Enterprise Transformations, It's all About Performance Management

The first thought might be: Agile and Finance, really?  Isn't Finance bounded by statutory guidelines and timelines which finance can't afford to miss?  Is anyone using Agile Finance? If yes, is success envisioned?  How Finance can relate to Agile manifestos?  How to know If I am heading towards Agile Finance?  How EPM can help? We will try to address these in today's blog post. Today, successful CFOs are thinking Agile, they empowered with tools and technology to make informed decisions quickly, adapt to constant change, and implement new strategies with accelerated speed. The Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA) surveyed nearly 500 senior finance executives in organizations across the USA and Canada and found that 89% of businesses embracing an agile finance approach are more likely to report positive revenue growth, and 95% are more likely to report increasing profitability 1. Am I magically and logically heading towards Agile finance?

Sales Planning - "What you plan now, you will harvest later!" - Og Mandino, Author of The Greatest Salesman in the World Sales planning is about allocating resources, aligning markets, and managing quotas to attain strategic goals by leveraging resources, capabilities, and opportunities. The strategy is executed by resources on the ground level, so it is crucial that the leadership sets achievable-stretch goals by considering drivers such as customer behaviors, market trends, and demographics. An organization is setting itself for failure if reps are not optimistic about their targets or if markets are over or underserved. In theory, it sounds simple to organically grow or balance territories to serve the best client with the best reps, however, bigger the business, more complex it's resource and market allocations become. Quota assignment is both - art and science, in addition to resource and territory assignment one must figure out if a) top-down targets are realistic,

  Chesterton and Cabrera I am a big proponent of leveraging learnings from different fields and apply them for Enterprise Performance Management (EPM). In today's post, I have picked up insights from - GK Chesterton, a well-known English writer, philosopher, and critic & cognitive scientist - Derek Cabrera. For starters here are some views of Chesterton from his book "The Thing" " There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."  The simplification of anything is always sensational, and the rewa

History of ZERO-BASED Budgeting ZBB is five-decade old concept which was popularized by Pete Pyhrr when he was working as a young manager for Texas Instrument. In his words, “especially in times of economic problems, when you need to make reductions, or when you have significant and rapid technological change.” Here we break the budget down to small categories and then decisions are made on the tradeoffs of what return of investment, what do we lose, and what do we gain with the investment. It is looking at the expenses at a deeper level to derive the cost management and performance management, we are thinking about the resource allocation. In the modern world, we can do what-if and scenario analysis on aligning the resources to different priorities and ensuring they still align with higher corporate strategy and vision. Traversing in Turbulent Times We help our clients thrive in VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) environment by empowering them with word-class perfor

“It's not going to be an easy ride, there will be rough patches, but we will get there”- said one of the project managers while explaining the benefits of a new technology implementation project kick-off meeting with VPs and C Suite leadership. A few months after project implementation, odds were in his favor, he delivered a quality product, under budget & on time! One can leverage a five-step methodology of Design, Deployment, Stabilization, Improvement, and Transformation to facilitate the expectation discussion.      Figure by: Professor  Dr. Salman A. Mufti,  Smith School of Business, Queens University Truly setting expectations on when a technology implementation will deliver results and when it will start creating impact is the key. During the design phase, most of the stakeholders are closely involved, the team is talking about the future and shaping future blueprints. This raises expectations, anticipation and magnifies the positive impact the implementat

The first major manifestation of digital technology was mainframe computers, they cost millions of dollars, and in order to use them, it required hours of training. Since then, we took a big leap from mainframes to desktops, to laptops, to smartphones, and now we have democratized technology where a majority of folks in the world have technology access.  The disruptive innovation model transforms products that are historically very expensive, complicated and makes them affordable and accessible. It helps in thinking about innovation-driven growth by keeping customers in mind, and highlighting how the progression of original innovation and disruptive innovation works. These customers range from Performance customers (who can be satisfied with the minimal viable products) to Demanding Performance Customers (who like to have the best of the experience). Disruptive innovation model helps us in answering questions like:  Why are some companies being so successful for so long? Becaus

Adopting new technology can be considered one of the pillars of progressive thinking, however, next crucial step is to effectively leverage the technology to drive value for customers, business, stakeholders, technology users and enhance their capabilities. This can be achieved by:    Choosing tech with internal/external customer focus ·     Planning effective change management to increase adoption and usage of tech through a focus on varying learning needs by a group of users such as age, preference, impact on their work etc.     Planning for lag effect and investing in building readily available resources and tools to support learning and adoption and a greater focus on users who have no willingness to adopt    Being open-minded to bring in new talent to help and support the transition From my finance transformation journeys I remember two cases of gross margin financial planning implementation where the client wanted to opt new tech to drive more efficiency and acc