The Ledger

The Roadmap to a Culture of Analytics

With more businesses leveraging predictive analytics, finance must move from explaining what happened, where it happened, and why it happened to what might happen in the future and how to make it happen. However, many people can describe the end goal of something without necessarily paving the road ahead to get there. To have a strong analytics force in any organization, you must first have a strong analytics culture. There are four different elements of a company culture that must change in order for it to thrive in a culture conducive to strong analytics.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Achieving a Well-Rounded Approach to Digital Business Planning

Digital business planning should be seen as a comprehensive approach to supply chain planning that uses trusted data, process integration, automation, and collaboration to meet the demands of complexity in the digital economy. FP&A professionals should also consider the idea of integrating demand planning and demand sensing into the larger planning process in order to deliver what customers want most. While demand planning involves traditional time-series methods that are based on historical trends and seasonal patterns, demand sensing brings live or recent data into the mix. Together, these processes span the entire planning spectrum – from more strategic planning such as sales and operations planning to operational demand planning.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Establishing Your Smart Manufacturing Strategy to Drive Profitability

“A critical issue for the business is profitability and, in serving that primary goal, to continuously improve or even transform operations so you can remain profitable over the long run. To ensure your smart manufacturing strategy drives profitability, focus on how it helps leverage data to keep costs down and productivity up. Think also about how to leverage data to build a more agile and flexible business so you can more quickly respond to market conditions. Finally, automate manufacturing systems with an eye toward making data available, so you can more effectively address problem areas, whether it be speed, quality, waste or material losses.”

Read More at Forbes Magazine >

Have You Realized the Full Value of Your FP&A Software?

“The process of implementing FP&A software is as critical as the quality of the solution, according to new research.

CFOs know the importance of financial planning and analysis solutions that allow their finance teams to develop budgets and forecasts quickly and accurately. Unfortunately, selecting the right FP&A software is only half the battle. Equally important is how that technology is implemented across the enterprise, from training users and setting their expectations to ensuring that they receive continued support after the software goes live. Absent a successful implementation, a company will never realize the full value from its investment.

Read More at CFO Magazine >