UNDERSTANDING THE BENEFITS OF PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Many online articles talk about “performance management”, but financial managers rarely seem to pay much attention to it. Everyone wants to be more efficient, but when all your time is devoted to performing accounting...

HOW A GPO SOLUTION CAN HELP WITH YOUR DAY-TO-DAY OPERATIONS

The goal of every Finance team is to get rid of jobs that bring little or no added value as this enables them to streamline their operations.
Specialized solutions can go a long way towards helping...

IS REPLACING YOUR ERP OR FINANCIAL SYSTEM A GOOD IDEA?

Organizations give many reasons for replacing their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or financial system: corporate expansion, lack of functionality, outdated UI, rigid scenario simulation, hard to use...

MAKING STRATEGIC DECISIONS WITH AN ANALYTICS TOOL

Every day, we’re faced with millions of decisions. We make most of them instinctively, while others require some thought. But, when those decisions involve multiple variables, we feel like we want...

BUDGET MONITORING – CRITICAL PRACTICES

Budget monitoring is a critically important process that enables managers to stay on top of their budget objectives. Do you share with your managers how much room they have left in their budget? Is your variance explanation process decentralized?

FIVE BEST PRACTICES FOR SHARING MANAGEMENT INFORMATION

With today's improvements to and democratization of business intelligence tools, organizations are confronted with a new reality that involves a certain number of not inconsiderable risks and challenges. The newly...

WHY YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO NOT KNOW YOUR COSTS

Whether it’s the public sector wanting to know program costs or the private sector seeking to optimize profitability, gaining a thorough understanding of your product and service costs is an essential organizational tool.

HOW GOOD IS YOUR BUDGETING PROCESS?

In a context where the finance function has to produce more with ever more tightly controlled resources, it makes sense to look for ways to optimize time-consuming, non-value added activities. When applied to budgeting, this means CPAs spend less time on transactional activities...

A CORPORATE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION — WHAT'S THAT?

Today’s Finance departments need to be more efficient, more analytical and more in control than ever. The current trend in finance – to adopt specific software solutions and hire financial data analysts in addition...

WHAT WILL THE IT OF THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE?

Regardless of the type of industry they work in, information technology (IT) managers all share one main concern: in a rapidly transforming environment that includes such challenges as cloud computing, cybersecurity and data analytics...

CONTROLLING MANAGEMENT INFORMATION PAYS!

Issues of transversality and of convergence, of aligning sales with operations, are major concerns for today’s corporations. This is true for all the sectors with which DECIMAL works, but especially for manufacturing sector. In this sector, financial managers play...

ADAPTATION AND TRANSVERSALITY

Of all the sectors we work with, the banks, insurance and investment companies, financial institutions and cooperative networks that make up the financial sector are feeling the greatest sense of panic. The robots and artificial intelligence...

CONVERTING DATA INTO MANAGEMENT INFORMATION

The municipal sector is noteworthy in that it involves many stakeholders – the mayor, the opposition, councillors, the media, citizens and MAMOT (Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Regions and Land Occupancy) – all of whom are demanding greater...

SETTLE FOR YOUR CURRENT FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Faced with tighter budgets and downsizing, public and private sectors must do more and better with less, even as they launch major IT development projects.
As a result, Finance teams are increasingly being asked to manage several strategic and / or IT initiatives...

WHEN PLANNING IS INTEGRATED WITH REPORTING

Today, every organization wants to acquire tools so they can analyze past events and better plan and predict the future. They all want to be able to quickly synthesize management information to identify and analyze trends – to distinguish the long-lasting from the...

WHY ARE SO MANY COMPANIES STILL SO DISJOINTED?

Everyone agrees that the various departments within a company or organization should communicate well and be fully integrated with each other. However, the fact remains that, even today, many of them are still working in silos.

DEMYSTIFYING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

It is no longer news that information technology (IT) costs are eating up an ever-increasing share of organizational budgets. And with good reason! Internal IT services are more vital and more complex than ever. Listen in on conversations...

10 THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN CHOOSING A CORPORATE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION

When you need to improve or optimize your management solutions – specifically, your budgeting, costing, or financial dashboard processes – there are several factors to keep in mind.

IMPROVE YOUR IT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

A good IT costing system is a valuable tool for effective budgeting and IT costs optimization.
Although funds allocated to IT often represent a significant portion of an organization’s expenses, calculating and explaining their cost remains problematic.

THE CAM-I PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK

LThe demand today for improved performance and accountability has led to an increase in expectations around the term performance management leading to a variety of limited views as to what the term involves. To help organizations understand and improve performance...

FINANCIAL DASHBOARDS: HAVE THEY FULFILLED THEIR PROMISE?

Now that new corporate performance management practices are being taught at business schools around the world, various types of financial and operational dashboards, using different methods...

TO WHAT EXTENT ARE YOU ATTACHED TO YOUR COSTING METHOD?

During a recent costing consultation for a company, I came to a number of realizations. Among them, the astounding number of Excel files involved, the need to review certain drivers but, above all, the misconceptions about...

DRIVER-BASED BUDGETING AND PLANNING (DBBP)

Are you constantly revising your budget forecasting? Are you having issues decoding your crystal ball? Did you think about adopting an approach where simple performance indicators could do the trick? Driver-based budgeting and planning (DBBP) can help you...

DOES YOUR DASHBOARD PROVIDE AN ACCURATE PICTURE OF THE SITUATION?

Several years ago, I was asked to give conferences on BI (Business intelligence). Because of my focus on costing and profitability analysis, I found the topic extremely interesting. The question that immediately came to mind was:...

COSTING SYSTEMS: FROM OUTDATED TO FUNCTIONAL AND RELIABLE

Is your costing system outdated? Does it adhere to best practices? What signs are there to indicate that your costing system is generating results that are approximate at best?
Read on for the attributes of a truly outdated costing...

MANAGING THE BUDGETING PROCESS IN ACCORDANCE WITH INDUSTRY BEST PRACTICES

If you are frustrated with your organization’s budgeting process then rest assured, you are not alone! For the past 20 years, studies and surveys have systematically revealed a widespread dissatisfaction with the process of establishing...

COST, PROFITABILITY ANALYSIS AND BUDGETING PROCESS. WHAT DO THEY HAVE IN COMMON?

Whether your organization is in the service, manufacturing or distribution sector, making a profit is never quite as easy as you might have hoped.
Many companies ask themselves the same questions:...

ACTIVITY-BASED MANAGEMENT (ABM) BEST PRACTICES

Recognizing the potential of activity-based management, many organizations began implementing ABM projects in the 90s. In fact, a 1992 survey by the Institute of Management Accountants found only 100 implementation projects under way at that time...

“IS EXCEL THE MOST DANGEROUS PIECE OF SOFTWARE IN THE WORLD?”

A shocking and thought-provoking question, given that it refers to such a widely-used software program.
The question was asked in February 2013 in the British weekly The New Statesman, in reference to the fact...

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MATURITY FRAMEWORK

Performance management is mentioned and discussed in almost all facets of business. The demand for improved performance, along with increased accountability, has led to an increase in hype and associated expectation around the management of performance.