White Papers

Making Strategy Real

by Don Tapscott and Paul Barter

In today’s competitive global business environment virtually all firms work diligently to analyze alternatives and to create a business strategy that enables competitive advantage. Once the strategy has been defined however, nine out of ten organizations fail to implement it effectively.

What is the answer? How can management communicate the strategy effectively
and assure that the entire organization has bought in to the strategy and is aligned
behind it?  Read the article Making Strategy Real.

How Best-in-Class Plan, Budget and Forecast in Today's Dynamic World

by Cindy Jutras

Prospecs for the global economy remain precarious. But highly effective financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting can successfully enable decision making even in periods of unprecendented change. Read more.

Enterprise Clarity and Efficiency Demonstrated by SAP running SAP

Showcasing the clear business value of SAP software - SAP runs SAP.  Like so many of its customers, SAP counts itself among the best-run businesses in the world.  This is why SAP runs SAP.

Software from SAP supports proven industry best practices, global information visibility, and the agility needed to quickly adapt and respond to market opportunities.  By running its own software, SAP has been able to reap the benefits of its own efforts - reducing costs, improving efficiencies, and increasing business performance for the organization as a whole. Read more.

A Complete View of the Enterprise

CFOs, as the gatekeepers of forecasting and planning, are under pressure as never before.

Traditionally finance leaders have typically provided one view of the enterprise to their executive team and investors - the financial view - through familiar key performance indicators such as revenues, costs, cash or working capital. Financial indicators, while crucial of course, often describe reality as it was, a historic snapshot.

Precise forecasting - explaining what is likely to happen and why - requires many different views from various departments or "lenses" within the business. Tracking non-financial operational indicators, from marketing, sales, HR or R&D, tells you what's coming around the corner. Increasingly it falls to the finance department to make the links between forward-looking data from core operations, and explain to stakeholders how this will impact the P&L, balance sheet and cash flow statement.

But why now? What is driving the finance department to become, in essence, a hub for the integration of financial and non-financial data in forecasting and planning?  

Read the article to understand the four main factors.

The Business Value of Business Intelligence

The Value of Better Decisions - How are Decisions Made in Your Organization?

In every organization, employees make hundreds of decisions each day. They can range from whether to give customer X a discount, whether to start producing part Y, whether to launch another direct mail campaign, whether to order additional materials, etc. These decisions are sometimes based on facts, but mostly based on experience, accumulated knowledge, and rule of thumb.

That poses a problem because experience, knowledge, and rule of thumb can take years to develop. Some employees never acquire them. Those who do may still fall prey to decision traps or biases in judgment. Improving the quality of business decisions has a direct impact on costs and revenue. For instance, giving a customer a discount may or may not help the bottom line, depending on the profitability of the client over the duration of the relationship.  Read more.