EPM edge
Today most or nearly all of the organizations with a vision to stay ahead of the competition have industry specific ERP suite implemented. ERP packages and the best practices which packages bring in lead to an increased level of operational efficiency; this increased operational efficiency forms the very basis of a level playing field for various players in the industry, where each player is able to run on similar operational efficiency.
In my opinion amongst various players in an industry who have vision to be ahead of the rest and are able to extract operational efficiency from their respective ERP packages- it would be very difficult to establish a clear differentiation between them.
Question which then demands an answer is how to then bring in differentiators which would add that extra mile between a leader and competition. Let me restrict thoughts in this post on how to incubate differentiations via finance organization and not touch upon differentiation generating opportunities in procurement, sourcing and/or marketing and sales organization.
If we look at parameters with which a finance organization can be evaluated we can probably list down parameters such as - number of FTEs, finance cost, DSO, stringent control, lesser number of errors in invoices etc. We can also add planning horizon, granularity at which planning is done and ability to churn the data out for analysis as unique parameters.
Enterprise performance management has been repeatedly used as a proactive approach which for sure can deliver on the promises made around increased efficiency in finance organization. A EPM suite which would let the finance organization to exercise control on parameters listed above yet ensuring that there exists a tight integration between financial and operational planning models, increases accuracy of forecasts and improves planning horizons can be the right tool to accelerate the growth of organizations on move. Thus in world where we a level playing field of ERP enabled organizations right EPM suite would keep the leader ahead of rest of the pack.
