FSN - Product Reviews

"Report Authority" – the document authoring and global XBRL compliance solution for the finance function

Report Authority – is a new document authoring and global XBRL tagging solution for the finance function being officially launched this month in London. Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor takes a look at the product which was developed by AMOSCA, an award winning Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) consultancy specialising in the provision of Oracle Hyperion solutions.

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Is ERP converging with Social Media?

The problem with ERP systems is that they are exceedingly boring. They may be functionally rich, vertically aligned and easily navigable but fundamentally they are dull. Don’t get me wrong – they do a great job – indeed they have steadily driven down the costs of transaction processing over the last two decades but are they attractive or enticing to use – not a bit! So what is going to get the Facebook generation using ERP systems, asks Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor.

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Presenting business information in PowerPoint – more smart than art

In the first part of this short series Simon Hurst, FSN writer, looked at creating and animating charts in presentations using PowerPoint 97 through to 2010. This time he concentrates on some of the new graphics features that were first introduced in Office 2007.

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Anaplan -"A new paradigm for analyzing, modeling, budgeting, planning, and reporting in the cloud"

The historic failings of the performance management industry are familiar territory to the founders of Anaplan, a new cloud based analytical platform and the subject of this latest FSN Product Review, by Gary Simon. Presented with the unique opportunity and resources to take a completely fresh approach to business analytics these veterans of the CPM sector decided to leverage their deep experience of formerly supplying one of the most successful budgeting, planning and forecasting products of its day to develop from scratch the next generation of performance management system.

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IBM Cognos Financial Statement Reporting (FSR)™ - "Satisfying the multi-stakeholder challenges of the Last Mile of Finance"

In recent years the growing demands of statutory and regulatory reporting has heaped pressure on an already stretched corporate finance function tasked with completing the so called, ‘Last Mile’ of finance, i.e. the process loosely defined as the stage between the final group consolidation and the presentation of the fully adjusted results and disclosures to internal and external stakeholders. In this product review, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor takes a look at the ‘core’ functionality and XBRL capabilities of IBM Cognos Financial Statement Reporting (FSR) – a solution specifically designed to address the multi-stakeholder environment of the Last Mile of finance.

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FinancialDriver to re-define mid-market budgeting, forecasting, planning and consolidation

The mid-market has always been a difficult ‘nut to crack’ when it comes to budgeting, planning, forecasting and consolidation applications – collectively known as corporate performance management systems (CPM). Multinationals and large public sector organisations are well served by sophisticated suites of software but these complex products sit uneasily with mid-sized businesses that are short on IT skills and cannot afford a solution costing hundreds of thousands of pounds. So is there an alternative? Up until quite recently the answer has been “No” but in this feature article, Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor, takes the first look at a newly launched CPM suite, “FinancialDriver” which runs in the Cloud and is aimed squarely at meeting the needs of the smaller business.

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Apparity launch ushers in next generation spreadsheet management

In recent years the spreadsheet management industry has flourished, fuelled by heightened awareness of financial risk and the ever burgeoning weight of regulatory compliance. Readers of FSN are aware of spreadsheet risks, yet business critical spreadsheets continue to permeate all business processes and industries. But not withstanding the risks we cross our fingers and continue our love affair with spreadsheets. So what can be done to contain the risks and identify errors before they become financially damaging or dent business reputation? Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor takes a brief look at Apparity a new generation of spreadsheet management tool aimed at spreadsheet-bound processes.

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Can Sage One Accounts fill the Microsoft Office Accounting gap?

Last week Sage re-entered the ‘on-demand’ accounting software market with the launch of its Sage One product aimed at the SME business and sole traders who probably aren’t using any software package at the moment. It’s a heavily contested market and FSN readers will remember the rise and subsequent fall of Microsoft Office Accounting Express (MOA) which Microsoft offered free to end users and then withdrew almost as quickly when it found it couldn’t make money!

But it’s left a gap in the market for an easy to use or entry level system – an idiot proof accounting package that accountants can point their non-accounting clients to, safe in the knowledge that they can process most business transactions reliably and without falling foul of HMRC. Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor takes a look at Sage One Accounts.

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FSN Product Review - PrecisionPoint Software, connecting business users to ERP - A new paradigm in the mid-market

Mid-market businesses have been poorly served by the traditional Business Intelligence industry. The solutions are expensive and complex to implement because they have no embedded understanding of ERP data structures and require considerable consulting support. PrecisionPoint is without parallel in the Business Intelligence space, says Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor. Its patent-pending integration engine technology and ‘understanding’ of native Microsoft Dynamics installations sweeps away the complexity of ERP data structures at a stroke re-connecting users with their underlying ERP system.

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Beyond budgeting

Lesley Meall, FSN contributing editor re-visits the traditional budget process and what has changed over the last couple of years in terms of approach and solutions.

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