Mobility is a workplace necessity. Employees expect their organizations to enable mobility with a fast, secure, and highly functional smartphone. IT leaders recognize the imperative to provide workers with the mobile tools to get their work done—anything less than a great user experience will erode workforce productivity, employee morale, and corporate competitiveness. The standard for […]
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This guide helps tech companies navigate the financial statement audit process from start to finish. Learn how to prepare your team and documents, capture the right internal controls, and respond confidently to auditor questions. You’ll also find insights on audit analytics, what to ask when selecting an audit firm, and tips for reducing stress throughout […]
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A worksheet to identify and solve client pain points to sharpen your competitive advantage. Download to read more now!
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Few debates in enterprise technology generate as much heat and as little light as the comparison between cloud and on-premises ERP costs. Advocates of each approach produce analyses that, unsurprisingly, favor their preferred option. The truth is that a fair comparison is possible, but only if it accounts for every category of cost over a […]
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The supply chain disruptions of recent years taught many executives a lesson I have long believed: resilience is not primarily a matter of logistics contracts or warehouse capacity. It is a matter of information. Companies that weathered disruption best were those that could see quickly what was happening across their suppliers, inventory, and customer commitments, […]
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The shift toward recurring revenue has transformed business models well beyond software. Manufacturers now sell equipment as a service, media companies sell memberships, and distributors offer replenishment subscriptions. These models create predictable revenue and deeper customer relationships. They also create considerable complexity for finance teams, because billing and revenue recognition no longer follow a simple […]
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General-purpose ERP systems are remarkably capable, but they were designed to serve many industries at once. A food manufacturer, a professional services firm, and a medical device company all share common needs in finance, procurement, and human resources. Their core operations, however, differ profoundly. Historically, each company filled the gap through extensive customization, which made […]
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I have been involved, at various points in my career, with companies preparing for public offerings and for sale to strategic or financial buyers. One lesson has remained constant. Investors and acquirers do not merely examine a company’s financial results; they examine the systems and controls that produce those results. A company whose numbers are […]
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I am often struck by how many ERP programs declare success on the basis of a single fact: the system went live. That is an achievement, certainly, but it is not the outcome the organization invested in. The real question is whether the business now operates better than it did before. Answering it requires a […]
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Wholesale distribution is a business of thin margins and high volumes. A distributor may carry tens of thousands of items, serve thousands of customers with individually negotiated prices, and buy from hundreds of suppliers with varying terms. Small inefficiencies, such as a few points of excess inventory, a pricing error, or a missed supplier rebate, […]
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When ERP programs disappoint, post-implementation reviews seldom conclude that the software failed. Far more often, they find that people did not adopt the new processes as intended. Users reverted to spreadsheets, created workarounds, or simply resisted changes they did not understand. The technology was delivered; the transformation was not. Effective change management is the discipline […]
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If I were asked to name the single process that best reveals the health of a company’s finance function, I would choose the month-end close. A slow, stressful close usually indicates fragmented systems, manual reconciliations, and data that cannot be trusted without considerable effort. A fast, orderly close indicates the opposite. In my experience, cloud […]
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Every enterprise has requirements that standard ERP functionality does not fully address. A specialized pricing algorithm, an industry-specific compliance report, a customer portal, or an integration with a proprietary system may all be essential to the business. The question is not whether to extend the ERP, but how to do so without recreating the customization […]
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