Digital transformation requires better insight, not just more data. Done well, transformation breaks down traditional silos across the organization. But many organizations struggle with delivering projected returns on transformation initiatives. Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) can deliver exceptional value by getting business units to plan and act as one. However, many costly “traditional” Enterprise Performance Management tools can prove an expensive exercise that deliver little sustained value. As George Westerman, from MIT Center for Digital Business has said, “When digital transformation is done right, it’s like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly – but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar.”

The old and new of EPM

Many organisations have invested in EPM at different stages over their lifecycle. A major challenge is integrating traditional, older EPM solutions into fast-changing modern enterprises. One reason is because some of the largest traditional EPM solutions on the market are still based on technology that was first built 20 or 30 years ago.

New features were often added by acquiring and integrating different products with different code-bases. While they can have dazzling arrays of “features”, they require many technical support teams and specialist consultants to maintain them. This means while the environment and business needs change, these inflexible systems can’t keep up.

Planning is key to delivering business strategy

From Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) teams, HR and Sales & Operations, to CFOs and CEOs, there’s the need to plan the future, and do that cohesively across the enterprise. Aligning people and data from different parts of the organization is a crucial challenge.

Additionally, those professionals must often come up with new strategies quickly when the business changes course – perhaps a new market opens, a merger becomes possible, or new competitors arise.

Without the right resources and data, creating that plan becomes a “finger in the wind” exercise: that’s not good planning.

As well as changing strategy, enterprises often reorganize and restructure, from re-ordering cost centers to reorganising product lines. The same need to work cross-organization and the same issues of data silos exist. Because it is rigid, traditional EPM struggles to solve these dilemmas.

Source: Jedox

Modern EPM makes planning agile

With modern EPM, businesses’ leaders can now solve more complex business challenges. With driver-based and predictive modelling, decision-makers have the tools for continuous foresight and can make informed strategic decisions based on trusted data and insights, brought into a common data hub.

But not all platforms are equal. And when it comes to EPM, no one delivers more real-world value than Jedox. The Jedox difference comes from its flexible modelling capabilities coupled with predictive and unique GPU capability, making it versatile and, critically, scalable as the enterprise grows and evolves.

The embedded Jedox AI engine provides smart decision-support and automation. Jedox has designed AI specifically to solve planning challenges from predictive forecasting to customer churn. Importantly it is designed to help Finance and business users, and embeds inside existing planning processes. Machine learning and statistical forecasting boost the speed and quality of plans. This improves performance and enhances business agility in fast-changing markets.

Seamlessly working across the most complex IT landscapes

A major challenge with traditional EPM was that it was often engineered to work with other products by that same vendor. That approach no longer makes sense in a best-of-breed world. Business, and IT, need flexibility that is future-proof.

Jedox embraces the modern business environment with more than 50 connectors to enterprise systems and data sources in the cloud, hybrid and on-premise. And as the enterprise continues to change, new services and apps from third-party vendors can be seamlessly connected with Jedox’s powerful platform.

With flexible deployment options (public, private cloud, or on-premise), Jedox is optimized for any organizations scaling from a small team to global rollouts. The ISO-certified advanced elastic cloud platform has embedded advanced security layers at each level to provide the enterprise controls and governance to secure the most confidential corporate data.

Driving value, and creating a quick ROI

Jedox’s approach is one that minimizes disruption to the everyday flow of business processes. Its proven approach to implement EPM is designed with self-service in mind, so the users remain in control.

Source: Jedox

Traditional EPM was often hard-to-learn and difficult to use. It had unique interfaces and couldn’t quickly adapt over time. Jedox solves this by bringing data and planning to where business users are most comfortable through multi-modal deployments. This makes it easy for new users to learn and create value on any device.

The unified EPM platform from Jedox delivers the foundations a growing company wants; self-service budgeting, strategic planning, and forecasting augmented with intuitive analytics and comprehensive BI dashboards.

These features provide the entire organization with a single-source-of-truth. By enabling granular planning at any level of detail Jedox merges the traditional process silos. Users across any business unit – from finance, sales, human resources, to operations – can plan, project and make critical decisions based on the same, reliable data, without discrepancies from division to department to team.

With complex planning and reporting, business leaders can hesitate when it comes to investing in off-the-shelf solutions, especially because many business processes are unique to the specific organization. Jedox provides an elegant solution with the compelling combination of better-practice and an elastic modeling engine that quickly tailors to specific organizational needs.

Comprehensive pre-built Jedox Models, available from the Jedox Marketplace kickstart projects with models  for departments, including finance, sales, human resources and industry-specific solutions. Users adapt the solutions without burdening the IT department. That way, the solution fits the users’ needs – the people that matter.

The software’s intuitive prototyping enables rapid and flexible solution creation, for quick ROI. The multi-dimensional in-memory platform is designed to continually adapt to changing business needs.

On top of the advanced technology, Jedox also put innovation, education and customer success at the heart of any customer deployment. This helps enable teams to become self-reliant and create exceptional value.

To find out more about Jedox’s advanced and flexible EPM solution, get in touch, or visit www.jedox.com.