We read with great interest recently that Financial Consolidation Applications have reached the Plateau of Productivity on Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Business Intelligence & Corporate Performance Management.
The Gartner Hype Cycle (see fig below) tries to make sense of different emerging technologies starting on the left hand side of the graph and typically travelling from left to right. Following their introduction, technologies can be subject to unrealistic hype bringing them to the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” only to fall into the “Trough of Disillusionment” once reality sets in, before emerging at the right hand side where they finally begin to deliver some of the benefits that were originally promised at the “Plateau of Productivity” (in many cases new technologies never progress far, due to failure along the way).
At CALUMO we provide a rich ecosystem of best-practice solutions based on our core product capabilities. Let’s look at the type of functionality commonly expected in Financial Consolidation Applications as they stand at the Plateau of Productivity.
- Data collection
- Online over the internet (real-time for collaboration)
- Mapping (for sites with different ledgers)
- Validation (stop/proceed based on check-total, variance etc)
- Online review and approval process at each tier (Workflow)
- Escalations if late (alerting)
- Journal entries
- Recurring and manual
- Automated currency translation gains/losses
- Automated P&L, Cash Flow, Balance Sheet & notes
- Intercompany processing
- Automated balancing
- Audit trail
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Intercompany eliminations
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Foreign currency translation
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Consolidation (obviously)
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Consolidate actuals and budgets
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Consolidate statistical measures such as headcounts
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Accommodate different fiscal periods & calendars
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Wholly owned or minority interest
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Multi-tier consolidation or hierarchies
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Revaluations
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Automated Intercompany eliminations to first common parent
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Flexible Chart of Accounts
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Financial reporting
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Results in home or reporting currency
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Multiple hierarchical reporting
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Lead schedules for supporting notes
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Rounding to thousands
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Allocation of rounding error to specified account
At Calumo we offer a unified architecture for all our modules ranging from Financial Consolidation to BI, Planning and Operational performance management applications. All these are available through a familiar interface (Excel or Internet Explorer) offering the lowest total cost of ownership amongst BPM vendors today.
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