Tag Archive for: Enterprise Planning

Defining An Analytics Strategy

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LEXINGTON, Mass., Dec. 12, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Ironside, a Boston-based data and analytics firm, just released an authoritative list of questions that they recommend business leaders try to answer now in planning for their analytics initiatives.

Today, it’s safe to say that the majority of businesses understand the value of analytics. They get that their data is important and that using it in the right way can have significant benefits. The problem, though, is that even though the business community as a whole acknowledges these facts, there’s still a lot of magical thinking around analytics tools and platforms out there. Read more

Ironside Webinar Series: Rolling Forecast Essentials

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On April 26th, Ironside hosted a webinar on Rolling Forecast Essentials. Members of our Financial Performance Management team, Mark Flyamer, Senior Consultant and Rich Canale, Solution Architect, discussed the foundation needed to start implementing rolling forecasts work at your organization.

Rich and Mark discussed design techniques to help you expedite rolling forecast models and minimize the hours needed to get a working solution all while preserving the accuracy and integrity of your financial data.

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Rolling Forecast Automation: Financial Analytics Maximized

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Financial analytics and performance monitoring are vital components in an organization’s success. The ability to review and quickly react to industry and market changes is a critical competitive advantage that requires agile analytics to get right. The rolling forecast is a continuous planning process that provides your organization with just such an analytical vehicle.  Extending beyond the traditional fiscal year review, it combines actual data with forecast results across a rolling number of periods to provide a consistent analytic horizon.  An organization’s rolling forecast process must support variance analyses of performance versus targets using the most current information. This is necessary if they want to recognize and reflect actionable changes that will keep them on or get them back on course. Read more

Sales Data Strategy: Your One Source of Truth

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I belong to many Sales Operations and Sales Compensation social media groups. Recently, I read a post regarding what defines Sales Performance Management (SPM) that was very tool-based.  It prompted me to think about all the systems and data utilized and captured in a mature sales data strategy and to ask myself the following question:  What is the heart of SPM? Read more

The New Face of TM1: Performance Modeler

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On February 7, 2012, IBM Cognos released the newest version of TM1: TM1 10.1. TM1 has been around for a very long time but has really only recently come to be recognized as the premier planning tool for any size business.

Its only criticism was that unlike its sibling Enterprise Planning (EP)  it was not an “out of the box” solution that the finance department could run independent of its own IT department.  In fact, it gave rise to a somewhat symbiotic relationship between IT and Finance because of the scripting involved in applying rules to a cube and importing data through a Turbo Integrator or manually coded process. That said, I believe all this has changed with this release (10.1) of TM1. Read more