Whether you call it BPM, EPM or CPM one point that almost everyone can agree upon is that performance management solutions will be in steady demand during a period of market turmoil. After all, they provide the essential budgeting, planning, forecasting, analytical and reporting applications that businesses need to steer them through the tough times. Oracle, SAP and IBM have deep presence in this market place and are well positioned to offer solutions but recent months have also seen smaller, more nimble suppliers in the ascendency, which offer companies a real choice, in functionality and supplier. Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor, reports on the smaller players snapping at the heels of the big providers.
Names such as Adaytum, Frango, Armstrong Laing, Applix, Cartesis, OutlookSoft have all but disappeared from the performance management landscape – subsumed by the “big three” – Oracle, SAP and IBM which now dominate the enterprise space. Microsoft, it will be remembered, exited performance management a few months ago.
Oracle and SAP enjoy a distinct positioning courtesy of their massive ERP businesses which sit under their performance management offerings and while IBM does not have this ERP foundation it has formidable capability in infrastructure, such as databases, hardware and middleware which differentiates its positioning. Of course Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems last week muddies the water once again – a one-stop shop, which if it proceeds, allows it to break away from close competitors.
Although the Big three ostensibly offer comprehensive functionality, not all of the capability is seamlessly integrated, added to which some companies, especially those in the mid-market, can feel uncomfortable working with such large and occasionally impersonal suppliers. The ‘small is beautiful’ concept has been sorely missed in some quarters. But the performance management landscape is changing and there has been something of a quiet revolution going on, almost unnoticed in the background.
Relatively small software houses, headquartered all around the world, such as Clarity (Canada), Trintech (Ireland), Tagetik (Italy), Board (Switzerland) and Blackline (United States) have been making inroads into the corporate market with fresh ideas and innovative products.
Clarity, for example, has transformed itself from a small Canadian software house a few years back into a force to be reckoned with, especially in the area of financial statement production. Its FSR (Financial Statement Reporting) product has been on a tear since its launch last year as large corporates seek to streamline the so called “Last Mile” of Finance with efficient document production and electronic filings of statutory returns. But they are not the only supplier to successfully invade the large enterprise domain under the noses of the Big Three.
Tagetik another full range service provider of CPM applications is increasingly making its presence felt on the international stage with significant domain expertise and a niche positioning around complex financial consolidations as well as the ability to natively forecast cash flow as part of its budgeting, planning and forecasting capability. With its broad application offerings, unified database and Microsoft integration it is one of the rapidly growing software houses that has come to fill the void in the market that was created when the earlier generation of specialist vendors were snapped up in a period of industry consolidation a few years ago.
Trintech is another organisation making an impact with niche capability around the financial close process, bringing substantial experience of governance, risk and compliance into the frame as well. It acquired Movaris, giving it strong offerings around controls in the Last Mile of finance and its Unity suite blends, risk management, compliance, reconciliation and financial close into one overall offering.
Blackline occupies similar territory, specialising in solutions that optimise and automate the financial close and helping organisations to eliminate spreadsheet bound processes. By using rules-driven automation it helps companies cut costs and pave over the cracks in functionality that is often missing from ERP and accounting systems. For example, balance sheet account reconciliations help ensure that reconciliations during the close, even in remote locations, are completed accurately and on-time whilst task management functionality, using electronic sign off capability replace "binders full of checklists" normally required by most companies to track their close calendar process.
Board MIT is an organisation that up until now has hidden its ‘light under a bushel’ having preferred in the past to sell through partners rather than direct. It is another full service provider, covering the full gamut of business intelligence and performance management. It is innovative as well. For instance, the Launch of Board 7 last week leverages the powerful features of Windows Presentation Foundation to provide “interactive visualization”, a combination of drillable graphs, three-dimensional displays, animations, vector graphic, advanced visual containers and modern ribbon bar to enhance the user interaction and reduce learning effort. Board’s ‘toolkit’ approach lets users develop sophisticated self-service enquiries without specialist programming knowledge or training.
But make no mistake, whilst these vendors are not necessarily household names they have good credentials and the involvement of some significant industry figures behind the scenes. Bani Brandolini, President International at Tagetik is a veteran of the CPM market. As Managing Director of Hyperion (now part of Oracle), he was responsible for setting up and running international operations worldwide and more recently he was President International of OutlookSoft (now part of SAP).
Clarity on the other hand enjoys the patronage of its founders, Mark Nashman CTO and President and Frank Pizzolato, CEO. Both bring deep product, industry and process knowledge to bear – Nashman was formerly a management consultant specialising in Information Technology and Finance and Pizzolato previously consulted in decision support systems.
The close involvement in the business of individuals like these and teams of in-house consultants, rather than third part consulting partners, is an important leveler in a market place that places a premium on expertise, experience and business acumen rather than technology for its own sake.
Potential customers have a real choice at last – there needed to be a contrast to the Big Three. Now organisations can choose from a ‘best of breed’ approach or a comprehensive suite of applications but above all, whether they choose one of the Big Three or one of the alternatives, they have the freedom to choose a vendor that has empathy with their organisation, culture and values.
