inlumi blog

You may or may not be familiar with the “catch 22” idiom. It is where one is trapped between two contradictory conditions, a somewhat inescapable paradox. It is a situation that I frequently come across when discussing the benefit of an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solution. Organisations are in desperate need of a tool that streamlines their FP&A processes, but the team involved shudders at the thought of implementing a solution.

Joachim Brandt is a Principal Consultant at inlumi Norway. In 2020, Joachim led the implementation of a consolidation solution in Oracle EPM Cloud at Fiven, a chemicals company headquartered in Oslo. Having previously done all their consolidation in Excel, Fiven now has a scalable solution which has significantly improved their close processes, reporting, and analysis.

As a Commercial Manager in our Managed Services division, I have been very busy recently trying to fit as many upgrades for organisations as I can into our schedule to meet the December deadline for Hyperion 11.1.2.4, expiring on Oracle Premier Support. Rightly or wrongly, there had been quite a lot of indecision about whether to make the move or stay with a release that is moving to Oracle Sustaining Support and the implications this has. Owing mostly to security concerns with the lack of vulnerability patches post Dec 2021, many organisations have now decided that upgrading sooner is better, but that timeline is now likely to push into early 2022.

It is a reality that employee-related costs comprise a significant percentage of an organisation’s operational costs. Typically, a Workforce planning solution caters to the traditional finance cycle of the annual budget and the year-to-go periods of the quarterly forecasting. If an organisation wanted to perform long-term planning of Workforce costs, this was done at a cost centre level with a subset of accounts. The COVID pandemic triggered an emphasis on the costs, with organisations quickly looking for ways to gain further insight into them. A critical aspect in the decision-making is truly understanding where these costs are.

When I ask organisations how frequently they perform a forecast, the response is almost universally the same: every quarter with an annual budget. Mid- to long-term planning was often done manually in Excel even if an Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solution was in place. The focus was on the short term with special attention to the budget.

What are the challenges to being a female leader in tech, and how can starters learn from leaders to be successful in their careers? We wanted to hear from women in technology, specifically on the topics of diversity in the workplace, work-life balance, and mentoring. In this interview, we speak to Susan Gittings: leader, consultant and mother.

Implementing and managing change has always been vital for companies to adapt to changing market demands. In an age of increased market transparency, labour mobility, globalization, instantaneous communication platforms and constant access to information, companies have been forced into a more flexible and holistic approach to their business strategy. Those that can make even marginally more accurate market trend forecasts than the rest of the industry often obtain a significant competitive advantage.

In an ever-changing business environment, teams need to work together to sustain business performance and deliver value. However, oftentimes barriers still exist with organisational silos preventing collaboration, effectiveness and efficiency. In this article we will take a look at the reasons why silos exist, the related risks, and factors driving the change towards integrated, end-to-end processes.

inlumi is delighted to announce a new partnership with Nimbus, a private investment company, which will support us in our mission to help organisations face the unprecedented challenges of today and become fit for the future.