Nucleus Research takes a different approach to their vendor rankings vs. other IT analyst firms. Through the analysis of user experiences, Nucleus evaluates software vendors based on functionality and usability – key drivers of value - and places them into four categories: Leaders, Experts, Facilitators, and Core Providers.
Enterprise-class consolidation software applications provide intercompany eliminations that are powerful enough to handle sophisticated business needs yet allow for easy reconciliation. Not all software that claims to do financial consolidations provides both, and in some cases, it provides neither.
Intercompany transaction volume can be significant and difficult to identify. To ensure all this activity is identified, eliminated and documented correctly for auditors requires a detailed system of controls.
Upgrades to modern ERP, CRM and HCM systems have helped many organizations improve their transactional processes. However, many are hindered in gaining efficiencies in their management processes due to reliance on legacy corporate performance management (CPM) applications.
Straight aggregation engines are not designed for the complexities of financial consolidation, currency, eliminations, consolidation status, cash flow, and entity adjustments that only apply to specific hierarchical roll-ups that can be critical for true statutory reporting compliance. It doesn’t mean that you can’t solve some of these problems with a straight aggregation system, the question is, how agile is it, how easy is it to maintain and what is the cost and sustainability of your end solution?
The limitations inherent in legacy CPM applications may be one of the reasons CPM software often gets deployed in Finance and doesn’t get into the hands of managers in other departments. If the software is too expensive, difficult to deploy, and not easily extensible – expanding beyond Finance is challenging.