Forrester is Back in the CPM Game & Providing Additional Validation of the Importance of CPM

The world of market analysts is evolving quickly to match the needs of an ever-more educated consumer. Our relationship with Forester, a technology analysis firm based in the United States, has seen a similar evolution. It has been a few years since Prophix last drew from Forrester for its perspectives on the CPM space. This is primarily because their key analyst covering our area retired, resulting in the Forrester Wave EPM (aka CPM) study being dropped. However, more recently Forrester has started to look at CPM again, possibly because they, like many other analysts, are seeing the financial planning space become increasingly relevant because of COVID-19. Modern CPM Solutions Drive Growth in the Post-COVID-19 Era One such example of Forrester’s re-entry into the CPM space is a new report titled, “Follow the Money: DOP Planning and Analytics Redefines Enterprise Performance Management” by analyst Liz Herbert. The focus of the paper is on how “a new generation of solutions harnesses AI, Modeling, and Visualization to drive growth in the post-COVID-19 era”. Here are some of the key points:

• AI And Cloud fuel Digital Operations Planning (DOP)- New entrants and revamped stalwart solutions are bringing a new level of AI to planning and analytics via the cloud. These solutions also deliver AI in a simpler, business-user-friendly way for more of a self-service approach.
• Adaptive planning is key to a future ‘Fit Business’- Business leaders need easy-to-use applications that let them model and analyze their most important business decisions based on real-time information across the enterprise.
• Leaders must navigate a crowded and complex market of choices- DOP vendors, supply chain and finance specialists, analytics tool vendors, and traditional CPM providers all offer choices for the new world of digital operations planning.
• Leaders need new planning tools- Emerging from the pandemic, Application Development & Delivery (AD&D) leaders face a mandate to balance cost cutting with revenue generation-related activities. However, they can’t achieve these important goals through guesswork — which is the reality many are dealing with when using outdated or manual tools.
• CPM solutions deliver cross-departmental planning benefits- Although some people mistakenly think of planning (or performance management) tools as geared primarily around financial management, there are multiple major benefits to using these tools across the DOP stack (i.e. cross-departmental planning). For example, they can be applied to planning for product and production, people and skills, supply chain and logistics, sales and marketing planning among other uses.

We will be watching Forrester closely in the coming months to see what other insights can be gained from their renewed interest in the CPM marketplace.