping you to refine your forecasting processes and improve the accuracy of your financial projections.
Recent TRG blog posts
10 Common Mistakes in Financial Forecasting & How to Avoid Them
Posted by Rick Yvanovich on Fri, Sep 27, 2024
Blog Topics: Financial consolidation, planning and reporting, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Financial Accounting Management Software
Nucleus Reports Infor EPM Improves Financial Productivity by 20 Per Cent
Posted by Rick Yvanovich on Sun, Sep 15, 2024
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.
Blog Topics: Financial consolidation, planning and reporting, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)
Why Infor EPM & SunSystems Are Such a Dynamic Duo for Finance Leaders
Posted by Rick Yvanovich on Sun, Jun 30, 2024
Senior finance executives require a winning combination of agility and control. They need systems that not only capture financial data accurately but also empower strategic decision-making. This is where Infor EPM and Infor SunSystems come together as a dynamic duo, offering a powerful one-two punch for your finance function.
Blog Topics: CFOs, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Financial Accounting Management Software
8 Steps in Selecting the Right Planning & Budgeting Software
Posted by Rick Yvanovich on Sat, Jun 29, 2024
Accurate financial planning and budgeting are no longer optional – they're essential for survival. But with a plethora of planning and budgeting software options available, choosing the right one can feel overwhelming. Fear not, here is a step-by-step guide to navigate the selection process and find the perfect planning and budgeting software for your business!
Blog Topics: CFOs, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Financial Accounting Management Software
How Top-Ranked EPM Software and Vendors Stack Up Against Each Other
Posted by Rick Yvanovich on Fri, Jun 28, 2024
As organisations seek to gain a competitive edge, choosing the most effective EPM solution becomes crucial. In this blog post, we explore the top-ranked EPM solutions, and offer guidance on selecting the best fit for your business. Whether you're looking to streamline financial planning, improve performance reporting, or gain real-time business insights, understanding the current landscape of EPM software will help you make informed decisions that drive success.
Blog Topics: Financial consolidation, planning and reporting, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Financial Accounting Management Software, Business Intelligence
A Simple Guide to Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)
Posted by Rick Yvanovich on Mon, Jun 24, 2024
Enterprise performance management (EPM), not to be confused with employee performance management, is increasingly popular thanks to technological advancements. The solution provides powerful functionalities with real-time data consolidation, predictive analytics, cloud-based applications, and better yet, ease of use.
Blog Topics: Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Financial Accounting Management Software
An Overview of Infor EPM (Enterprise Performance Management)
Posted by Rick Yvanovich on Fri, Jun 7, 2024
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
- 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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Blog Topics: Financial consolidation, planning and reporting, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Financial Accounting Management Software
Conquering the Challenges in Financial Consolidation for Hotel Chains
Posted by Rick Yvanovich on Thu, May 2, 2024
As a finance leader, you grapple with the problems brought about by disparate operations, ever-changing regulations, and fluctuating market dynamics. Follow along as we delve into the intricacies of financial consolidation for hotel chains, pinpoint usual stumbling blocks, and reveal the game-changing power of specialized consolidation software.
Blog Topics: Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Financial Accounting Management Software, Digital Transformation
What To Look For In a Planning and Budgeting Solution?
Posted by Rick Yvanovich on Thu, Dec 14, 2023
What enterprises today have an abundance of are pressures. For instance, the pressure of addressing challenges associated with planning and distributing budget rationally, or the pressure of finding an optimal financial solution.
Forward-looking CFOs have shifted away from traditional spreadsheets to a more sophisticated solution that can enable them to make more informed decisions based on real-time data and insights.
Blog Topics: Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)
Advantages and Disadvantages of Traditional Budgeting Approach
Posted by Rick Yvanovich on Tue, Dec 12, 2023
Budgeting is a cornerstone of financial planning in businesses. The traditional budgeting approach, with its roots in historical accounting practices, has been a mainstay in the corporate world. However, this method has faced criticism, particularly from proponents of more dynamic budgeting methods like Beyond Budgeting.
Blog Topics: Planning and Budgeting, Financial consolidation, planning and reporting, Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Financial Accounting Management Software