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Teradata Reports First Quarter 2020 Financial Results

May 21, 2020 BI News and Info

Financial Analytics Shed Light On The Long Shadow Of Disruption For Midsize Businesses

April 26, 2020 BI News and Info

Part of the “Navigating Disruption Today, Planning for Tomorrow” series

Knowing that “business as usual” will never happen again, midsize companies are pulling together all their resources to figuratively keep their doors open in a world where they literally can’t. But this is not the time for finance leaders to merely collect, validate, and report information while providing day-to-day budget guidance, closing the books, and ensuring policy compliance.

It’s time for finance leaders to up the ante by using analytics to help the business survive today’s long shadow of disruption and find a way toward a future recovery.

According to interim results in March 2020 from Oxford Economics and SAP research, 53% of midsize companies have all the data they need to support capital spending improvements. However, deriving insight from this data is considered a more significant challenge than collecting it.

A path forward guided by numbers and empathy

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a mix of growth and decline for midsize businesses. Regardless of which side of the economic landscape a company falls on, there are always risks to consider.

It’s vitally important to map new routes to avoid those pitfalls and explore the possibilities ahead. The business may be facing no revenue in the short term as expenses keep adding up. Loan forgiveness may be on the horizon. Furloughing staff may be a necessary option. Perhaps, the better choice is an extended line of credit.

There are so many choices, and each one needs to be evaluated carefully to ensure the best-possible fiscal gain without harming shareholders and the employees on which the company depends. Fortunately, finance teams are mathematically inclined, making them the perfect partners for adding value to these discussions. But charting a path through a world that’s always changing requires more than static spreadsheets full of outdated data.

Intelligent data analytics tools – such as predictive analytics, machine learning algorithms, or scenario modeling – enable finance employees to bring information together instantly across all areas of the business. But at the same time, finance employees have the freedom to assess this intelligence with a mix of pragmatism and empathy that is sorely needed today.

Modern predictive analytics allows finance leaders and their teams to simulate various business outcomes when planning and assessing financials. This tool is especially helpful when no single course of action is apparent at the time and many scenarios need to be considered. It can help plot a journey based on a baseline. Then, finance teams can further explore potential outcomes with modern analytics – such as data visualization – to generate meaningful discussions among organizational and business stakeholders.

This balance of real-time data intelligence and humanity allows organizational leaders to quickly come to a consensus on the best course of action at that point in time. And when things change, they know the business can pivot on the fly and get moving in the right direction.

A dynamic world calls for dynamic insight

Now is not the time to make decisions through emails, team meetings, or telephone calls. Traditional planning might have meant working around traditional deadlines, but those traditions don’t apply in such a fluid and turbulent state. Decisions need to be made instantly and in the moment – and this new normal involves everyone collaborating in the moment to make the right decisions.

Such an ever-changing world requires dynamic analytics solutions to keep up. However, this reality does not necessarily mean that midsize businesses should make a substantial investment in technology and devote the time that is already scarce for a significant implementation.

Right now, intelligent analytics tools are available in the cloud and designed to instantly model the business and support collaboration in the application, as well as on mobile devices. Midsize businesses can quickly upload the solutions they need in a matter of hours and give the right employees access to them, whether they are working in the office or from a remote location. Better yet, they can add new capabilities as needs change and act immediately.

For finance organizations, such a technology-enabled transformation can become an empowering development. This moment is when they can finally move beyond order-taking and report generation to drive real value for the business. Now, finance leaders can leverage a skill set that informs decisions with real-time scenario modeling and brings people together to ensure alignment and consensus – all as a critical partner for all business areas.

For further exploration of how financial managers can navigate disruption today while planning for tomorrow, we invite you to join our webinar on Wednesday, April 29 or Wednesday, May 6, “Weather Financial Uncertainty with Strength and Resilience.”

This blog is part of a series offering suggestions to help small and midsize companies weather the challenges related to the pandemic. You can find other blogs in the series at the archive page, Navigating Disruption Today, Planning for Tomorrow.

This article originally appeared on Forbes SAP BrandVoice.

Follow SAP Finance online: @SAPFinance (Twitter) | LinkedIn | Facebook | YouTube

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Digitalist Magazine

3 Marketing Tactics That Will Help Your Financial Advisory Firm Attract Customers

April 16, 2020 CRM News and Info

The technology explosion of the last decade has forever changed the way that investors grow their wealth. Subsequently, financial advisors are doing their best to adopt new approaches to attracting and securing new clients — while also improving the digital experience for their existing customers to ensure retention and continued growth.

Whereas financial advisors used to be able to hang their hat on their local reputation and word-of-mouth referrals, modern investors are eager for more immersive digital customer journeys, which means that financial advisors need to be able to meet them on their path to financial growth through holistic marketing initiatives.

And as the financial industry becomes more and more saturated with younger and younger investors, financial advisors must be able to capture their attention and make a compelling case for their firm’s skill and value.

That said, developing and executing a robust digital marketing strategy aimed at financial investors is rife with challenges, especially if it hasn’t been a priority in the past.

Among other things, it requires:

Updating your website and optimizing for search engines
Building great content in the form of blogs, infographics, eBooks, and videos
Delivering engaging demand generation campaigns
Optimizing your sales funnel at every stage
Improving brand awareness and customer loyalty
Tracking, measuring, and improving the full suite of initiatives

That’s a lot, right?

Luckily, you’re not alone.

In fact, most of your competitors are well behind the when it comes to adopting a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that drives growth. So, focusing on the most effective and efficient tactics can help you quickly and significantly distance yourself from the competition, grow your brand, and exceed your business goals.

Today, we’re going to equip you with three easy-to-implement marketing tactics that will help you do just that.

1. Adopt a Multi-Channel Approach

As we mentioned above, neighborly referrals aren’t enough to grow your financial advisory in the modern digital age. Today’s investors are accustomed to performing their own research and evaluating numerous options before choosing a skilled and experienced firm or professional to grow their wealth.

However, what modern investments own in terms of digital savvy and independence, they severely lack in financial literacy. As such, you should be focusing on the following channels to grab their attention and educate them about their options.

Social Media Marketing Platforms: Whether your target audience’s social media platform of choice is LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, they’re likely spending a lot of time browsing and interacting on social. Use this to your advantage by distributing content and messaging that helps you build trust and brand awareness with your audience through this channel. You can also curate content from thought leaders in your space to avoid feeling overly promotional or sales-driven.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising Using Dedicated Landing Pages With Adaptive Forms: Creating search, display, and remarketing pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns is a great way to attract your audience. And by sending this traffic to dedicated landing pages with adaptive forms, you can educate your audience about their investment options while collecting valuable contact information in exchange for informative and engaging content assets. Growing your marketing lists in this way will grow your sales funnel and nurture hot prospects into loyal clients.

Interactive Digital Events and Webinars: Online events, especially webinars, are an awesome way to identify new prospects and speak to them directly about their primary goals and challenges. A lot of investors would rather watch a webinar than read an eBook, so getting in front of them online can be more personal and more effective. Plus, it gives you the chance to speak to them directly during a live Q&A session after you delivered your presentation.

Event-Based Emails: Event-based emails are automatically triggered whenever a known contact completes a significant action – such as visiting a webpage, filling out a form, or purchasing a product or service. These automated messages allow you to immediately follow up with great prospects as you guide them through the customer journey and beyond. They provide an added layer of personalization and keep your brand top of mind at crucial moments.

We know this sounds like a lot, but marketing automation can streamline and simplify this process while producing far greater outcomes. That way, you can ensure you’re targeting the right audience with relevant messaging wherever they are without having to exhaust your time and resources.

2. Nurture Your Customers With Targeted Email Campaigns

Batch-and-blast email marketing is simple. It’s also ineffective because it’s a dated one-size-fits-none approach.

When you send messages that don’t align with your potential investors’ needs and interests, they’ll either unsubscribe or send your emails to the SPAM folder. Not only does this hurt your marketing efforts, but it also rapidly decreases your email reputation and delivery, which can be a death sentence for digital marketing initiatives.

To get more out of email, you need to segment your audience based on their financial status, investment interests, demographics, and how they’re interacting with your brand. Once they’re properly grouped, enter them into targeted email nurture campaigns and continue to update your segments, content, and messaging for consistent improvement. This allows you to send more targeted messages to your prospective and current clients. As a result, your engagement metrics and return on investment will skyrocket.

Marketing automation allows you to automate all of your lead nurturing efforts — from basic A/B testing to advanced segmentation with conditional logic and dynamic content. One thing to remember, though, is that these programs are never “finished.” Be sure to check in on your performance at regular intervals and innovate and iterate accordingly.

3. Develop and Distribute Relevant Content

Your investors want to feel confident in their decision to pick you to manage their assets. It’s up to you to build that trust and credibility by guiding investors through compelling buyer journeys that provide them with relevant information and resources. The right content can help you answer pressing questions, position yourself and your firm as real thought leaders in your space, and build your reputation as an effective wealth manager.

If content development and marketing hasn’t been your focus in the past, don’t stress. You can’t build a full content library overnight, so focus on quality over quantity. Even one good asset for each funnel stage will put you in great shape for all of your inbound, outbound, and demand generation strategies. Be sure to gate the content and nurture the incoming leads while you work on building out additional assets.

Before even starting, though, you should map your various customer journeys to determine the information you need to provide to keep investors engaged. This will help you focus your time and resources on projects that will make the biggest impact and allow you to provide unique and useful content.

Once you’ve developed some solid content, you can use marketing automation software to distribute all of these great assets using a multi-channel strategy from one centralized location. Act-On even has an entire media library that allows you to store and share your content with just a few clicks!

Streamline the Sales Cycle With Powerful Marketing Automation

At Act-On, we know our stuff, and we know your business. We work with dozens of financial advisory firms to help them revitalize their marketing and grow their assets under management by aligning their unique strategies with our powerful marketing automation platform.

If you’d like to learn more about how your financial advisory firm can overcome common industry challenges, please download our eBook, “The 4 Main Challenges Facing Wealth Managers and How to Overcome Them With Marketing Automation.” This valuable resource walks you through a series of coordinated strategies you can implement to develop a holistic digital marketing strategy that helps you attract and retain loyal and lucrative investors.

And if you’re ready to see how Act-On makes it easy to align your strategy with the best marketing automation software on the market to deliver amazing customer journeys, please schedule a demo with one of our marketing automation experts. They’re eager and excited to show you how you can leverage our powerful platform to implement the tactics outlined in this blog — and many more!

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Act-On Blog

Resources for Retailers: Financial Relief, Inventory Advice and Conserving Cash

April 10, 2020 NetSuite

Posted by Ian McCue, Content Manager

Few sectors have been hit harder by the coronavirus outbreak than non-essential retail categories like apparel, footwear, health and beauty, and home goods. These retailers have had to close their brick-and-mortar stores in most states, putting them in an extremely difficult financial situation. Indeed, retailers everywhere are dealing with the new reality.

Ecommerce presents an opportunity to make up for some of that lost revenue, but it still accounts for just 16% of all retail sales. While grocery retailers have seen a huge spike in online sales, year-over-year ecommerce sales are down in most categories. Fulfilling ecommerce orders has its own challenges in the time of social distancing, and many companies have had to temporarily close warehouses after employees tested positive for the coronavirus. A few retailers, including Patagonia and TJX Companies (the owner of TJ Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods), have shut down ecommerce entirely in an effort to protect employees.

The average small retailer only has enough cash on-hand to last 19 days if no revenue came in, according to a 2016 study by JPMorgan Chase. Stores in some states have already been closed for that long.

Conserving Cash

As retailers rapidly cut costs to conserve cash on hand as much as possible, many have furloughed or laid off employees. But there are other steps retailers can take to reduce expenses and generate revenue right now.

Reallocate existing inventory

Retailers with physical locations have millions of dollars’ worth of inventory sitting on their store floors and in backrooms. This is no longer a short-term problem, as it could be a month or more before most stores can open their doors. They should consider moving that inventory to centralized distribution centers that fulfill online orders.

Sellers could also consider fulfilling orders from stores, though there would need to be enough orders for products they stock to justify the cost of labor.

Ask partners for help

Suppliers, utility providers and even landlords may be flexible during these challenging times. In the restaurant space, large food suppliers have reduced prices to help their customers, and retailers should ask vendors whether they can get any temporary breaks or set up payment plans for existing bills. If nothing else, retailers could cancel orders from suppliers or temporarily suspend production.

Many retailers have informed landlords they will not pay April rent, and some landlords may be willing to negotiate. Help could come in the form of rent relief, temporary discounts or rent deferrals (i.e., discounts that are paid back later). This crisis requires a team effort.

Drive new and existing customers online

Ecommerce is the most obvious way for retailers to keep money coming in right now, and they should pour whatever resources they can into this channel. Consumers have shifted their purchases online. Any improvements to the online customer experience will have an extended return on investment. The best ecommerce sites give customers the option for curbside pickup or local delivery, which has become popular during social distancing. Customers can order and pay online, which enables contactless transactions and may convince more shoppers to convert.

Social media and email marketing are critical in boosting online visits and orders. First, retailers can use these marketing channels to let shoppers know they’re still open for business online. Second, they can highlight sales or other promotions that provide a more immediate call to action. If any products seem to sell well right now – leisurewear, for example, as more people work from home – this is also an ideal place to feature those items. However, marketing is tricky right now and businesses need to be careful what they say in email marketing messages.

Loan Programs

There are currently few retail-specific loans at the local and state level and no funding available through trade associations like the National Retail Federation (NRF) or Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA). Relief funds that have appeared in the restaurant industry, for example, do not seem as common in retail – not yet, at least. For now, they can take advantage of two federal programs may free up money for sellers to invest in the initiatives mentioned above:

The CARES Act Paycheck Protection Program

The CARES Act includes $ 350 billion in relief for businesses with less than 500 employees under the Paycheck Protection Program. Small retailers can get a loan worth up to 250% of their monthly payroll costs. The federal government will forgive the loan if a business uses it to cover payroll, rent or other basic expenses and meets certain requirements.

In addition, The CARES Act offers extended unemployment benefits and an additional $ 600 per week on top of the state’s usual payment. That’s important to the many retail employees who have lost their jobs.

SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loans

The Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Economic Injury Disaster Loans are another good option for retailers and can be received in conjunction with the Paycheck Protection Program loan. Companies with less than 500 employees can get up to a $ 2 million loan to pay “fixed debts, payroll, accounts and other costs.” Retailers can also request a $ 10,000 advance during the application process from the SBA.

Planning for the future

When state and local governments reduce social distancing restrictions and stores can reopen, retailers will reenter a much different landscape than the one they left behind. Experts think the economic effects of this pandemic could deliver a fatal blow to a few large, national retailers that were already in dire financial straits. The effects of that alone would be far-reaching, as a number of wholesalers rely on the business of select large chains.

Consumer spending habits will change, as well, and retailers that sell non-essential goods may be hit the hardest. So how should retailers start planning for this new environment?

Manage inventory and purchasing carefully

Retailers should be wary not to over-purchase and target lower inventory levels. It’s dangerous to assume the apparel and footwear or consumer electronics market, for example, will immediately return to its status in January. Retailers should be conservative to start and adjust production and inventory based on demand.

Businesses need to account for the fact that they already have excess inventory due to store closures and the recent decline in spending. Some of that aging inventory is seasonal items, and selling those products will probably require deep discounts. Given their recent financial challenges, retailers cannot afford to have any more money than necessary tied up in inventory.

Explore liquidation options

Even hefty discounts will not move all of these leftover items, which means apparel and accessories retailers will sell more excess inventory than usual to off-price retailers. Although TJ Maxx, Ross and similar stores pay pennies on the dollar, it could help recover some losses on out-of-season merchandise. However, off-price retailers may become inundated with inventory because so many retailers have excess merchandise, driving down the value of those items even further. Discount stores may be purchasing some inventory now, but they must be careful, too, since they’re non-essential businesses and currently closed.

Map out multiple scenarios

Retailers should explore the financial impact of different moves they might make after reopening to see how it might impact cash reserves. For example, what would funds look like if the company resumed some cancelled or delayed orders from a supplier? What would it cost to invest more in ecommerce or target new strategic markets? If demand returns quickly, what is the workforce situation? A planning and budgeting solution makes it easier to calculate the financial impact of these what-ifs.

Prepare for a ‘new normal’

The coronavirus has changed consumer concerns and expectations for the near future, and retailers must be conscious of that when they reopen. The government may suggest employees and/or shoppers should wear masks and gloves in stores and wash or sanitize their hands frequently. Retailers must be prepared to adjust to this new environment by being ready to supply employees – and customers – with hand sanitizer, face masks and possibly disposable gloves where it makes sense.

Just as important, companies must communicate the changes they’re making to address consumers’ worries. Social media, emails and even ads are all effective ways for retailers to let consumers know the steps they’re taking to keep everyone healthy.

Evaluate sales channels and refocus

The shift to more online shopping may force retailers to invest not only in their ecommerce sites to ensure an easy shopping and checkout experience, but establish defined, scalable processes on the back-end to fulfill and quickly ship more online orders. Retailers with brick-and-mortar stores need to support curbside pickup and delivery since many have recently tried it for the first time and enjoy the convenience.

Finally, retailers should evaluate their stores and figure out if it makes sense to reopen all of them. The combination of growing online sales and persistent cashflow issues may mean it’s best to leave some closed, especially for brands that have many stores.

The retail landscape will undoubtedly look different post-coronavirus. Just how different it looks will depend on how long social distancing lasts and the scale of the pandemic’s total economic impact.

If legacy retailers struggle to recover and a few disappear, that opens the door for more small, nimble retailers to capture market share. Many of these are direct-to-consumer businesses that have already shown much promise and had success over the last few years. An industry that’s been a beacon of change for the past 10-15 years seems to have encountered yet another industry-shifting moment.

Learn about unifying financials and inventory.

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The NetSuite Blog

Choose the Right Marketing Stack to Grow Your Financial Advisory Firm

April 2, 2020 CRM News and Info

Despite the fact that 65% of all investor interactions occur online, only 44% of investors say that their financial advisors do a good job of sharing best practices related to their investment goals. This gap in providing expert messaging and content to an eager audience is just one example of why financial advisors need to improve their marketing, deliver better customer experiences, and focus on delivering relevant educational messaging and content to prospective and existing investors.

The good news is that roughly 80% of firms are expected to increase their online marketing budgets moving forward, so clearly most financial advisories recognize the need to step up their game. Now, the challenge for many of these wealth managers becomes determining how and where to spend those marketing dollars to expand their assets under management and grow their respective firms.

MarTech Hero Choose the Right Marketing Stack to Grow Your Financial Advisory Firm

The reality is that it’s nearly impossible to plan, develop, distribute, track, and optimize a holistic series of marketing campaigns across all pertinent channels manually. Even those financial marketers who are able to miraculously launch their campaigns without a coordinated technological approach are almost certainly delivering mismatched and uninspired programs — and also failing to collect accurate and actionable data to understand their audience and deliver what they truly need to advance along their investment journey.

Simply put, disjointed tactics executed manually are guaranteed to deliver customer experiences that are confusing at best — which means less clients, less assets under management, and less revenue for your firm.

So if you’re part of the 80% mentioned above, you should be thinking about how you can build a marketing technology (MarTech) stack that empowers your financial advisory firm to scale your marketing efforts and capitalize on the most lucrative areas for growth.

What Is a Marketing Technology Stack?

A marketing technology stack is the collection of all the different marketing-related software that an organization uses to plan, develop, execute, track, and optimize their marketing efforts. Due to the wide array of marketing technology solutions available, MarTech stacks vary significantly among different industries and even from company to company within those industries.

In fact, the playing field is so diverse that Scott Brinker of Chief Martec has been creating a digital representation of all of the MarTech vendors every year since 2011 to try to make sense of it all.

Here’s what the “Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic” looked like in 2011…

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Act-On Blog

Live Webinar: How Financial Services Firms are Using the Microsoft Power Platform to Accelerate CRM by “Minding the Gap”…Even Around Salesforce!

March 20, 2020 CRM News and Info

Have you been to London? Then it’s likely you’ve ridden the Tube (subway) and heard an announcement politely saying as you enter or exit: “Mind the gap.” This deceptively benign statement was put there to warn you to watch out for the space between the platform and the train because if you don’t “mind the gap,” you can trip or fall. That could mean going to the hospital or at the very least, having a bad day. Either way, you slow down or even end your journey to your destination—and you’ll probably slow down the train, as well.

What is the connection between minding the gap and financial services?

“Mind the gap” has been adopted by business experts as an analogy. In an Inc. article, entrepreneur Josh Linker said, “While the gaps in your organization aren’t screaming for attention, they can be a wellspring of opportunity…the rallying cry for you to explore what’s missing, what’s not there, and what could be.” The act of minding gaps in your operations could mean failing to realize your vision (or at least slowing it down) or reaching it faster.

How do you realize your vision…and realize it quickly? Use the Microsoft Power Platform to mind the gap

Nobody wants to delay realizing their goals or vision, and they certainly want to avoid missing goals and missteps along the way. You do that by identifying the gaps—processes, technologies, methodologies—then look for ways to address them with the right technology. The issue is, unfortunately, that traditional approaches of customizing off-the-shelf software that is already in place or spending lots of time and money building a custom application doesn’t work or is cost-prohibitive. That’s when it’s time to turn to the Microsoft Power Platform.

The Microsoft Power Platform: A low-code, rapid application development environment that bridges the gaps

Smart financial services firms are already using the Microsoft Power Platform to quickly and easily build apps, automate workflows, and extend solutions they already use—not just Microsoft applications. Even software like Salesforce, Oracle, and SAP can be extended by the Power Platform to bridge any gap.

This might sound too good to be true, but it works—fast and cost-effectively. Plus, you don’t have to uproot, change, or replace applications or systems you’re already using. If you’re happy with what you have but just have that one gap to fill, the Power Platform does it with finesse. Here are a just a few examples of AKA financial services clients that have put the Power Platform into action and are already seeing results:

Automated Client Reporting…From Salesforce: The asset management arm of a life insurance company was risking penalties and losing huge investors, but they didn’t want to replace Salesforce. AKA built a Power Platform solution “surrounding” Salesforce that streamlined the process, resulting in empowered, happy employees who can put their focus on delivering white-glove customer service.

Client Engagement Hub with Next Best Action…Within Dynamics 365 CRM: A global asset management firm had a goal to double sales growth, but their current system had a poor user interface, did not offer personas, and did not offer insights for next best actions. AKA designed in the Power Platform and rolled out in just 3 months a Client Engagement Hub with Next Best Action—fully integrated with Dynamics 365 CRM and Marketo.

Mobile Trade Approval App…Integrated with Salesforce: Portfolio managers for an investment firm were slammed with emails for trade approvals. They needed an easy, fault-proof way to approve/disapprove trades from mobile devices. In a one-day workshop, AKA designed a Power App that integrates with Salesforce, enabling the managers to approve trades with the click of a button on their mobile devices.

Build an app to bridge that gap

Would you like to see for yourself how the Power Platform works? Sign up for our webinar, hosted by AKA financial services experts Tom Berger and Michael Quattlebaum, where you’ll see how other financial services firms have used the Power Platform to accelerate their CRM systems by eliminating gaps:

LIVE Webcast
Bridging Gaps and Building Apps – IN DAYS, NOT MONTHS
How 5 Financial Services Firms are Using the Microsoft Power Platform to Accelerate their CRM–Including Salesforce

April 7, 2020 | 1 pm EDT / 10 am PDT

During the webcast you’ll learn about the Power Platform and what makes it the best choice above custom development or customizing existing software. We’ll discuss several typical gaps the Power Platform bridges, followed by 5 real-life examples of how the Power Platform is being used at by financial services companies.

ABOUT AKA ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS
AKA specializes in making it easier to do business, simplifying processes and reducing risks. With agility, expertise, and original industry solutions, we embrace projects other technology firms avoid—regardless of their complexity. As a true strategic partner, we help organizations slay the dragons that are keeping them from innovating their way to greatness. Call us at 212-502-3900!

Article by: Amy Spencer | 212-502-3900

Amy leads the team that is responsible for go-to-market strategies, messaging, and demand generation for AKA’s financial services practice. The better part of her 25+ year career has been dedicated to working for Microsoft’s most successful ERP and CRM partners, including The Taylor Group (aka ManagedOps.com & Surebridge), Navint (acquired by Tribridge and then DXC), Innovia Consulting, and now AKA Enterprise Solutions.

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CRM Software Blog | Dynamics 365

Teradata Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2019 Financial Results

February 10, 2020 BI News and Info

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Alternative Financial Asset Company Meets SLAs with TIBCO

November 26, 2019 TIBCO Spotfire

For over 75 years, this alternative financial asset company has offered a depth and breadth of expertise across a variety of financial services, such as hedge funds, alternative asset administration, private equity, real estate, and more. This company needed to increase productivity levels to improve quality and serve its customers better. In order to do that, it needed real-time transparency into business process deliverables across its global workforce to ensure that it was meeting service-level agreements.

The company turned to TIBCO’s integration platform and BPM workflow management to implement intelligent task assignments. The system identifies the business tasks due to assigning them to eligible users around the world based on skillset. As a result, the company saw 12 percent of its workforce capacity freed of offshore back-office tasks, and real-time workflow visibility across 1,200 employees.

The alternative financial asset company experienced a number of benefits from the adoption of TIBCO’s integration and BPM software, including:

Ability to scale with no additional cost by looking at its business processes with full end-to-end and cross-functional transparency, allowing for better process improvement and innovation
Competitive advantage, allowing the company to tell customers their financial and case position faster than any other company
Digital transformation by using the cloud to support the company’s agile transition to greater speed and adaptability, allowing it to develop and deploy work faster

To learn more about how this customer is using TIBCO to deliver more offerings faster thanks to integration, check out the full success story.

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The TIBCO Blog

Teradata Reports Third Quarter 2019 Financial Results

November 20, 2019 BI News and Info

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Downstream Oil And Gas CFOs: A Change In The Financial Landscape

October 11, 2019 BI News and Info

As a CFO of a downstream oil and gas organization, you’re familiar with the term “gravel,” which means going out into the field to see how the real world works.

In that vein, we recently had an experience where a customer’s maintenance orders were marked on pieces of paper. Then, the workers would come in and stack them in a corner.

But the problem was that they didn’t have the time or staff to enter those paper orders back into the system. So there was no record that the maintenance orders had actually been completed – or even partially completed.

Sadly, this is not an uncommon state of affairs, as many oil and gas companies have antiquated, paper-based systems. Not surprisingly, it is damaging their profitability.

The bimodal theory

The Gartner Group has a phrase called the bimodal theory. Mode one is a linear approach to change, emphasizing predictability, accuracy, reliability, and stability. In other words, you don’t want to do any customization or differentiation. Just stick with the standards.

Mode two is a nonlinear approach that involves learning through iteration, emphasizing agility and speed, and, above all, the ability to manage uncertainty. That’s your competitive advantage, your secret sauce. You want to use this to become a better company.

The role of the downstream CFO

Downstream CFOs are seeing a change in the financial landscape. They’re seeing that the oil and gas value stream not only consists of refining, marketing, and secondary distribution – but also the end customer. All these processes need to fall into place before you can go any further.

The digital CFO needs to continually improve operations and know what the operating cost is by unit inside the refinery. Also, they need to know which refinery and unit are most efficient across the top KPIs and which refined product is growing margins the fastest.

Accounting and financial capability road map

CFOs are positioned to play a key role in the success of their companies – as long as they have the right tools. We’ve worked with many businesses in the oil and gas industry, and the following road map to organizational change is being adopted as best practices.

You can use centralized financial reporting from systems to enable real-time transaction-level visibility and soft-close capabilities. This helps with rapid financial integration of future mergers and acquisitions. And it enables real-time transaction-level visibility in near real-time and soft-close capabilities.

By digitizing core finance processes, you can drive updates to a single journal, general ledger, cost accounting, and profit center accounting. This approach enables increased hydrocarbon margin transparency, intercompany transactions and reconciliations, and granular visibility into all accounting transactions.

You can use AP invoice-processing costs related to invoice routing, exception handling, and invoice management. And you can use credit management, disputes and collections management, and self-billing. You can also integrate commodity transactions to reduce the need for daily bulk-data transfers to third-party solutions, provide tighter management and enforcement of credit limits, and automate cash application.

You can use corporate compliance controls (GRC) to integrate and manage IT operations that are subject to regulation. And you can provide continuous compliance of segregation of duties (SOD) to ensure oversight and reduce errors.

By leveraging treasury and risk management procedures, you can manage every activity associated with cash, payments, liquidity, risk, and compliance. And you can help finance gain more control over payment batches, foreign exchange, and commodity exposures.

Digitizing operations improves KPIs

Top performers in the industry are achieving impressive stats such as:

Sales revenue up 4.5%–5%: Higher achievement of sales revenue targets with real-time access for finance to pipeline and sales data

Revenue growth 20%–23%: Where finance leadership spends more than two-thirds of its time with executive management on key risks and decision support activity

Costs down 30%–36%: Where cost and profitability reports are generated to the level of product, channel, and customer

Profitability up 30%–38%: Where the profitability of the product, channel, and customer are regularly reviewed to develop strategies for improvement

Margins up 20%–22%: Where finance leadership has access to a cockpit/dashboard that provides a timely and integrated view into a predefined set of key financial and operational metrics

Revenue per employee – 2x: Where ownership and accountability has been assigned for all key metrics to ensure that mitigating actions are executed promptly once a metric falls out of the acceptable range

Source: SAP Performance Benchmarking

Into the cloud

Last year, we were approached by a venture capital company that bought an antiquated 1960’s era oil and gas asset at a refinery that wasn’t working. It was covered with blue tarps and had been so for about eight years.

They were going to raise about $ 500 million to get it back up and running and process crude oil through it. They told us, “We need to do accounts payable, accounts receivable, and paychecks for workers. And then we’ll we have to maintain the refinery once we get it started, so we’ll need a maintenance system.” It was a simple request that led to a conversation about cloud.

They asked us how long going into the cloud would take – half a year? We said it would take six weeks to get up and running, and then two months to configure the financials. They had heard that these systems take months or even years. And we said, no, technology is very quick today. We are able to create it in the cloud just like signing up for a Facebook account.

Four months later, they were successful. We were able to move them from no PCs and no users to a fully robust cloud platform that would last a very long time.

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