Published July 27, 2010 @ 16:01 by Mike in Media Hits, Partner Information
Matt Rothman spoke with our very own Cheryl Power, Director of Channels, during this month's Worldwide Partner Conference event in Washington, DC.
Here's the video evidence of that exchange.
Thanks, Matt, for spreading the word about PROPHIX. Watch more Tech-Tips with Matt Rothman at http://www.youtube.com/rothman20814.
Entry PermalinkBudgeting Toolkit: Essentials to Eliminate Spreadsheet Pains
Published July 27, 2010 @ 11:35 by Mike in Best Practices
All companies create plans and/or budgets. For most companies, this process is primarily handled with Excel. As the number of people involved in the budgeting process increases, and the distribution and collection of Excel budget templates can become burdensome, error prone, and difficult to maintain. In addition to the budget creation process, tracking performance against the plan or budget in Excel is equally difficult. Individual spreadsheets with appropriate data must be distributed, with side by side comparisons created manually.
Eliminate these challenges. Get the Budgeting Toolkit to learn how.
- Complementary Gartner Report - Evaluate Budgeting Solutions Separately From GL and Other Finance Systems
- Replacing Excel: A Case Study - Feeding America, the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity, had been making do with Excel spreadsheets for budgeting. They required improved data security and reliability. Feeding America came to PROPHIX for a centralized solution, and reaped several additional benefits.
- PROPHIX Express Brochure - Moving beyond spreadsheets for budgeting, planning, and reporting has never been easier or more cost-effective.
- PROPHIX 8-Minute Autodemo - This 8-minute autodemo is designed to give you a first-hand look at PROPHIX's complete array of Performance Management solutions.
- Live PROPHIX 1-Hour Webinar - This live webinar is designed to give you a thorough look at PROPHIX's Performance Management solutions for budgeting, forecasting, reporting, analysis, KPIs, metrics, drivers and more.
To get your free budgeting toolkit right now, click here.
NEW 8-minute PROPHIX Performance Management Autodemo is here!
Published March 30, 2010 @ 11:44 by Arwa in Company Updates
We are excited to announce that the NEW 8-minute PROPHIX Performance Management Autodemo is finally here. The Autodemo is designed to give you a first-hand look at PROPHIX's Performance Management solution, including product features and key benefits.
PROPHIX Software is the leading developer of solutions designed to automate financial processes including planning, reporting, analysis, and performance management for the midmarket. Thousands of finance leaders around the world use PROPHIX to empower their organization and gain greater insight into business performance.
Watch the NEW 8-minute Autodemo and learn how PROPHIX can simplify many of the common business performance issues facing your company today!Transition to IFRS: Why You Should and How You Can
Published March 8, 2010 @ 12:05 by Arwa in Industry News
The AICPA (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) published an article last week referencing content and speakers from an IFRS Webcast that was sponsored by PROPHIX.
The AICPA is a national, professional organization for all Certified Public Accountants. Its mission is to provide members with the resources, information, and leadership that enable them to provide valuable services in the highest professional manner to benefit the public as well as employers and clients.
The article addressed Finance Executives' prominent question as to why they should change to IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) and if there are any real benefits.
Cecil Nazareth, partner at IFRS Partners, along with Geoffrey Ng, Vice President of Product Planning at PROPHIX, gave valuable insight about transitioning to IFRS while presenting at the recent IFRS Webcast that was sponsored by PROPHIX.
Geoffrey Ng explained that by adopting IFRS, companies would benefit in lowered cost of capital, integrated IT systems, easier consolidation and reduced overall costs.
Nazareth expanded on Ng's benefits. He noted that 'IFRS makes sense to investors, the public and those who use financial statements.' He also said that IFRS provides:
- comparability across countries;
- consistency in application;
- cost-saving in compiling financial statements by eliminating time and effort in conversion/consolidating; and
- ease of compiling consolidated financial statements.
Nazareth also suggested to start today as the process takes two years.
Click here to read the entire AICPA article on how and why transition to IFRS. We also suggest that you listen to the recording of the recent IFRS Webcast that was sponsored by PROPHIX.The Secret Of Successful Scenario Planning
Published February 10, 2010 @ 15:10 by Mike in Industry News
David Niles, president of SSA & Co., a consulting firm that focuses on strategic process management, has written a great piece on scenario planning for Forbes.
The Secret Of Successful Scenario Planning
You have to look at seemingly far-fetched possibilities too.
Today almost no business operates without some kind of scenario planning. Executives take pride in rigorously evaluating wide varieties of potential influences on their businesses, from customer moves to supplier changes, shifts in energy prices, competitive actions and a whole host of other business drivers.
Given the ubiquity of scenario planning, why do so many businesses find themselves playing catch-up when their market environments change? Recent dismal share performances and record defaults make it undeniable that this aspect of corporate planning has significant deficiencies.
Look at the automobile industry. A year ago, cheap financing, a core driver of growth, was drying up, crippling suppliers and putting auto retailers across the country out of business.
Yet one notable exception, the auto retailer AutoNation, experienced profitability and positive cash flow in 2008 and 2009, and its stock price has appreciated nearly 400% since October. It's a firm with locations in some of the hardest hit regions in the U.S., in Florida and the Southwest. It's in one of the worst industries to be in right now. Staring into that abyss, what kind of performance do you think you would have achieved? How has AutoNation done it?
Backtrack three years to 2006. The conventional wisdom at the time held that Americans would go on and on buying 14 million to 16 million automobiles a year. The number might vary, but not by more than perhaps 10%. This assumption was based on the stable underpinnings of auto demand--cheap financing by car companies (and by home equity loans) and a customary replacement cycle of three years. Looking at the averages, you can easily see how executives might have made those now clearly erroneous assumptions.
Mike Jackson, the chairman and chief executive officer of AutoNation, took a different approach. He looked beyond the homogenized data and asked himself, What if buyers began to hold off and replace their cars after five years instead of three? What if the financing spigot--either for the automotive companies or for the individual consumer--got turned off? These things didn't seem to be very likely three years ago, but if they came to pass they could (as they did) have a devastating effect on the industry. The fact that Jackson asked these questions ultimately had profound impact on AutoNation's ability to survive in 2009.
Jackson had the wisdom to look at low-probability but high-consequence events that could rock his business. He avoided the trap of planning based on averaged data.
In business, as in life, real outcomes often don't follow the averages. Yet much of corporate strategy and finance is planned as if they always did. Far too many companies make strategic and financial planning a routine exercise. They take last year's budgets and results and assume some modest variation from the mean. Even when they do regular scenario planning they fail to delve deeply into their operations, or look at how multiple events might interrelate (for instance, increased energy costs and their impact on interest rates, which in turn would likely affect the cost of capital for one's customers and their businesses).
From an investor's perspective, the idea of planning for low-probability, high-consequence events is well treated in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Taleb's method is very similar to what CEOs need to be doing--understanding the key leverage points of their economic models. For instance, many executives don't take the time to understand what alters the financing of their customers' purchases, or what their investors' or lenders' ultimate incentives are. Just that kind of misjudgment left many companies stranded in the fall of 2008, when the commercial paper markets dried up. They found themselves in a scramble for liquidity; they had to slash investments, hold back their strategies and shift their attention from their customers to their balance sheets.
By relying on simple variations on the mean, companies effectively homogenize the data they get, and they miss crucial key information. When you average out your customers' demand, you lose sight of those customers' key decision thresholds. Which ones will buy from you tomorrow and why? What does that say about their changing needs? Similarly, when thinking about competition, you can't just model out where your competitors were last year in terms of pricing and service. You have to discern where you think they'll be in the future
What Jackson and AutoNation did was understand better than their competitors the root drivers of car demand: cheap financing and a short replacement cycle. Modeling out what could disturb the fragile financing infrastructure that supported automotive purchases, they discovered the possibility of a huge near-term disruption in their customers' ability to pay. And modeling out what could happen to their business if their customers began to hold on to cars longer, they discovered that they could reduce their inventory levels and increase their emphasis on service operations, just when customer demand began to lean that way. The results of those two perceptions--and AutoNation's discipline in acting on them--set the stage for the company's recent success.
These ideas may not sound revolutionary, but very few businesses show the discipline to create scenarios and measure probabilities for large but unexpected market changes.
Try it yourself. Start thinking about the four or five key assumptions you make in your forecasts. What will happen with your suppliers? Why? What will happen with your customers? With your competition? Why? Then apply a probability to each scenario, based on your impression of the likelihood of its occurring. Probabilities allow you to start to balance resource allocation to the most likely outcomes while not ignoring the possibility of others.
Lastly, look across those scenarios. What are their key themes and underlying drivers? When you do that you can model other scenarios and, just as important, set a focus on leading indicators that will help you prepare for different eventualities. I think you'll find that the result is a deeper understanding of your business, and greater agility. By better evaluating specific possible outcomes, their probabilities and their underlying drivers, you can greatly improve your company's ability to see around corners and prepare for the future.
How Midsize Companies Manage A Successful Transition to IFRS
Published January 27, 2010 @ 10:55 by Mike in IFRS, Industry News
On February 25, PROPHIX is sponsoring a CFO.com webcast entitled "How Midsize Companies Manage A Successful Transition to IFRS".
Speaking during this one hour webcast will be Cecil Nazareth, from IFRS Partner, and our very own Geoffrey Ng, VP of Product Management.
If you're looking for best practices around a successful transition to IFRS, Register Now!
Here's the summary from the landing page.
Is your company planning to make the transition from generally-accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to international financial reporting standards (IFRS)? If so, you will need at least two years to complete such an endeavor.
But for many midsize companies, two years may seem like too short a timeframe in which to ensure they have the knowledge and resources to manage the transition successfully.
Fortunately, there's help. This Webcast will provide you with a timeline and illustrations of best practices that enable midsize businesses to chart a straightforward course from GAAP to IFRS. If you are interested in learning how your company will likely benefit — especially from simplified reporting requirements — by implementing IFRS, then this is one Webcast you will not want to miss.
CFO's Best of 2009: Budgeting and Planning
Published January 6, 2010 @ 16:39 by Arwa in Industry News
We all know that putting together a budget was never at the top of anyone's "fun list". Last year's volatile economic climate made the process even more strenuous. In 2009 CFO.com looked at the challenges of budgeting and forecasting and provided some suggestions through several articles. They have compiled a list of best of budgeting and planning articles for 2009.
Click here to read these articles, and then find out how PROPHIX can expedite and simplify your budgeting process.Global CIO's Top 10 CIO Issues For 2010
Published January 5, 2010 @ 13:56 by Arwa in Industry News
Happy New Year. It's with great pleasure that we continue to blog about topics that are of interest to you. This week, we will turn our focus to a recent article from InformationWeek which highlights CIOs challenges and priorities for 2010, and how this year will require more emphases on customers, revenue, external information, and a desire for rapid change.
It should be no surprise that one of the top priorities listed pertains to the importance of Business Analytics and Predictive Analytics. Business Analytics are critical as they help companies make data-driven decisions with greater speed, accuracy and confidence.
Read the entire article, and then visit us to find out how PROPHIX can help you with your Business Analytics needs.Money is tighter, customers are more fickle, cycles are shorter, opportunities come and go more quickly - in 2010 and beyond, "speed kills" will be more accurate than ever. Your organization is probably awash in data - mountains of it, probably - but is there a corresponding volume of insightful information? And out of all that insight, are you able to gain advantage through foresight? Can you see around the corners and over the horizon? Or do you just arrive there and hope that what you've got matches what's needed in those unseen precincts? Business analytics and in particular predictive analytics will become enormously important in 2010, and CIOs who seize the initiative in turning insights into actionable foresights will have a huge advantage.
Achieve Agility Via A New Way to Forecast
Published November 26, 2009 @ 14:23 by Arwa in Industry News
In recent months, we witnessed a number of economic changes, and became more aware that managing an organization in the next decade will be different than during the past decade. The added level of uncertainty will make planning and performance assessment far more difficult.
Download BusinessWeek's research update , and then visit us to find out how PROPHIX can help you to implement rolling forecasts.Rolling forecasts ensure that planning is a continuous, dynamic exercise - not something that is outdated as soon as it is complete. Knowledge enables managers to react more quickly to changing economic and business conditions.
Traditional budget processes are renowned for requiring enormous amounts of time and effort. The results are stale by the time the plan is complete.
To achieve the benefits of rolling forecasts, you need to overcome several challenges. Organizations need to upgrade their budgeting and planning tools to fully enable trend analysis, scenario planning, financial modeling, data consolidation, global/local capabilities, and dissemination of results. These tools need to be flexible and intuitive so that processes such as re-forecasting do not intrude on productivity.
The Changing Role of the CFO
Published November 16, 2009 @ 11:41 by Arwa in IFRS, Industry News
If you haven't read BPM Partners' white paper, Bean Counter to Business Leader: The Changing Role of the CFO , you really should. The paper delivers great insights regarding the evolving role of the CFO in modern corporations, as well as gives key focus points for success in this role.
One of the key success factors relates to staying ahead of the curves. In essence this means understanding and planning for changes in the regulatory environment and the supporting technologies, such as IFRS, and XBRL.
A few weeks ago we talked about IFRS, and XBRL. Big changes are coming around the corner, and PROPHIX wants to be sure that you don't wait until the last minute to adopt a solution. The folks at BPM Partners clearly recommend a BPM system that will help you manage the changes and improve business processes.
Read more about the PROPHIX solution and how it can accommodate the change to IFRS and XBRL!Companies whose financial systems lack flexibility and are difficult to change clearly will have a major headache to face, such as those whose systems are based onspreadsheets, custom coding, or departmental systems. To be in the best position for the transition to IFRS, now might be the time to finally implement a true enterprise business performance management (BPM) system, putting the company on a unified platform for consolidation and reporting. An enterprise BPM system has the benefit that changes can be made one time in the central data structure and those changes then flow through all reports and input templates company-wide.
To stay ahead of the curve, it would be wise to find ways to automate the XBRL tagging BPM software vendors, naturally, are aware of the need for XBRL support, so solutions are available. A solution that automates XBRL can actually make reporting easier, since once information is tagged in the system, it then will be fed automatically into your reporting package.
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