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"Drive Performance with
Financial and Operational Performance Management. SAP BusinessObjects enterprise
performance management solutions can help you capitalize on the value of your corporate data, enabling your organization to become more agile and competitive by providing organizational alignment, visibility, and greater confidence"
Source : SAP
Optimizing Financial Performance for a Competitive Edge
Financial Performance is also known as :
Financial Management,
Financial Performance Measures,
Evaluating Financial Performance,
Financial Performance Indicators,
Financial Performance Strategy,
Financial Performance Analysis,
Financial Performance Management,
Performance Management,
Business Performance Management,
Performance Management Software,
Boosts Financial Performance,
Corporate Financial Performance,
Financial Performance Ratios,
Sustainable Financial Performance,
Financial Performance Report,
Financial Performance Resources,
Improved Financial Performance,
Financial Performance Initiative,
Corporate Performance,
Financial Business Performance,
Business Intelligence Financial Performance,
Financial Statements,
Processes Financial Performance,
Optimizing Financial Performance,
Strong Financial Performance.
Applications for financial
performance management
help address changing corporate
finance priorities. By
integrating enterprise data
and processes, the applications
streamline traditional
finance processes and deliver
strategic insight to better
align business strategies to
achieve financial excellence.
Corporate finance positions have never
been more challenging. In addition to
traditional duties like financial planning,
reporting, and governance, CFOs and
financial managers are being tasked
with far more strategic responsibilities.
Historically, the office of the CFO has
had to rely on a disparate set of tools
from multiple vendors to begin to address
these many challenges – which
include mitigating the risk of restatements,
improving budget cycle times,
aligning resources and execution with
the strategic goals of the organization,
and having a complete understanding of
the drivers affecting cost and profitability
throughout the organization.
SAP helps you to meet your obligations
today while laying the foundation for
greater agility in the future with applications
for financial performance management.
Part of SAP® solutions for enterprise
performance management,
applications for financial performance
management cover the full life cycle of
financial management – and put you in
control of performance. Comprising
best-of-breed functionality, the applications
integrate enterprise data and processes
to streamline traditional finance
processes. You can gain strategic insight
for calculated decision making and
can confidently rely on your legal and
management reporting. You achieve a
thorough understanding of how value is
generated so you can align your business
processes more precisely with
strategic goals.
Support Business Needs
With the right data, performance management
applications, and resources,
finance managers can address many
business challenges, such as improving
operational efficiency, ensuring regulatory
and statutory compliance, and ultimately
controlling performance for maximized
profitability. Applications for
financial performance management integrate
enterprise data and processes to
deliver critical information that supports
decisions made by all key stakeholders.
CFOs, finance departments, and business
managers are able to utilize applications
that cover the following critical
areas:
- Strategic management of resources
– Optimize efficiency by aligning enterprise
strategy with individual, functional,
and divisional performance
measures and establish goals, initiatives,
and key performance indicators
(KPIs) that are linked and truly reflect
the desired strategic goals of your
organization
- Planning, budgeting, and forecasting
– Efficiently manage and measure
business plans and enable proactive,
rather than reactive, business tactics
- Consolidation and financial reporting
– Accelerate the financial close
process and have confidence in delivering
the information your organization
and stakeholders require
- Financial governance and compliance
control – Ensure that financial
business processes meet compliance
requirements worldwide to mitigate
risk
- Cost and profitability modeling –
Maximize profitability through a realtime
understanding of cost (including
IT services costing), capacity, and revenue
across many dimensions of the
business such as product, channel,
and geography
Improve Business Processes to
Achieve Ongoing Financial
Excellence
Performance management is not a onetime
event; rather, it is an iterative, ongoing
process that must be driven from
the top down. The goal is to improve
the financial health of the organization
on a continual basis. Applications for
financial performance management
support the performance life cycle by
providing strong strategy management
technology that promotes consistency
and advances alignment (see Figure).
Planning and consolidation software
streamlines planning and ensures a
fast, confident close, and activity-based
costing software manages costs and
helps maximize profitability. A new
breadth and confidence in corporate
data provides the foundation to optimize
enterprise performance and address
the complete spectrum of financial
performance management tasks
within the process life cycle, summarized
in the figure below.
Strategize and Prioritize
The SAP Strategy Management application
helps both line managers and
corporate executives develop and execute
strategic plans. By clearly linking
strategic goals to initiatives, KPIs, and
people, you can set clear priorities with
accountability and risk awareness that
all stakeholders understand and can act
on with confidence.
The software helps you transform written
plans into living documents so that
you can define, discuss, and update
goals with employees. Documents can
include rich contextual visualizations
that drive greater adoption of key objectives
across your organization. In
addition, you can intelligently manage
resources and exceptions to focus on
initiatives that will have the most
impact.
With the SAP Business Planning and
Consolidation application, you can
streamline the bottom-up and top-down financial and operational planning process
with a single application. Familiar
applications such as Microsoft Excel as
well as intuitive, Web-enabled thin clients
serve as native interfaces to the
application, allowing you to minimize
training, plan more efficiently, and improve
budget cycle times.
With innovative features such as business
process flows, you can rest assured
that processes such as annual
budgeting or closing the books are carried
out according to corporate guidelines.
In addition, you can enable more
calculated decision making by incorporating
predictive analysis and riskadjusted
planning.
Monitor and Analyze
Financial consolidation and legal and
management reporting processes form
a critical foundation of any organization’s
performance management activities.
SAP covers the full spectrum of
requirements for performing your financial
consolidation with our applications.
Your account team can advise you on
the best choice for your business.
Comprising best-of-breed
functionality, applications for
financial performance management
integrate enterprise data
and processes to streamline
traditional finance processes.
Figure: Performance Management Processes
Our applications support automated
consolidation processes that meet all
legal and reporting requirements, including
those for generally accepted
accounting principles and the international
financial reporting standards. The
software also features support for multiple
currencies, currency translation
adjustments, minority interest and equity
calculations, and intercompany reconciliation,
for example. Automating
processes and improving compliance
with regulatory and financial standards
– including a full audit trail – not only
help reduce external audit costs but
also enable books to be closed faster,
generating financial reports that you
have more confidence in.
Model and Optimize
The BusinessObjects™ Profitability and
Cost Management application delivers
visibility into the true drivers impacting
your bottom line. By linking operational
activities and financial perspectives,
you’re able to gain a deep understanding
of the levers affecting organizational
costs and profitability of any
dimension of your business – your customers,
products, and channels – both
current and future. You can identify the
causes of underperformance, test your
assumptions, and take incisive action.
You can also evaluate the cost of providing
IT services to users within the
enterprise. Modeling is rapid and model
maintenance is minimal, giving a fast
time to value and low total cost of
operation.
Reach Greater Potential
Applications for financial performance
management drive financial excellence.
You can capitalize on the value of your
corporate data to mitigate the risk of
restatements, improve budget cycle
times, and align resources and execution
with the strategic goals of the organization.
In addition, you gain insight
into the drivers affecting cost and profitability
throughout the organization,
which creates competitive advantage.
The applications deliver the following
business benefits:
- Strategic alignment – Synchronize
goals with initiatives, priorities, resources,
budgets, reports, risk management,
and analysis processes to
access the information you need to
improve performance and close the
gap between strategy and execution
- Improved visibility – Ensure that all
stakeholders in your organization
own, maintain, and share information
in context and in real time so they
can identify areas for improvement
and evaluate strategic scenarios for
maximum business impact
- Increased agility – Improve business
processes to speed performance
management cycles; deliver trusted
data to accelerate every stakeholder’s
ability to communicate, collaborate,
and execute on a commonly
understood and defined plan of
action, adjusting plans and execution
as necessary
- Greater confidence – Leverage a
foundation of consistent and trusted
enterprise performance management
data for incisive decision making and
for compliant regulatory, statutory,
and management reporting
- Achieve operational and financial excellence
by identifying and eliminating the
sources of cost most crippling to your
business and focusing on areas that
maximize profitability.
SAP Solutions for Enterprise
Performance Management
The applications for financial performance
management are part of SAP
solutions for enterprise performance
management – a comprehensive set of
solutions that help your company capitalize
on the value of your existing data
assets. With these solutions, your organization
becomes more agile, gaining
organizational alignment, visibility, and
greater confidence to give you optimal
control and competitive advantage.
These solutions can work with SAP
Business Suite applications; SAP solutions
for governance, risk, and compliance;
and the business intelligence
platform from SAP. As a result, you
can maximize business profitability,
manage risk and compliance, and
optimize corporate systems, people,
and processes.
Find Out More
To find out more about SAP solutions
for enterprise performance management,
visit www.sap.com/solutions
/performancemanagement
QUICK FACTS
Summary
Applications for financial performance management, part of SAP® solutions for enterprise
performance management, cover the full life cycle of financial management and put you in
control of performance. Comprised of best-of-breed functionality, the applications integrate
enterprise data and processes to streamline traditional finance processes. You can gain
strategic insight for calculated decision making and can confidently rely on your legal and
management reporting. You achieve a thorough understanding of how value is generated so
you can align your business processes more precisely with strategic goals.
Challenges
- Inconsistent or inaccurate data and reporting that could lead to the risk of restatements
- Lengthy financial management cycles
- Inability to predict future costs that impact growth
- Lack of alignment between enterprise strategy and day-to-day operations
Supported Business Processes and Software Functions
- Strategy management – Align strategy with execution to achieve operational excellence
- Planning – Streamline planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes to reduce performance management cycle times
- Profitability and cost management – Fully understand what drives cost and profitability across any dimension of your business
- Financial consolidation – Accelerate closing, manage reporting cycles, and comply with regulations
Business Benefits
- Strategic alignment – Synchronize goals with initiatives, priorities, resources, budgets,
reports, risk management, and analysis processes to access the information you need to
improve performance and close the gap between strategy and execution
- Improved visibility – Ensure that all stakeholders in your organization own, maintain, and
share information in context and in real time so they can identify areas for improvement
and evaluate strategic scenarios for maximum business impact
- Increased agility – Improve business processes to speed performance management
cycles and deliver trusted data to accelerate every stakeholder’s ability to communicate,
collaborate, and execute on a commonly understood and defined plan of action, adjusting
plans and execution as necessary
- Greater confidence – Leverage a foundation of consistent and trusted enterprise performance
management data for incisive decision making and for compliant regulatory,
statutory, and management reporting
For More Information
For information visit www.sap.com/solutions/performancemanagement