Is it really any great surprise that business executives, senior managers and all levels of decision makers want information at their fingertips? The desire is nothing new. What’s new is the ability of technology solutions to support the delivery of such information — on-premise, on-device, on-demand. Truly information delivered wherever, whenever!
In the past, access to business information was sometimes limited by the available technology – systems that needed to deal with massive amounts of data, in varying forms, from a variety of sources. There’s been a balancing act between the need for accuracy and the need for speed. A colleague of mine often says “poor data in, poor decisions out”, and in many ways there’s a great amount of truth in those few words. I’m sure we’d all prefer to wait for accurate information before making our decisions, however sometimes the reality is that business activity just won’t wait.
But things are now getting interesting in the financial performance management space. Can we at last be approaching a time when immediacy of information — the ability to make informed real-time decisions, wherever and whenever we choose — is just around the corner?
Steve Player is publishing a series of blogs on the Big Fat Finance blog that focus on how technology innovations are changing the way that Finance teams can adopt best practices in their business planning, forecasting and reporting processes.
In his first blog on 5th September, Finance’s New Tools for Helping Your Organization Overcome Uncertainty, Steve raised the subjects of in-memory, mobility solutions and Cloud as technology drivers of a step-change in the way Finance departments will manage information and address business needs. In his second blog on 11th September, Finance Leverages the Cloud for Faster Results, Steve considered the subject of on-demand solutions for finance, which he says may require organizations to take a break from their current routines, if they are to take advantage of such new technology.
Steve’s comments are quite timely and I’ll continue to share these blog posts with you over the next few weeks as they are published.
Having watched the way that SAP is innovating over in the areas of in-memory computing and mobility solutions, with solutions like SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, powered by SAP HANA (#BPCHANA), and just last week launching SAP EPM OnDemand #EPMOD, we now appear to be at a technology juncture in enabling Finance to move to the next level and begin a transformation in the way they access and utilize information for real-time performance management decisions, wherever and whenever they choose.
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