Equip Your Finance Team to Lead Strategically and Survive the Chaos

/in /by BPM Partners

Sponsored by insightsoftware

  • This white paper looks at how a unified, scalable EPM platform streamlines complex planning, closing, and reporting processes, enabling Finance to accurately guide the enterprise through volatile conditions.
  • Author: BPM Partners
  • Date: June 2025
  • Pages: 15
  • Request your copy today by completing the White Papers Request form.

Executive Summary:

The people of the Office of the CFO have experienced a perfect storm of business changes, tariffs, regulatory shift in different geographies, uncertainties around the use of AI, geopolitics, and disruptive technology. These forces could overwhelm finance teams struggling with legacy processes and methods. Yet the same people are expected to progressively improve their planning, analysis, consolidation and reporting, and data quality.

EPM helps Finance meet the moment. To meet their imperative to lead strategically through chaotic conditions over the next decade or more, they need faster finance operations and the most reliable, complete data possible. That implies the automation and unification of data that an enterprise performance management (EPM) system can make available. Modernization via EPM can bring all finance workflows under one roof (one UX, one data foundation). It also enables more flexible, accurate planning, quicker reforecasting, and much faster closings.

How CPM Modernizes Finance for Banking and Financial Services

/in /by BPM Partners

Sponsored by OneStream Software

  • To continue success and growth, FSI entities need maximum efficiency and accuracy from their finance team. Yet many FSI entities are hindered by fragmented financial data, disconnected systems, and manual processes. This white paper examines how modern CPM solutions can address these challenges for finance teams in banks.
  • Author: BPM Partners
  • Date: April 2025
  • Pages: 17
  • Request your copy today by completing the White Papers Request form.

Executive Summary:

When it comes to particular CPM capabilities, banks and other FSI entities need integrated business planning for their capital adequacy analysis, portfolio planning that integrates with the treasury area, and integrated sensitivity analysis for stress testing of their loan portfolios. Modern CPM solutions can help unify data, processes, technology, and people, making it easer to:

  • Manage the balance sheet to maximize net interest income, balancing profitability with interest rate, capital, and liquidity risks
  • Ensure compliance with complex regulatory requirements
  • Optimize the institution’s capital position
  • Manage risk efficiently while preserving capital flexibility
  • Integrate sensitivity and what-if analysis for stress-testing of loan portfolios
  • Analyze capital adequacy with consistent precision and accuracy
  • Maintain and update manual compensating controls
  • Monitor, report on and optimize their liquidity risk position

FP&A Tools to Navigate Uncertainty

/in /by BPM Partners

Sponsored by Unit4

  • A review of the latest FP&A trends and product capabilities helping companies navigate through uncertainty.
  • Author: BPM Partners
  • Date: September 2024
  • Pages: 19
  • Request your copy today by completing the White Papers Request form.
  • View related webcast here.

Executive Summary:

Uncertainty ahead, for Finance, is all but certain. Accelerated change—driven by technology advances, geopolitical conflict, electoral and regulatory shifts—is a constant. Finance leaders know they must be equipped with new capabilities to navigate through turbulent periods. There are solutions available today that offer many of the required capabilities. They can prepare organizations to manage performance and optimize results in the face of business conditions with numerous unknowns and growing volatility. Many companies already take advantage of these solutions. It’s up to you to determine the timeline for your company to join them. Topics covered include:

  • AI (data quality with anomaly detection, automation, predictive forecasting, interactive analysis with Gen AI)
  • Extended Planning and Analysis
  • Scenario Planning
  • Continuous Forecasting
  • Ad hoc Reporting
  • Profitability Optimization
  • Finance Transformation

Global CPM Trends and Priorities Report 2025

/in /by BPM Partners

Sponsored by Lumel, JustPerform, Planful, Unit4

  • Research, analysis, and recommendations from two of the leading analysts in the CPM space.
  • Authors: BPM Partners (Craig Schiff) and BARC (Dr. Christian Fuchs)
  • Date: September 2024
  • Pages: 56
  • Request your copy today by completing the White Papers Request form.
  • Preview the management summary here.
  • View related webcast here.

Executive Summary:

Our primary goal for this report is to equip end-user organizations with the most current and complete information as they embark on new or expanding performance management projects. Although our focus is on end-user organizations, vendors can benefit from the data and analysis contained in this report as well, which in turn also benefits end-users. Topics covered include:

  • Self-service and Ease of Use
  • Modern Cloud-based Solutions
  • Scenario and Driver-based Planning
  • Integrated Planning
  • Integrated Financial Consolidation
  • Predictive and AI

Consolidation and Planning: Unified or Best of Breed

/in /by BPM Partners

Sponsored by Talentia

  • For midmarket controllers and FP&A managers, integration matters but performance comes first.
  • Author: BPM Partners
  • Date: May 2023
  • Pages: 12
  • This white paper is available in both English and French versions
  • Request your copy today by completing the White Papers Request form.
  • View related webcast here.

Executive Summary:

The goal of all performance management ultimately is to report accurately and quickly on performance and facilitate making the best management decisions. Both consolidation and planning are integral to those aims. This white paper focuses on consolidation, but to avoid creating silos neither consolidation nor planning solutions should be chosen in isolation, without taking the other into consideration.

The Road to FP&A Excellence

/in /by BPM Partners

Sponsored by Unit4

  • A guide to modernizing your financial planning and analysis: knowing when and where to begin, how to establish ROI, and what milestones to aim for.
  • Author: BPM Partners
  • Date: December 2022
  • Pages: 16
  • Request your copy today by completing the White Papers Request form.
  • View related webcast here.

Executive Summary:

It may be time to launch your Finance department’s journey to efficient, high-performing financial planning and analysis (FP&A). Asking yourself a few pointed questions about how finance processes are working at your company can probably reveal the answer quickly. The actual modernization of FP&A can be handled as an incremental evolution, a phase-by-phase extension of existing capabilities, or a full-fledged transformation of these functions. This whitepaper looks at the overall journey to more effective, modern FP&A, and should help Finance groups prepare for a successful transition.

BPM Pulse 2022 Survey Results: Transform, Extend, Evolve

/in /by BPM Partners
  • Benchmark your project and get new ideas from over 315 peer organizations that took part in this year’s BPM Pulse survey on budgeting, financial and operational planning, financial reporting and analytics, consolidation and close, AI, and finance transformation. This document contains result highlights supported by charts and expert commentary.
  • Author: BPM Partners
  • Date: August 2022
  • Pages: 23
  • Request your copy today by completing the White Papers Request form
  • The 2023 BPM Pulse is now open. To receive the full 2023 results report and an Amazon gift card JOIN IN

Executive Summary:

The 2022 BPM Pulse Research Study was conducted during April/May 2022 and received over 315 valid responses. Only input from verifiable end user organizations was accepted.

In this report you will:

  • Find out what the 65% of companies pursuing finance transformation are hoping to accomplish
  • See which extended planning operational areas are getting the most attention
  • Learn which capabilities companies are counting on to help them manage through the next 12 months
  • Discover today’s most important features in budgeting, consolidation, and reporting systems
  • Understand the reasons behind the numbers through BPM Partners’ expert commentary

10 Key Reasons for Mid-Sized Companies to Modernize Consolidation

/in /by BPM Partners

Sponsored by Talentia

  • Modern consolidation systems are not limited to legal consolidation, but can also support extensive management reporting as well as budgeting and forecasting.
  • Author: BPM Partners
  • Date: April 2022
  • Pages: 9
  • Request your copy today by completing the White Papers Request form.

Executive Summary:

Full-featured consolidation and management reporting systems were often seen in the past as reserved for large enterprises, due to their cost and complexity. Increasingly, however, they have become more accessible to mid-sized (midmarket) businesses as newer solutions have become available that address their cost, ease of deployment, and usability criteria. As we are reminded by corporate Finance groups each year with their responses to the annual BPM Pulse survey by BPM Partners, consolidation remains ripe for improvement and time savings. Nearly half (46%) of the Finance groups who answered the Pulse survey take two weeks or longer to complete their monthly close. Only 16% finish in three days or less.

A Strong ROI Case for Finance Transformation

/in /by BPM Partners

Sponsored by FYIsoft

  • Finance transformation projects can and should have a high ROI, as we’ll demonstrate through several cost savings/benefit scenarios in this whitepaper.
  • Author: BPM Partners
  • Date: February 2022
  • Pages: 15
  • Request your copy today by completing the White Papers Request form.

Executive Summary:

Finance leaders struggle to balance increasing demands for finance function support with decreasing finance function budgets. As a result, 65% of finance teams are currently undergoing or planning a finance transformation effort. Even in the midmarket, more than 60% of companies have engaged in related projects. These initiatives are a combination of software modernization and process reengineering that aims to make planning and analysis more dynamic, frequent, forward-looking, collaborative, participatory, and inclusive of operations. In addition, manual processes are automated and streamlined which reduces errors, speeds up financial cycles, and leaves more time and resources available for analysis.

The Data Foundation Your CPM Initiative Needs to Succeed

/in /by BPM Partners

Sponsored by DataRails

  • Crucial to the success of every BPM/CPM/EPM solution is a solid and well-conceived data foundation, which helps establish and maintain one authoritative set of numbers to give credibility to forecasts, budgets, reports and analysis.
  • Author: BPM Partners
  • Date: August 2021
  • Pages: 11
  • Available for Instant Download.

Executive Summary:

Companies preparing for a CPM project to upgrade their FP&A, often confront the obstacle of an incomplete or poorly built data foundation. Data quality issues and information siloes are common, data transformations may be difficult, and manual processes for accumulating information typically need to be replaced. Without a proper data foundation, different business units may disagree on which version of the truth is the correct one, and the organization will struggle to agree on performance outcomes and metrics. Lack of trust in the numbers will hinder decision-making.