Meeting Customer Demand with Integrated Manufacturing Visibility

Today’s customers demand high-quality, individualized products and faster delivery. When it comes to the manufacturing function, manual processes and isolated information silos make meeting these demands increasingly difficult. What’s needed are connected manufacturing processes that are integrated across the entire product life-cycle to break down silos and provide visibility across the phases of design, planning, logistics, and operations. This can enable next-generation business processes that leverage intelligent technologies to analyze root causes of inefficiency, predict machine and process failures, and speed execution. An integrated environment for manufacturing can help compress cycle times, speed time to market, minimize costs, and meet manufacturing demand with greater efficiency and agility – despite growing variability.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Turn Strategy into Actionable Plans with Next-Level FP&A

“Few processes within the purview of a CFO have so much potential to create—or destroy—business value than FP&A”

A recent study from the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) found that in general, top performing organizations take a more rigorous and integrated approach to their FP&A practices by relying on businesses insights to drive results, not just predict them. Unfortunately, many companies are not achieving the full potential of their FP&A activities because they tend to put more focus on forecasting and budgeting, rather than the core principles of planning and execution. Forecasting and budgeting are certainly important, especially in communicating to the organization if it is on track to achieve its business outcomes or to raise warning flags. But forecasting results is not the same as building a plan to actually achieve them. Planning and execution are what will determine success.

Read More at CFO Magazine >

The Pivotal Role of the CIO in Digital Transformation

Businesses around the world are under intense pressure to invest in transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and cloud that will help them compete effectively in a world increasingly defined by digital innovation and disruption. This unique situation requires chief information officers (CIOs) to play a larger role in shaping and executing business strategy. Deloitte’s global cost management survey found that while cost management is a top priority for businesses, it is referred to as a “save to transform” initiative because many companies are using their cost savings to help fund investments in growth and transformation. CIOs and technology leaders operate at the intersection of all three save-to-transform aspects: cost reduction, growth and transformation.

Read More at Information Week >

Intelligent Technologies Are Re-shaping the Future of Business

Technology is shaping the future of how businesses operate. Digital transformation and the rise of intelligent technologies are driving business leaders to shift from managing technology to delivering more creative and strategic business outcomes. An organization’s technology vision comprises four components: the future of work, strategic technology investments, risk and resiliency, and technology operating model agility. Its approach to each of these aspects can help create an environment in which innovation grows, encourage collaboration between business and technology functions, and create sustainable competitive advantage.

Read More at The Wall Street Journal >

Modern FP&A Leaders Need to Upgrade Their Playbook

“In a world of digital transformation and constant disruption, analysis must keep pace with queries that will change midstream and anticipate questions that have yet to be asked, but should be.”

 The ability to turn around insightful analysis in a timely manner is key to being seen as a modern business. To remain competitive, mature reporting processes must become more of a comprehensive playbook that provides decision makers with actionable insight in real-time. More mature processes rely less on spreadsheets, and favor purpose-built FP&A solutions that provide access to common databases, manage data scenarios and related workflows, and ensure transparency. Immature financial planning capabilities often resemble a shadow budget process, with simplistic reports, scarce analytics and a lack of business-value insights. When it comes to business planning, level of detail used must be appropriate to test a hypothesis “what if” in a way that has business relevance. Successful FP&A organizations often have the ability to provide faster and more predictive analytics, adjustments on the fly, and an emphasis on high performance through leveraging advanced analytics.

Read More at Smarter with Gartner >

What Makes a True Data-Driven Organization?

Finance is woven into the fabric of almost everything a business does, and today’s organizations need to do more than track and control costs to be profitable. Many finance organizations that are aspiring to become more data-driven are moving forward with analytics transformation today. Those who are successful are able to leverage embedded analytics into core financial processes and empowering their finance teams with insight on demand. However, businesses that rely on spreadsheets and disparate systems for robust analytics usually hit major roadblocks, because it’s near impossible to obtain a single version of financial truth with these outdated tools. There are three essential factors that businesses must encompass to become a true data-driven organization.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Powerful Apparel Pricing Requires Advanced Analytics

Today’s consumers are more sophisticated and technologically savvy, making them harder to predict and even harder to satisfy. For apparel manufacturers and retailers to be successful, they must think be able to predict future wants and needs of their potential customers. Many successful apparel manufacturers and retailers have found a scalable way to employ a responsive, intelligent pricing discipline that aligns their pricing strategy with their customers’ willingness to pay by leveraging insights from advanced analytics to make smarter pricing decisions. Pricing smarter requires understanding where customers perceive value and having the agility to respond to competitors’ moves with full insight into the impact on financial performance.

Read More at McKinsey Insights >

Robust Financial Analytics Are the Key to Business Visibility

When it comes to obtaining actionable analytics, the best thing a business can do is drastically decrease their use of spreadsheets. While spreadsheets can still be helpful in a tactical capacity, they should no longer represent a view of reality that is relied on for business visibility. Instead, businesses should invest in a centralized platform that enables a single source of financial performance truth. A fully-integrated tool that provides robust financial analytics enterprise-wide is crucial for any modern organization to make faster and more informed decisions that enhance their customer’s experiences and drive business performance. A single source of trusted financial data also supports critical processes that modern businesses need to remain competitive like budgeting, forecasting, and predictive analytics.

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How To Stop Manual Processes From Draining Your Profits

Organizations look to finance leaders to support strategic initiatives by providing actionable information about the business. Ultimately, they can only be successful business partners when reliable financial data is available and when compliance is consistently achieved. When accounting and finance teams rely on manual processes, they struggle to focus on higher-risk areas and analyze trends – especially at peak times during the month. A 2016 Institute of Management Accountants (IMA) study found that 61% of finance teams still rely on spreadsheets for business analytics. As a result, companies have limited real-time data, and little time (if any) is left for analytics that can help identify errors or required adjustments. In today’s world of finance innovation and rapid advancements, businesses that continue to rely mainly on spreadsheets and manual business processes will not be in the race much longer. Digitizing and automating these processes will not only reduce costs and increase efficiencies; it will also free up valuable employees to perform more strategic tasks.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >