2009 Business Finance Research Report
Business Intelligence
In the Corporate
Finance Environment
Study Sponsored by IBM Cognos
2009 Business Finance Research Report
Business Intelligence
In the Corporate
Finance Environment
A
S BUSINESS FINANCE EXECUTIVES adjust to a recovering econo-
my, many organizations are invigorating the role of business
intelligence (BI) in their operations. Executives are making
significant adjustments to corporate strategy and tactics on
a more frequent basis; all as a normal course of succeed-
ing in today’s hyper-competitive markets. This is occurring in a global
context that has added a seemingly infinite number of variables that affect
the financial and operational performance of an enterprise. As a result,
CEOs, COOs and other C-level executives are placing greater demands on
the finance department in general – and the CFO in particular – to:
• Provide an accurate and ongoing picture of the financial health of the enterprise; and
• Offer insight into how emerging – and potential – shifts in key market factors will af-
fect the organization.
• Establish timely scalable measures of corporate performance that align across func-
tions
These insights from the CFO’s office are not only being used to respond to competi-
tive and market developments, but are also being used to mitigate the risk posture of
the enterprise. In this context, the need to make good decisions based on the most ac-
curate and current information has never been more important.
As a result, there is a growing sensitivity to any factor that gets in the way of the
rapid gathering and analysis of information to support the enterprise decision-making
process. Variables that are contributing to delays or complexity to the data compilation
and study of key enterprise information resources include:
• The widespread reliance on spreadsheets, rather than the analytical capabilities of BI
tools in performing ongoing analysis to support planning and budgeting functions.
• The lack of interoperability of BI features that come bundled with popular enterprise
resource planning (ERP) applications.
Productivity Gains Associated with Data Agnostic BI Solutions
Study Sponsored by
IBM Cognos
• The absence of intuitive tools that can be read-
ily used by business executives and non-IT staff
to generate timely performance management
content and facilitate speed of thought analysis.
These are among the
central findings in a study
conducted by Business-
Finance magazine in a
project sponsored by IBM
to understand the evolving
role of business intelligence
in today’s complex and dy-
namic global marketplace.
It is the position of
this report that organiza-
tions with highly-complex
organizational structures
(especially those operat-
ing multiple enterprise
application systems across
a number of geographies
and lines of business) will
find an application inde-
pendent BI strategy more
effective than BI tools that
come bundled in ERP ap-
plications in managing the
complexity of critical information capture and
analysis functions.
BUSINESS FINANCE WRESTLES WITH
COMPLEXITY OF
SOURCES AND THE
IMPERATIVE FOR
SPEED
Our survey of 267 se-
nior finance executives
found that many enter-
prises are struggling for
ways to remove barriers
to gathering data from
multiple enterprise sys-
tems, while accelerating
the ability to generate
high-quality analytical
and decision-support
processes. The respon-
dents cited many impediments to optimizing
both of these functions. For instance:
• Many organizations are wrestling with how to
bring together multiple enterprise systems that
host or generate infor-
mation which must be
quickly and effectively
analyzed in a common
environment.
• Critical information is
often not available in
a standard format that
can be easily accessed by
business finance analysts
through a common deci-
sion support platform.
• The absence of a com-
mon format and analyti-
cal tools has prompted
many of organizations to
manually copy and paste
data into spreadsheets
for further analysis,
reporting and dissemi-
nation to key enterprise
audiences.
• The enterprise data management environment
is often so complicated that business finance
analysts depend on significant assistance from
IT IS THE POSITION of this report
that organizations with highly-
complex organizational structures
(especially those operating
multiple enterprise application
systems across a number
of geographies and lines of
business) will find an application
independent BI strategy more
effective than BI tools that come
bundled in ERP applications
in managing the complexity of
critical information capture and
analysis functions.
How would you rate your ability to do all your planning, budgeting,
and forecasting activity using your financial performance management
software without the use of spreadsheets?
Extremely easy = 5
Relatively easy = 4
Challenging, but
possible = 3
Very difficult = 2
Not possible = 1
No reply
2%
16%
35%
20%
25%
2%
the information technology (IT) department.
These challenges are prompting CFOs and
other senior business finance executives to open
an extremely important dialog with their CIO
counterparts about the role current BI systems are
playing in the decision-making process, and to
evaluate whether the status quo needs to evolve.
Today, almost half of the companies surveyed
who buy large enterprise applications depend
on the BI tools that come bundled with the ERP
systems that they have purchased. For instance,
47 percent of respondents surveyed who use SAP
as their primary ERP system said they also use an
SAP package as their primary BI tool. Similarly,
44 percent of respondents who use Oracle as their
primary ERP system use Oracle as their primary
BI tool. In these cases, SAP and Oracle custom-
ers chose the embedded BI features in their ERP
solutions 50 percent of the time.
Because the tools most organizations use were
not designed specifcally for BI
operations, it should not come
as a surprise that many have
experienced frustration when it
comes to performing analysis or
generating reports. When we
asked respondents to rate how
easy or efective their existing
BI tools were in supporting key
planning budgeting and forecast-
ing activities, only 18 percent
believed the technologies were
easy to use, with 36 percent char-
acterizing the activity as chal-
lenging, 20 percent saying it was
very difcult, and over a quarter
(26 percent) reporting that it was
not possible at all.
Tese fndings suggest a sig-
nifcant BI performance gap that
is prompting business fnance
executives to explore the trade-of
associated with:
• Using the BI tools and capabilities that are
bundled in with enterprise applications; or
• Making dedicated investments in application
independent BI solutions that ofer better ways to
integrate information from disparate sources and
leverage all investments in data and ERP applica-
tions.
FASTER AND BETTER ANALYSIS IN A MORE
COMPLEX AND DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT
While the need for speed and agility has always
been of paramount importance, the past few years
has elevated the stakes – and the requirements for
improved performance to a new level. Te need
for transparency has been signifcantly enhanced,
as executives look for ways to secure fnancing,
operate in signifcantly more volatile equities mar-
ket, and address the emergence of new regulatory
reporting requirements that have emerged in the
• In a typical year, how often are you required to update or revisit your
plans within your organization?
• In 2009, how often have you been required to update or revisit your
plans within your organization?
Weekly
Every few
weeks
Monthly
Every
other month
Every
quarter
Bi annually
Annually
No reply
3%
4%
3%
8%
24%
32%
7%
7%
37%
33%
10%
9%
15%
8%
1%
1%
Typical Year
2009
2009 Business Finance Research Report
major economies of North America, Europe and
Asia.
Te dynamic nature of today’s environment
makes it necessary to rapidly shif directions. Very
few strategic plans envisioned at the beginning
of this fscal year are holding completely steady
without signifcant adjustments to major tactical
elements of the plan, or even whole-sale changes
to the strategic objective.
Tis has manifested itself
most obviously by the need
to increase the number and
frequency of budget and
fnancial plans or updates
over the course of the fscal
year. For instance, while 24
percent of our respondents
reported the need to update
plans on a monthly basis in
a typical year, in 2009 that
percentage jumped up to
almost 32 percent.
By contrast, the percent-
age of organizations that
typically depended on
plans developed once a
year (15 percent) dropped
down to 8 percent in 2009.
And as the frequency of
fnancial planning and up-
dates rises, a full 68 percent
of our respondents admitted that re-forecasts and
plan revisions are considered a more challenging
aspect of their responsibilities today. Te nature
for this difculty can be attributed to the technolo-
gies and processes that business fnance analysts
currently depend upon to meet their reporting
responsibilities. For instance, nearly half of our
respondents (47 percent) stated the need for IT as-
sistance or the aid of spreadsheet applications due
to gaps in planning and BI sofware capabilities
that come bundled with their ERP oferings.
Dependence on the IT department to conduct
fnancial analysis – such as creating and changing
reports in their BI tool – was cited by a whopping
59 percent of respondents. Tis has had the dual
efect of taking IT staf of of core responsibili-
ties to provide administrative support to business
fnance professionals, while adding a step in the
critical path of analysis, and delaying the delivery
of key insights to corporate decision-makers.
More important, however, is the opportunity
cost that may not be cap-
tured by this statistic.
If IT staf involvement is
a requirement for certain
business fnance projects,
therefore adding time
and specialized resource
prerequisites, it is very con-
ceivable that certain analy-
ses are avoided, postponed
or discouraged. Tis could
remove important inputs
from the decision-making
process.
Limitations embedded
in the BI oferings that are
bundled with enterprise ap-
plication systems were also
cited by a full 52 percent of
respondents who reported
the need to use spreadsheet
programs to cross-corre-
late, analyze and examine
core enterprise performance management metrics.
Manual manipulation of data and information
between applications ofen introduces errors into
the data analysis process. Tis is especially true if
the analysis is being conducted in a collaborative
environment, where multiple analysts are examin-
ing and processing data in spread sheets. (It also
makes version control in documents a critical
concern.)
COMPLEXITY IS THE COMMON DENOMINATOR
As a result, there is growing interest in solutions
that are dedicated to a more complex BI mission
THE NATURE for this difficulty can
be attributed to the technologies
and processes that business
finance analysts currently depend
upon to meet their reporting
responsibilities. For instance,
nearly half of our respondents
(47 percent) stated the need
for IT assistance or the aid of
spreadsheet applications due to
gaps in planning and BI software
capabilities that come bundled
with their ERP offerings.
that takes both complexity and the scale of data
into account. Within the survey, 43 percent of
executives reported they currently pull data manu-
ally from multiple sources into their performance
management process; an additional 41 percent
stated that they have future plans to do so.
It is challenging for legacy BI tools that are
bundled with ERP applica-
tions to meet this require-
ments because they were
not necessarily designed
to work beyond their own
operating environment.
Some BI components in the
ERP suite assume that most
– if not all – data that needs
to be mined and managed
will be kept in the packaged
ERP repositories.
Tis, however, is increas-
ingly not the case. As many
organizations adopt new systems architectures in
which natively developed applications coexist with
packaged enterprise sofware, Sofware as a Service
or other Cloud Computing formats, the number of
places in which data can reside will not decrease…
it will increase.
Adding further to the complexity equation,
our survey showed an interest in developing a
multi-disciplinary picture of how the enterprise
is performing. An overwhelming 69 percent of
respondents said it was important to link fnancial
and operational plans in a way that allows changes
in one environment to be automatically refected
in the other. Only 23 percent said they have that
capability today. Tis seems to emphasize the
importance of application agnostic BI tools that
can interoperate with many diferent enterprise
systems.
THE CASE FOR APPLICATION INDEPENDENT BI
Given the complexity management and interop-
erability challenges that our respondents appear
to be having with the BI modules that come bun-
dled with enterprise application packages, it seems
that there is a growing business case for dedicated
application independent BI tools that:
• Bring together information from a wide variety
of internal and external sources onto a common
platform.
• Are intuitive enough for
business fnance profes-
sionals to manipulate ex-
tensively (i.e. they must
provide user interfaces
that rival popular spread-
sheet applications).
• Absorb terabytes (or
more) of data that are
being pumped by internal
and external systems.
• Access data in real-time from source systems.
• Support the analytical manipulation of dynamic
data in real-time.
While the deployment of these application inde-
pendent solutions will represent an additional in-
vestment in enterprise sofware, these new outlays
can be cost justifed on the basis of:
• Less dependence on IT resources to conduct new
and novel analyses.
• Reduced error rates in the analytical process that
comes as a result of manually cutting and pasting
data from operational systems into spreadsheets.
• Better access to more sources of data to provide
more context, and therefore better decision-
making support.
• Reduced exposure to risk by having more transpar-
ent access to the full array of information resources
that are critical to the decision-making process.
IT IS CHALLENGING for legacy
BI tools that are bundled with
ERP applications to meet this
requirements because they were
not necessarily designed to work
beyond their own operating
environment.
2009 Business Finance Research Report
doc_678516550.pdf
Business Intelligence
In the Corporate
Finance Environment
Study Sponsored by IBM Cognos
2009 Business Finance Research Report
Business Intelligence
In the Corporate
Finance Environment
A
S BUSINESS FINANCE EXECUTIVES adjust to a recovering econo-
my, many organizations are invigorating the role of business
intelligence (BI) in their operations. Executives are making
significant adjustments to corporate strategy and tactics on
a more frequent basis; all as a normal course of succeed-
ing in today’s hyper-competitive markets. This is occurring in a global
context that has added a seemingly infinite number of variables that affect
the financial and operational performance of an enterprise. As a result,
CEOs, COOs and other C-level executives are placing greater demands on
the finance department in general – and the CFO in particular – to:
• Provide an accurate and ongoing picture of the financial health of the enterprise; and
• Offer insight into how emerging – and potential – shifts in key market factors will af-
fect the organization.
• Establish timely scalable measures of corporate performance that align across func-
tions
These insights from the CFO’s office are not only being used to respond to competi-
tive and market developments, but are also being used to mitigate the risk posture of
the enterprise. In this context, the need to make good decisions based on the most ac-
curate and current information has never been more important.
As a result, there is a growing sensitivity to any factor that gets in the way of the
rapid gathering and analysis of information to support the enterprise decision-making
process. Variables that are contributing to delays or complexity to the data compilation
and study of key enterprise information resources include:
• The widespread reliance on spreadsheets, rather than the analytical capabilities of BI
tools in performing ongoing analysis to support planning and budgeting functions.
• The lack of interoperability of BI features that come bundled with popular enterprise
resource planning (ERP) applications.
Productivity Gains Associated with Data Agnostic BI Solutions
Study Sponsored by
IBM Cognos
• The absence of intuitive tools that can be read-
ily used by business executives and non-IT staff
to generate timely performance management
content and facilitate speed of thought analysis.
These are among the
central findings in a study
conducted by Business-
Finance magazine in a
project sponsored by IBM
to understand the evolving
role of business intelligence
in today’s complex and dy-
namic global marketplace.
It is the position of
this report that organiza-
tions with highly-complex
organizational structures
(especially those operat-
ing multiple enterprise
application systems across
a number of geographies
and lines of business) will
find an application inde-
pendent BI strategy more
effective than BI tools that
come bundled in ERP ap-
plications in managing the
complexity of critical information capture and
analysis functions.
BUSINESS FINANCE WRESTLES WITH
COMPLEXITY OF
SOURCES AND THE
IMPERATIVE FOR
SPEED
Our survey of 267 se-
nior finance executives
found that many enter-
prises are struggling for
ways to remove barriers
to gathering data from
multiple enterprise sys-
tems, while accelerating
the ability to generate
high-quality analytical
and decision-support
processes. The respon-
dents cited many impediments to optimizing
both of these functions. For instance:
• Many organizations are wrestling with how to
bring together multiple enterprise systems that
host or generate infor-
mation which must be
quickly and effectively
analyzed in a common
environment.
• Critical information is
often not available in
a standard format that
can be easily accessed by
business finance analysts
through a common deci-
sion support platform.
• The absence of a com-
mon format and analyti-
cal tools has prompted
many of organizations to
manually copy and paste
data into spreadsheets
for further analysis,
reporting and dissemi-
nation to key enterprise
audiences.
• The enterprise data management environment
is often so complicated that business finance
analysts depend on significant assistance from
IT IS THE POSITION of this report
that organizations with highly-
complex organizational structures
(especially those operating
multiple enterprise application
systems across a number
of geographies and lines of
business) will find an application
independent BI strategy more
effective than BI tools that come
bundled in ERP applications
in managing the complexity of
critical information capture and
analysis functions.
How would you rate your ability to do all your planning, budgeting,
and forecasting activity using your financial performance management
software without the use of spreadsheets?
Extremely easy = 5
Relatively easy = 4
Challenging, but
possible = 3
Very difficult = 2
Not possible = 1
No reply
2%
16%
35%
20%
25%
2%
the information technology (IT) department.
These challenges are prompting CFOs and
other senior business finance executives to open
an extremely important dialog with their CIO
counterparts about the role current BI systems are
playing in the decision-making process, and to
evaluate whether the status quo needs to evolve.
Today, almost half of the companies surveyed
who buy large enterprise applications depend
on the BI tools that come bundled with the ERP
systems that they have purchased. For instance,
47 percent of respondents surveyed who use SAP
as their primary ERP system said they also use an
SAP package as their primary BI tool. Similarly,
44 percent of respondents who use Oracle as their
primary ERP system use Oracle as their primary
BI tool. In these cases, SAP and Oracle custom-
ers chose the embedded BI features in their ERP
solutions 50 percent of the time.
Because the tools most organizations use were
not designed specifcally for BI
operations, it should not come
as a surprise that many have
experienced frustration when it
comes to performing analysis or
generating reports. When we
asked respondents to rate how
easy or efective their existing
BI tools were in supporting key
planning budgeting and forecast-
ing activities, only 18 percent
believed the technologies were
easy to use, with 36 percent char-
acterizing the activity as chal-
lenging, 20 percent saying it was
very difcult, and over a quarter
(26 percent) reporting that it was
not possible at all.
Tese fndings suggest a sig-
nifcant BI performance gap that
is prompting business fnance
executives to explore the trade-of
associated with:
• Using the BI tools and capabilities that are
bundled in with enterprise applications; or
• Making dedicated investments in application
independent BI solutions that ofer better ways to
integrate information from disparate sources and
leverage all investments in data and ERP applica-
tions.
FASTER AND BETTER ANALYSIS IN A MORE
COMPLEX AND DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT
While the need for speed and agility has always
been of paramount importance, the past few years
has elevated the stakes – and the requirements for
improved performance to a new level. Te need
for transparency has been signifcantly enhanced,
as executives look for ways to secure fnancing,
operate in signifcantly more volatile equities mar-
ket, and address the emergence of new regulatory
reporting requirements that have emerged in the
• In a typical year, how often are you required to update or revisit your
plans within your organization?
• In 2009, how often have you been required to update or revisit your
plans within your organization?
Weekly
Every few
weeks
Monthly
Every
other month
Every
quarter
Bi annually
Annually
No reply
3%
4%
3%
8%
24%
32%
7%
7%
37%
33%
10%
9%
15%
8%
1%
1%
Typical Year
2009
2009 Business Finance Research Report
major economies of North America, Europe and
Asia.
Te dynamic nature of today’s environment
makes it necessary to rapidly shif directions. Very
few strategic plans envisioned at the beginning
of this fscal year are holding completely steady
without signifcant adjustments to major tactical
elements of the plan, or even whole-sale changes
to the strategic objective.
Tis has manifested itself
most obviously by the need
to increase the number and
frequency of budget and
fnancial plans or updates
over the course of the fscal
year. For instance, while 24
percent of our respondents
reported the need to update
plans on a monthly basis in
a typical year, in 2009 that
percentage jumped up to
almost 32 percent.
By contrast, the percent-
age of organizations that
typically depended on
plans developed once a
year (15 percent) dropped
down to 8 percent in 2009.
And as the frequency of
fnancial planning and up-
dates rises, a full 68 percent
of our respondents admitted that re-forecasts and
plan revisions are considered a more challenging
aspect of their responsibilities today. Te nature
for this difculty can be attributed to the technolo-
gies and processes that business fnance analysts
currently depend upon to meet their reporting
responsibilities. For instance, nearly half of our
respondents (47 percent) stated the need for IT as-
sistance or the aid of spreadsheet applications due
to gaps in planning and BI sofware capabilities
that come bundled with their ERP oferings.
Dependence on the IT department to conduct
fnancial analysis – such as creating and changing
reports in their BI tool – was cited by a whopping
59 percent of respondents. Tis has had the dual
efect of taking IT staf of of core responsibili-
ties to provide administrative support to business
fnance professionals, while adding a step in the
critical path of analysis, and delaying the delivery
of key insights to corporate decision-makers.
More important, however, is the opportunity
cost that may not be cap-
tured by this statistic.
If IT staf involvement is
a requirement for certain
business fnance projects,
therefore adding time
and specialized resource
prerequisites, it is very con-
ceivable that certain analy-
ses are avoided, postponed
or discouraged. Tis could
remove important inputs
from the decision-making
process.
Limitations embedded
in the BI oferings that are
bundled with enterprise ap-
plication systems were also
cited by a full 52 percent of
respondents who reported
the need to use spreadsheet
programs to cross-corre-
late, analyze and examine
core enterprise performance management metrics.
Manual manipulation of data and information
between applications ofen introduces errors into
the data analysis process. Tis is especially true if
the analysis is being conducted in a collaborative
environment, where multiple analysts are examin-
ing and processing data in spread sheets. (It also
makes version control in documents a critical
concern.)
COMPLEXITY IS THE COMMON DENOMINATOR
As a result, there is growing interest in solutions
that are dedicated to a more complex BI mission
THE NATURE for this difficulty can
be attributed to the technologies
and processes that business
finance analysts currently depend
upon to meet their reporting
responsibilities. For instance,
nearly half of our respondents
(47 percent) stated the need
for IT assistance or the aid of
spreadsheet applications due to
gaps in planning and BI software
capabilities that come bundled
with their ERP offerings.
that takes both complexity and the scale of data
into account. Within the survey, 43 percent of
executives reported they currently pull data manu-
ally from multiple sources into their performance
management process; an additional 41 percent
stated that they have future plans to do so.
It is challenging for legacy BI tools that are
bundled with ERP applica-
tions to meet this require-
ments because they were
not necessarily designed
to work beyond their own
operating environment.
Some BI components in the
ERP suite assume that most
– if not all – data that needs
to be mined and managed
will be kept in the packaged
ERP repositories.
Tis, however, is increas-
ingly not the case. As many
organizations adopt new systems architectures in
which natively developed applications coexist with
packaged enterprise sofware, Sofware as a Service
or other Cloud Computing formats, the number of
places in which data can reside will not decrease…
it will increase.
Adding further to the complexity equation,
our survey showed an interest in developing a
multi-disciplinary picture of how the enterprise
is performing. An overwhelming 69 percent of
respondents said it was important to link fnancial
and operational plans in a way that allows changes
in one environment to be automatically refected
in the other. Only 23 percent said they have that
capability today. Tis seems to emphasize the
importance of application agnostic BI tools that
can interoperate with many diferent enterprise
systems.
THE CASE FOR APPLICATION INDEPENDENT BI
Given the complexity management and interop-
erability challenges that our respondents appear
to be having with the BI modules that come bun-
dled with enterprise application packages, it seems
that there is a growing business case for dedicated
application independent BI tools that:
• Bring together information from a wide variety
of internal and external sources onto a common
platform.
• Are intuitive enough for
business fnance profes-
sionals to manipulate ex-
tensively (i.e. they must
provide user interfaces
that rival popular spread-
sheet applications).
• Absorb terabytes (or
more) of data that are
being pumped by internal
and external systems.
• Access data in real-time from source systems.
• Support the analytical manipulation of dynamic
data in real-time.
While the deployment of these application inde-
pendent solutions will represent an additional in-
vestment in enterprise sofware, these new outlays
can be cost justifed on the basis of:
• Less dependence on IT resources to conduct new
and novel analyses.
• Reduced error rates in the analytical process that
comes as a result of manually cutting and pasting
data from operational systems into spreadsheets.
• Better access to more sources of data to provide
more context, and therefore better decision-
making support.
• Reduced exposure to risk by having more transpar-
ent access to the full array of information resources
that are critical to the decision-making process.
IT IS CHALLENGING for legacy
BI tools that are bundled with
ERP applications to meet this
requirements because they were
not necessarily designed to work
beyond their own operating
environment.
2009 Business Finance Research Report
doc_678516550.pdf