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Today, finance teams are at the forefront of change--guiding their businesses as they plan for today and tomorrow. With this responsibility comes the need for a new way of working: an agile methodology for finance-led business planning.
A scalable corporate performance management (CPM) solution can serve as the magical cure to heal all of your team's pain points. The right software will automate actuals and forecasts, free up time for more value-added analysis and ultimately allow your finance team to become strategic business partners within your organization.
This is the essence of Complete Planning. It's a vision for finance and the business to continually plan and act in real-time. Complete Planning creates an uninterrupted, agile and decision-making culture. It gives everyone in the business the financial intelligence they need to make better decisions and take better actions based on better data. It provides accurate and timely insights, models and forecasts that increase the confidence in--and frequency of--financial decision making. And, in the process, it positions finance as the company's strategic leader.
If you're in need of a CPM tool to streamline budgeting, forecasting, reporting and financial close, it's important to remember that not all solutions are created equal. This guide has everything you need to know to select the right solution for your organization and start thriving from day one.
What do you want to achieve? Consult with your executive team to determine the processes and key performance indicators (KPIs) which you want this platform to improve. Communicating these goals and objectives to vendors will help them better understand your needs.
How will your users feel? To ensure effective change management and maximize user buy-in, ask your final users--early in the process--what they need to succeed. To support your users and their day-to-day tasks, consult with them on which platform would be the quickest to learn and easiest to use. As employees join or depart from your team, this platform needs to be simple enough for your team to teach new users at any time without having to hire your own full-time administrator.
What do you need to improve your selected processes and KPIs? To define the success of this project, compile your team's requirements list. What are the must-haves and nice-to-haves? A strict, precise definition of what you need will better guide you toward selecting the platform that can deliver your desired outcomes.
What do the online reviews say? To compare vendors, read evaluations written by customers and analysts on trusted, neutral marketplaces. See vendor scorecards, read why customers picked a platform over another and discover which platform is preferred by customers in your industry, of your size. This will help you assemble your vendor shortlist and prepare questions for when you meet each vendor.
What should you expect from this partnership? It's your first interaction with this vendor--so you should feel like you've been heard after you've communicated your goals and objectives. Ask yourself: Does this vendor understand my needs? Have they explained how their platform will meet my unique needs? Do I trust this vendor team enough to work with them? Have they outlined to us the steps in their implementation process? To assess long-term fit--before you schedule a demo--ask about their company culture and strategic priorities. Do theirs align with yours? While the platform is critical to your decision, so are the people. It's a partnership after all.
What can this platform do? Can it accomplish what you need? This vendor needs to demonstrate clearly that their platform can improve the goals and objectives--most importantly your processes and KPIs--that you communicated in the discovery session. After the demo, ask for a workshop. This is when you'll receive a behind-the-scenes look. If this vendor says building a template on their platform is quick to learn and easy to do, ask them to show you.
How will they support you during implementation? Let them know your priorities and ask how their implementation process aligns with your target deadlines. They should have a structured training plan with online tutorials and additional resources for their new customers to enable you to own and maintain the solution--but the partnership shouldn't end there. After implementation, as your goals and objectives grow, will they supply consultants who can support that growth? This vendor should empower your team by providing best practices--customized to your team's unique processes and KPIs--to minimize your inefficiencies and maximize your success.
How else will they support you after implementation? When your users need technical support, can they expect immediate assistance, a quick resolution and the identification of a root cause to prevent recurring issues? Find out which hours this vendor is available for troubleshooting and what their plans are for mitigating business interruption at times of service outage for platform updates or system maintenance. Along with technical assistance, your team should receive a dedicated customer success manager who can support your team's journey as you grow and scale.
Why did their customers choose them? Watch customer testimonials and read customer stories. Toward the end of your evaluation, request a reference to hear a customer's experience, which processes they use this platform for (and if new use cases developed) and how that customer describes the partnership. Don't hesitate to ask if, or why, they made the decision to switch over to this vendor.
Are you comfortable with how long this platform has been in the market? Has this platform remained stagnant since inception or have they evolved to meet your industry's latest needs? This vendor should have the funding and support to continuously improve their platform. Learn the story of their platform, how often they launch new features and what they're currently doing to maintain a modern solution that can solve modern problems.
After you've improved your processes and KPIs, what can your executive team expect from this platform? Think about what this vendor can do for your team's performance beyond what you originally imagined.
What else can they help you achieve? Does this platform have other features to let you imagine new goals and set bigger objectives--without needing to buy a point solution in the future? Can you envision your team partnering with theirs?
The right buying decision establishes a partnership--one that delivers both immediate and ongoing value, gives your team the ability to scale and enables long-term growth under your leadership.
