In our last post we detailed what exactly Corporate Performance Management (CPM) is, why CPM is important, who CPM is important for and what the business benefits of cloud-based CPM software are. In case you missed it, CPM is important for every company, but especially those looking to:
- Remodel their budget.
- Reduce costs.
- Better align KPIs.
- Upgrade their organizational strategy.
- Improve the financial planning process
Because CPM software can be so beneficial, more and more medium-sized companies are utilizing it to automate their planning and budgeting processes. But, you already know this. So, after you have convinced your boss that your firm needs new financial software, then comes the mammoth question of how to select the right CPM software for your medium-sized business. With all the options out there, this can be an overwhelming task, and potentially one of the reasons why your boss did not want to upgrade in the first place.
In order to minimize the chances of making a wrong decision when deciding how to select the right CPM software for your medium-sized business, follow these steps:
- Your first step must be to define your achievable goals.
- Then, identify the technical, business and organizational aspects of your Business Intelligence (BI) strategy.
- Attentively establish and evaluate your firm’s technical and business functional requirements for a CPM software solution.
- Ensure that you are engaging with all key personnel during the assessment (and continue to engage with financial leaders throughout the year).
- Write a short list of the potential CPM software solutions who will be able to provide for your specific needs.
- Evaluate these potential software solutions and compile a comparative evaluation that can be distributed to other decision-makers in the firm.
- After narrowing down the potential list further, test each of these solutions using your firm’s data. Pay attention to ways you can make these tests more conscientious and objective.
- Once a solution has been selected, agree upon a realistic time frame for implementing your new CPM solution. I highly recommend a time frame of 3 to 6 months.
- During the process, when times get tough and you wish you had never asked how to select the right CPM software for your medium-sized business, remember the business case for cloud-based financial reporting and analysis.
No longer operate under separate planning & reporting processes. With Kepion’s Corporate Performance Management (CPM) Solution, you can collaborate on a single approach for integrated business planning. Designed for the business, by the business, Kepion’s Corporate Performance Management Software allows sales, finance, operations, marketing and HR to configure personalized planning apps specifically to how they work. Kepion’s Dashboards and Scorecards Software helps you visualize performance, plan for efficiencies and track your results.
How can Kepion Planning help my business grow?
Kepion Planning can scale as your business grows. Our flexible app modeling platform allows your business to start with a baseline model for budgeting, forecasting and reporting. As your business process grows to more complexity, Kepion can help simplify by automating your complex processes into a streamlined and intuitive process flow within our web interfaces.
Is my business too small to use Kepion Planning?
Kepion provides flexibility for both small and large enterprises to take advantage. Small businesses can leverage one of our pre-built apps to get started quickly, while mid-size to large enterprises can use our Business Intelligence BI modeler tool to build the solutions that fit around the way they work.