Report support: Five tips for using logos to improve reader engagement The first job of a report (like a web page) is to confirm for the reader that they are looking at the right document. To this...
Alex Yau – Paving my own way Alex Yau is a graduate consultant by day and a film star (of CALUMO educational content) also by day. He’s a hardworking,...
Clean Data Pt 2 – Air your dirty laundry, don’t wait for ‘clean data’ In part one of this series, we explored how using a corporate performance management (CPM) solution can help clean your data. You...
Communication in FP&A Pt 2 – Think big picture to tell better stories I’m a marketing coordinator, not an FP&A expert, so I can’t tell you what on earth “horizontal analysis” means or how to...
Skylights PowerPoint: Use dynamic CALUMO images to streamline your reporting Is your finance team spending hours building the monthly board pack by cutting and pasting from Excel, only to be told that someone missed...
DRNSW presentation – Enabling Finance to become a ‘value add’ for intelligent businesses Recently, CALUMO had the pleasure of attending the 2021 Shared Services and Outsourcing Week. At the event, we were proud to sponsor...
Anthony Xar – Seeking challenge in all walks of life Anthony is an experienced, sword-owning Senior Consultant at CALUMO, who enjoys the challenge of delivering on diverse business requirements. His passion for...
Clean Data Pt 1 – Which comes first, data cleanse or CPM solution? In this three-part series, we explain how you can help cleanse your data by implementing a corporate performance management (CPM) solution, using...
Communication in FP&A Pt 1 – The importance of Storytelling I’m a marketer, not an FP&A expert, so I can’t tell you much about your balance sheet or variable costs. But I...
Report Support: Get quick data insights with conditional formatting Want quick insights into your data? Conditional Formatting can help you make sense of your data by highlighting trends or patterns in...
Publications – Actionable insights delivered straight to your inbox Getting the right information to the right people at the right time is one of our key missions here at CALUMO. Checking...
Report Support: Flash Fill is your new best friend for data manipulation Want to manipulate your data as quick-as-a-flash? Don’t rely on a complex combination of functions such as FIND, LEFT, CONCATENATE, or Text...
Start Pages – Reduce barrier to entry and training effort Are you considering integrating CALUMO but are worried about the training effort involved in up-skilling all stakeholders? Or are you a current...
Laxman Baral – Mountains, Sea, and Perspectives Laxman Baral believes in CALUMO, and thinks the passion in the people around him is what makes us competitive in the BI...
Full presentation: The transformation of Mainbrace’s data management After a 12-month hiatus, Club CALUMO returned in May 2021. It was a great night of storytelling, where the audience learned all...
Data bias in finance – Part 2: Tactics to de-bias your finance team In part one of this series, we covered what data bias is and some tactics to mitigate its impact on decision-making in...
Philippa Henning – Understanding the people behind the data As a highly adaptable and well-travelled member of the team, Philippa brings a wealth of knowledge and empathy to CALUMO’s BI and...
Report support: Two tips to beautify your spreadsheets Want a more polished spreadsheet that appeals to a wider audience? Not everyone likes the standard matrix look of a spreadsheet. Or...
Meta – Increase your organisation’s data literacy CALUMO’s Meta enables deeper collaboration across your organisation’s data. In a nutshell, Meta allows you to label all your CALUMO assets, providing...
Data bias in finance – Part 1: Don’t trust your gut As a finance manager, your CFO and board expect you to provide accurate information along with informed, balanced recommendations. In an environment...
Kane Sherlock – Asking the right questions Kane is one of CALUMO’s longest serving consultants. His personable nature and understanding of what questions to ask help him efficiently get...
Community Housing sector set for finance technology revolution The community housing sector is facing an unprecedented increase in demand in the wake of COVID-19. To manage this flux, Community housing...
Linked Analytics – easily revisit your favourite data investigations Are you still stuck working from disparate spreadsheets? If so, when you’re presented with a discrepancy in your data, you’ll be used...
Report support: F2 is not the only way to see where that number came from When you’re trying to work out exactly what is behind your P&L figures (or any figure), you can read the formulas, and...
Magic views (or ‘Drill to view’) – see beyond the smoke and mirrors Magic Views (or ‘Drill to View’) is a trick that every FP&A professional should have up their sleeve. At the click of...
Two-thirds of business transformations fail—here’s how you can beat the odds So, you’re a CFO wanting to effect large-scale change? You might not want to hear this, but the odds are stacked against...
Corporate performance management (CPM) projects can find where the bodies are buried Almost every business you work for will have some skeletons hidden away in the data closet and as the financial controller it...
A view from the top – Tim Bryden Taking on the toughest challenges both in business and while snowboarding around the world has given Tim Bryden the experience and perspective...
10 ways to make your team more data-driven With the rapidly changing economic landscape, the roles of CFOs and Finance leaders in business have transformed into that of strategists and innovators. More than ever before, business people are relying on their Finance leaders to drive strategic initiatives and business growth, not...
The art of finance: How Arts Centre Melbourne realised its transformation goals Finance transformation. “Data-driven” Finance leaders. “Future-ready” Finance. These are just some of the terms used more often to describe how businesses are adapting their Finance functions to cope with the rapidly changing economic landscape. Although these terms aren’t new,...
Forecasting has never mattered more There is a risk that you might misunderstand this post as some sort of shameless plug. Cut through that – it isn’t. This is...
Webinar: Top 5 Corporate Forecasting Hacks From Your Peers Do you want to learn how your peers complete a corporate forecast within a day or less? This webinar will teach you...
We’re on the move! CALUMO HQ has a new home In the middle of COVID-19? Is that wise? It does seem like a strange time to...
Zero to Forecast in 3 weeks It's May 12, 2020 - where to from here? We have seen the first COVID-19 wave and the chaos it has brought...
COVID-19 update These are unprecedented and uncertain times. We are here to work together with you as we all navigate the challenges. CALUMO continues...
CALUMO achieves 20 top-ranks in BARC’s The BI Survey 19 Media Release CALUMO achieves 20 top-ranks in BARC’s The BI Survey 19 AUSTRALIA – 31 October 2019 – CALUMO, one of the...
CALUMO Takes the Pain Out Of Reporting and Budgeting at Dynamics Summit 2019 “Budgeting is painful, and reporting takes too much time.” We heard this over and over again at the Dynamics Summit 2019 in...
Join us at the User Group Summit North America in Orlando, FL! For the fourth year in a row, CALUMO is proud to be sponsoring the User Group Summit North America. You can register...
Tech Innovation for Finance Conference: Key Learnings, Winning Despite Disruption Sydney, AUSTRALIA - Held at the beautiful PARKROYAL Darling Harbour, this year's Tech Innovation for Finance Conference promised to equip attendees with strategies...
Webinar: Becoming an Excel WHIZ Excel is an integral part of every accounting and finance team's toolkit. Other than the ERP, Excel is typically the tool that...
CALUMO Partner Innovia Consulting User Conference: NAV and D365 users are still in Excel Hell for Reporting and Budgeting – What’s the Solution? We met scores of people in Excel Hell at Innovia Consulting annual conference. Innovia Consulting is one of CALUMO’s Premier Partners focusing...
SL Users Biggest Pains: DSLUG Conference 2019 Discovery Anaheim, California - “I am in Excel Hell.” This is a very common complaint from Microsoft Dynamics SL users we've heard time...
Dallas CPA Convergence Findings: ‘Excel Hell’ is #1 Problem Held on the premises of the Dallas Cowboy’s training facility and worldwide headquarters, this year’s ‘CPA Convergence, Dallas 2019’ certainly didn’t disappoint....
Join us at the DSLUG Conference 2019 in Anaheim! Are you coming to Anaheim, CA for the DSLUG Conference 2019? CALUMO is proud to be sponsoring, exhibiting and speaking in 3...
CALUMO receives top marks in BARC’s BI Survey 2018 Media Release CALUMO receives top marks in BARC’s BI Survey 2018 AUSTRALIA – 16 October 2018 – CALUMO, one of the world’s...
Evolving to AI for Finance Teams and the people they serve Just before we start I had to write a piece for an upcoming event we were doing and so I did as...
Join us at the GPUG Summit in Phoenix! Are you coming to Phoenix, AZ for the GPUG Dynamics Summit? CALUMO is proud to be Gold Sponsor, and we'd love to see...
Join CALUMO at the CPA Congress 2018 We are excited to announce our sponsorship of the CPA Congress 2018 Join us in Melbourne on the 15th and 16th of October...
5 Tips to Automate Excel for Reporting and Budgeting We're obsessed with helping our customers take the pain out of processes that people currently battle with Excel to achieve. We try to...
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and You I am reading and hearing more and more about the arrival of AI and the application of Machine Learning As usual, separating...
Diversity: A Good Business Model We are very proud to announce that an article written by our CEO Dominic Parsons, 'Why diversity is good for business' has...
CALUMO Feature Focus – Drill to View At CALUMO, we are constantly rolling out new features in our CALUMO software, and Drill to View is one of my favorites! ...
Great success at GPUG Amplify, Chicago March 2018 Amplify 2018 in Chicago was an excellent event. We met so many people from around the country. Most attendees were GP users,...
A story about removing Excel from the desktop of accountants Is it really feasible to remove Excel from the desktops of your accounting team? For some organizations such a thing is an...
Can I connect CALUMO to any data source? “We have systemx/systemy. Can CALUMO connect to that?” asks the potential CALUMO customer after my demo. I am asked this question all...
Why pre-built reporting and budgeting templates are not worth the money If you’re using a system like QuickBooks, prebuilt report templates are easy and a must. But if you work for an organization...
Which comes first: “the BI” or “the Data Cleansing”? Nope, this is not a “chicken or egg?” question (and the answer is the egg was first by the way – email...
The right time to move Excel budgeting to your CPM tool Today, I was talking with a customer about budgeting. My customer does some fantastic reporting with CALUMO, but they don’t use CALUMO...
Join CALUMO at ACE2018 IMA’s Annual Conference & Expo , June 16-20 CALUMO is excited to announce our sponsorship of ACE2018 IMA's Annual Conference & Expo, June 16-20, 2018 in Indianapolis, IN. With presentations...
Join CALUMO at Dallas CPA Society Convergence 2018 , May 11 CALUMO is excited to announce our sponsorship at Dallas CPA Society Convergence 2018 at Omni Frisco Hotel at The Star on Friday, May...
Join CALUMO at Financial Leadership Summit May 20-22, 2018 CALUMO is excited to announce our sponsorship and presentation at Financial Leadership Summit May 20-22, 2018 in Houston, Texas. Challenging economic times have created a...
Join CALUMO at DSLUG18 in April CALUMO is excited to announce our sponsorship and deep dive session at DSLUG18 on April 23-26 St. Louis, Missouri! DSLUG18 is THE conference for decision-makers all across...
CALUMO out and about: Gartner Data & Analytics Conference 2018 The 2018 event was yet again another great opportunity to talk with Gartner Analysts, Corporate Architects, Business Leaders and potential new members...
Webinar: What’s Better Than Excel for Budgeting? In our webinar we demonstrated: How much easier budgeting can be, Budgeting is much faster with products like CALUMO coupled with...
Club CALUMO – CALUMO Success Story – Freedom Foods Gregg Mackinder, System Improvement & Reporting Manager from Freedom Foods. Gregg initially joined Freedom to lead a cloud ERP upgrade and develop...
Join CALUMO at GPUG Amplify in March 2018 Join us, your Dynamics peers and the Microsoft Dynamics GP Product team at GPUG Amplify on March 20-21 in Chicago, IL. GPUG...
Webinar: Why “Lazy Smart” Accountants and Analysts Have The Best Reporting and Budgeting Find out how "Lazy Smart" accountants and analysts have the best reporting and budgeting. You will learn: - What a "lazy/smart" person...
Club CALUMO – CALUMO Success Story – University of Canberra This re-edited video features Andrew Gibson, Manager - Finance Information Systems from University of Canberra. Andrew and team have put CALUMO to...
Webinar: Hands-Free Year-End Reporting Does year-end reporting take time away from your family and fun? Does it mean you can't get your normal day to day...
Webinar: Financial Reporting and Budgeting Sanity Saver It’s a simple concept: One set of centralized reporting hierarchy structures. The impact of messing up you reporting hierarchies, or worse, not have...
BI In Education – University of NSW First of trilogy of End User case studies, here is a short and potted history of deliverables at University of NSW. CALUMO...
CALUMO building awareness with the appointment of Howorth (an Ogilvy company). FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Sydney, Australia and Plano, Texas - 10th October, 2017 - CALUMO building awareness with the appointment of Howorth (an...
CALUMO exhibiting at Dynamics Summit 2017, Nashville, TN – October 10 -13 Howdy Y'all! This year's Dynamics Summit is in Nashville, Tennessee. Once again, CALUMO is proud to be an exhibitor sponsor. Come and...
CALUMO sponsors the CFO Edge Summit, Sydney in November We are really execited to be a Premium Silver Partner of the CFO Edge Summit this year. We missed you in 2016, but we're...
Webinar: Top 11 Features to look for in your next Budgeting Software Top 11 features of excellent Budgeting Software Learn what our customers have asked us for when selecting their next Budgeting tool. See...
CALUMO achieves SOC 2 compliance CALUMO is proud to announce that we’ve been certified SOC 2 Type 1 compliant by the international business advisory firm, Skoda Minotti....
Webinar: Consolidate your Excel Corporate Budgeting Data. Compiling your Excel budget workbooks into one sheet can be painful. The video below can help and save you valuable time! OK,...
CALUMO Success Story: University of New South Wales This video of our CEO and Technology Evangelist, Dominic Parsons - is presented by Microsoft. The Business Intelligence, Budgeting, Planning and Reporting...
Compile your Excel Corporate Budget Data with this Macro! I have compiled many corporate budgets and built forecasting data without an application such as CALUMO. It's possible of course, but wow -...
How To Write an Excel Macro to significantly help your Corporate Budgeting Process Excel macros are not difficult to write and manage. Harnessing Excel macros will make your corporate budgeting process easier. "But I am...
Dallas CPA Society – CONVERGENCE 2017 – a great success! Dallas CPA Society - CONVERGENCE 2017 CALUMO was very proud to be Platinum Sponsor of the Dallas CPA Society's Convergence 2017 event earlier...
Webinar: Excel Budget Template Tips to Keep You Sane! Corporate Budgeting with Excel can be painful and the video below can help. If you're like most people struggling with this pain, you'll recognize...
BI In Education – University of NSW CALUMO for Higher Education Here is a short synopsis of what CALUMO has done for the University of New South Wales. Utilizing their...
BI in Education – Macquarie University CALUMO for Higher Education Here is a short synopsis of what CALUMO has done for Macquarie University. Faced with an issue of...
BI in Education – University of Canberra CALUMO for Higher Education Here is a short synopsis of what CALUMO has done for University of Canberra. With a multitude of...
Webinar: Automate Report Packs with CALUMO Skylights Reporting your Quarterly, Year-End or even Month-End results can be stressful and very time-consuming. CALUMO has the tools to make this process much...
Great, fun dashboards that you can build with CALUMO Did you know you can build cool interactive reports like this in CALUMO? This report uses data from sales cubes for the...
8 Reasons Why Cloud Budgeting Applications Beat On-Premise Thinking about a cloud-based corporate budgeting application? It's cheaper. But is it riskier than an on-premise solution? We've compiled a few reasons why...
CALUMO User License Types in Simple Terms Other software vendors' license models confuse and trick buyers. Our competitors' terms and conditions can be tricky - and we know that can...
Excel tip – How to get a unique list of items from a table Have you ever wanted to get a unique list of items, like customers, or accounts from a large list? I was helping...
Microsoft Power BI for Budgeting? At a conference recently I was asked: "Can Microsoft Power BI be used as a budgeting tool?" The short answer is: "No"....
CALUMO top ranked in Cloud BI in BARC BI Survey 2016 BARC's BI Survey is the world's largest survey of BI software users. CALUMO has ranked incredibly well for years. And 2016 was...
Trends in Financial Planning and Budgeting BARC’s BI Survey is the world’s largest annual survey of BI & CPM software users. BARC recently surveyed hundreds of users about...
Webinar: Automate Your Budgeting Process for Microsoft Dynamics with CALUMO Budgeting with Microsoft Dynamics AX, NAV, SL and GP is more difficult than it needs to be. If you’re currently using Excel,...
Club CALUMO – CALUMO Success Story – Allens Linklaters Allens is an international commercial law firm that operates in the Asia-Pacific region. It is one of what was known as "the big...
Video: CALUMO Feature Highlight – More Flexible Ad-Hoc Cube Browse with Tuple Sets Sometimes a traditional slice and dice of your cube data delivers too much information forcing you to manipulate your data in Excel. CALUMO's...
Video: CALUMO Feature Highlight – Data Spreading for Easy Writeback In this video, Warwick Leitch showcases CALUMO's Data Spreading for Easy Writeback for very fast and easy data capture when budgeting and...
Video: CALUMO Feature Highlight – Rich Text Editor In this video, Warwick Leitch showcases CALUMO's rich text editor that gives users the ability to write rich text in a budgeting...
Budgeting and Reporting in Multiple Currencies Budgeting, forecasting, and reporting with international entities can be tricky. Why? Currencies! Converting the P&L and Balance Sheet using closing or average...
Webinar: Budget better, smarter and more easily In this session with our friends at Conexus SG, Warwick shares tips on how to build great cubes and how CALUMO connects...
Business Intelligence Myths Busted! Over the years, I have heard some of the craziest stuff about BI. Things like “Excel will be a thing of the past...
5 Reasons Your Reporting Needs to Change Now! If you're spending more than zero (that’s 0, nada, nothing, no time, zip) minutes on your reporting, you’re doing it wrong and...
Webinar: Why CALUMO and SSAS are Inseparable In this session, Tim shares tips on how to build great cubes and how CALUMO connects seamlessly giving users a wonderful reporting...
9 Critical and Overlooked BI Features "BI" - what does it mean? It stands for Business Intelligence. What does Business Intelligence mean? Reporting data and numbers mostly. It’s a...
Top 11 Important Features of Budgeting Software When you're looking for budgeting software - there's some very obvious features that make it onto the must-have list - such as:...
Webinar: MR and Forecaster are Dead! In this webinar, Warwick Leitch discusses the replacements available for these technologies - some of which have no development roadmap and are...
New ERP nearly kills businesses. Saved by Business Intelligence New ERP project on the horizon? Boy, that's big. Painful! There is one thing that will make it easier: getting your reporting fixed...
I blew the CEO’s and CFO’s socks off with 1 simple report It was rather amazing really. But so simple. It was just another day for me working with one of my clients and the...
CALUMO Case Study: Stockland Corporation Business Intelligence in the Retirement Living Industry Stockland is a diversified property development company which owns and operates retirement villages, shopping centres and develops housing estates. Alex...
Webinar: CALUMO for Hospitality: management reporting on a silver platter Presented by: Nicole Khalil. Nicole has worked as an accountant for 11 years with various organisations in a range of industries...
8 Cool Financial Reporting Ideas Here are two excellent reports I came across at a client recently. I love these reports (and have replicated them with fake...
Video: CALUMO Feature Highlights Our latest overview video shares why users LOVE CALUMO for reporting, budgeting and forecasting. CALUMO makes Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management easy. We...
5 Reasons why Agile projects work best for Reporting and Budgeting projects Fixed scope (fixed cost) versus an agile project. Which works best? For my customers, agile has been hugely successful. The most painful...
Webinar: Excel + CALUMO = Excel on Steroids! Learn why CALUMO is the fastest and most flexible reporting and budgeting application with our Excel and Web tools. Whether it's considered...
Excel – Don’t hide the truth and lose important information! “All my data’s gone! Who broke my Excel workbook?” Even if it hasn’t happened directly to us, we have all heard those...
Manifesto for Agile Software Development in Business Intelligence I have had the joy of working in many different teams in my Business Intelligence career. From Finance, IT, support, Software Development,...
BI Solves Accounting bloopers This month-end close is not OK A $500M company takes two weeks to produce month-end close reports. It takes two people 100 hours...
6 Reasons To Improve Reporting and Planning So, you believe you have no time to improve or change your reporting or budgeting processes and tools? That's unfortunate as other...
What are the alternatives to pie charts? After my recent blog on pie charts, (I said I was not fond of them) I...
Webinar: Financial Reporting in the Hospitality Industry Business Analysis, Reporting, Budgeting and Planning tools for the hospitality industry Presented by: Nicole Khalil. Nicole has worked as an accountant for...
Gold, Gold, GOLD ! CALUMO achieves a third Microsoft Gold Competency We are really excited to announce that today CALUMO has attained another Gold Competency this time in Cloud Platform, demonstrating a “best-in-class” ability...
Massive savings with CALUMO at Moraitis – More output, less time and less people! Nicole Khalil from Moraitis Group saved two full-time staff in Finance with CALUMO. Watch the video for the whole story. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr20I6kW8D4[/embed]
Built-in BI tools are still too expensive even when they’re “free” In this blog, we compare the BI/Reporting tools found inside of ERP/GL systems with pure-play 'third party' specialist best-of-breed tools. "Oh yes, [insert...
Are errors rife in your reporting system? It happened to me with a client the other day. I was sweating! I was comparing data in new reports with those...
Microsoft KPI and Dashboarding Reporting Options If you’re at the very early stages of your KPI reporting tool review, here is a head start with some information about...
Webinar: Visualize your data with self-serve dashboards PRESENTED BY: Warwick Leitch. Build useful, powerful, great story-telling dashboards Deliver visual insight into your business Improve the visibility into your data...
The 5 biggest BI buying mistakes and how to avoid them “Ok, so we bought this excellent BI tool to visualize our data" Good job! Now, what? What I mean is: "What do...
Webinar: Slice and Dice your data and change your use of Excel forever Slice and dice your data with CALUMO In this webinar from March 2016, Warwick Leitch asked: Are you: - stuck in the...
Top 5 Tips for Instant Reporting of Forecasts and Actuals It should be easy to display actuals from the beginning of the year to the current reporting month – then add the...
Best Practice: Building Financial Dashboards the CALUMO way At CALUMO, we're always working on new innovative ways to display data for non-accounting people. Dashboards are the key. Dashboarding is an area...
Customer Success Story: Large restaurant franchise making smarter & faster decisions with CALUMO Excellence in Business Intelligence We recently undertook some work for a client in the food and beverage industry which exemplifies Business Intelligence best practice....
Webinar: Change your budgeting life forever In this webinar from Feb 2016, Warwick Leitch presented new ways to: Shave off 91% of the time required to execute...
Enough About Cubes Already! Well spectators, too much is never enough when it comes to understanding the power of cubes. Bear with me here. If you've...
CALUMO achieves #1 ranking in three key categories in the BARC BI Survey 2015 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THE LARGEST SURVEY OF BI USERS IS IN. RESULT: CALUMO RANKED AWESOME. Sydney, Australia and Plano, Texas - 30th...
CALUMO Try Instructional Videos Welcome to some videos to help you with CALUMO. Viewing these videos in full screen and with sound turned on is the...
CALUMO in the News: Sponsors AHSFMA Finance in Health Care Best Practice Forum Come and join us today if you're in Aged Care or in Healthcare - as we sponsor the inaugural Finance in Aged...
Webinar: how to report your business within moments, not days In our webinar: How to report your business within moments, not days; we show you how companies like Oakville Produce are reducing...
Excel tip #4,342 Format Painter made even easier I've been working with Excel for years and I continue to amaze myself with what I don’t know about Excel. I have...
How to fix an Excel Workbook file that’s mostly empty Ever wondered why your Excel Spreadsheet has so much empty space at the end and to the right? Or why is your...
BI – Beyond finance and into our own software At CALUMO, we love to make sure that our system is running fast and is stable. Our clients move to CALUMO-as-a-Service because...
4 Tips for data modeling with cubes I was reminded recently by how ease cubes are to create and much fun they are. What, me a nerd? Yeah, I’m...
Forecasting and reporting at its best at Mantra! In this video, Rachel Waters from Mantra explains how CALUMO has revolutionized reporting and planning keeping Mantra ahead of the competition. The...
Amazing – Moraitis Financial Reporting Down From 2 Weeks to 8 Hours! Nicole Khalil from Moraitis Group share's the amazing time save, cost saving and new insight her team and executives now have with...
Ten Things the Best Speakers NEVER Say As accountants, analysts or BI administrators, we need to remember it's part of our job to present. It could be presenting to...
2 things people don’t check when buying a Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools How's the performance of your BI or reporting tool? Are you waiting more than 10 seconds for a report to complete ?...
Webinar: Excel tips to Streamline Month-End Close Reporting 99% of accountants have had zero training in Excel and it’s the tool they often use the most! It’s hard to believe...
How to banish Excel’s curse – Poor Accuracy In my last post, I said most people are arrogant and overconfident when it comes to reporting in Excel. It’s human nature...
Agile Finance departments = success I have had the joy of working in many different teams from Finance, IT, support, Software Development to Sales. In each area,...
Your reporting, budgeting and forecasting reeks of arrogance and you don’t even know it! When did you last formally test any of the reporting, budgeting and forecasting spreadsheets you and your team have been using for...
A Great Plains Reporting Tool for Finance Professionals Microsoft Dynamics GP is an excellent ERP and it comes with a lot of features out of the box. But there is...
Rolling Forecasts – Why, What and How? Rolling forecasts are becoming more popular because organizations are becoming more interested in knowing where and when revenue is earned. What a...
Make Board Reporting 6 times easier! Board reporting is one of the most stressful times in the life of a CFO and the finance team but it doesn’t...
Guided Analytics takes Self-Service BI to the next level In the same way Sir Edmund Hillary needed his Sherpa Tenzing to climb Mount Everest, your business users need a guide to...
Month-end reporting – there is a better way! 100% of attendees at the recent CPA Management Accounting Conference series want to improve – and you can too. [caption id="attachment_978" align="alignleft"...
People who use CALUMO: meet Jenny – Accountant at a Manufacturing Company Meet Jenny Accountant, Manufacturing Company Jenny loves CALUMO. Her life is made so much easier by many of the features that CALUMO...
People who use CALUMO: meet Simon – CFO at a Professional Services Company Meet Simon CFO, Professional Services Company Simon needs to have complete visibility across the business and he needs to be able to...
What Not-for-Profits can do to ensure they survive and flourish under the NDIS "Providers will face unprecedented requirements for detailed and granular information" To say the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is ambitious with far-reaching...
NDIS Service Provider Case Study "If it wasn't for CALUMO, we could potentially owe the Department hundreds of thousands of dollars for unmatched funding. It’s amazing that...
4 Steps to revolutionize your Budget process "What a waste of time! 3 months full-time on this budget and the whole thing needs to change!” That’s what a client...
$500m company cuts Month-end from 2 weeks to 2 days! Imagine what they can do with the time and money they saved! My client is a major supplier to grocery stores. Since...
People who use CALUMO: Meet Dirk, Sales Manager. Dirk doesn’t know he’s using Business Intelligence… Meet Dirk Stirling. He’s a sales guy (though he likes to be called a Business Development Manager) at a Telecommunications company. Dirk...
$2.5b Company completes Year-End in 2 days Financial year-end done in a day and a half – position fully reconciled down to a unit level. Last year it took...
Is your budget process first class? I read a blog recently that got me thinking so I thought I would share it with you. It's by Peter Homan,...
ERP – to customize or not customize – that’s the million dollar question. Part 1 I am going to weigh in here on something that might seem a little off topic for Business Intelligence but isn’t at...
Month-end reporting reduced from 15 days to 3 Club CALUMO in Sydney last week was a great success and thanks to all those who attended. We had the pleasure of...
Web reporting for the non-technical “Why didn’t you show me that before? I am so upset now!” That’s what a client, Sammy, said to me a couple...
What’s New: April 2013 What’s new? Well, plenty. Among the many other things we’ve been up to recently, we hope you’re enjoying the new look and...
Oh the PAIN! It’s budget time again :( It’s that time of year again when plans and budgets are under way – and the crowd roars Yeah… wait… No? No...
Why is Excel the most popular month-end reporting tool in the world? Here are the key reasons: 1. Ease of use. Excel is by far the easiest reporting tool around today. Start typing and...
6 Steps to Streamline Month-End and find the “Holy Grail” Streamlining month-end is the Holy Grail!†I heard a management accountant, let's call her Emma, say at a networking lunch I attended...
Business Intelligence projects can find where the bodies are buried So, you think you know your month-end process, but you might be surprised by what's really happening. I recently delivered a monthly...
Business Intelligence without Budgeting and Forecasting is only second prize Most BI tools only report historical information - which is like only getting last week's race results when what you really want...
Is Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server alone good enough? Harrison is a Financial Controller with a bit of an information systems bent. He was curious to know about Microsoft SQL Server...
EPIC FAIL – When Business Intelligence Tools Go Bad Meet Willow. Willow is a Business Analyst for a large retailer. Willow gets all the reports from their stores and then spends...
Business Intelligence lessons from failed ERPS Having seen so many big brand ERP implementations fail, I sometimes wonder whether implementing ERP is about better service to customers and...
Budgeting in Excel makes me cry I have worked with many organizations big and small and am always amazed that their number one Business Intelligence tool is Excel!...
Big Data and Business Intelligence The stand out talking point of 2012 was surely the rise and rise of interest in Big Dataâ€. So what is Big...
Business Intelligence Buzz Words: Write Back Write back: is a term used in relation to Business Intelligence. It relates to the ability to manually input figures directly into the Business...
Business Intelligence Buzz Words: Big Data Big Data: the next big thing in Business Intelligence. Big data means getting loads and loads of data that is completely unstructured...
The fallacy of buying for the Big Brand Balance sheet A recent QLD Government case raises doubt over the usefulness of a Big Vendor Balance Sheet Even Governments won't take on IBM...
Does anyone actually use Business Intelligence to make more money? When you get past the snazzy charts, analytic epiphanies and one versions of the truth, the single key to successful Business Intelligence...
The Father of OLAP? – Edgar Frank “Ted” Codd So, who invented OLAP? Edgar Frank "Ted" Codd, the same person who invented relational data bases is the best person we can...
6 Steps to Cut Audit Fees & Report Early with Business Intelligence I want a 5% reduction in my core audit costs each year, notwithstanding that the business is growing AND I want to...
ANALOGY: Good Business Intelligence is like captaining an ocean-going freighter Trying to run an organisation without forecasts and automated reporting? The CFO at a $multi-billion manufacturing company gave me this awesome analogy:...
How to make your budgeting or forecasting a success Yep, you can make a budget or forecast process fun. Some of my clients name and shame people who didn't get their...
Upgrading ERP? Here’s 8 benefits that good Business Intelligence provides Moving to a new ERP platform or upgrading your exising ERP can be an expensive process. From our experience however, there is...
7 wins with perfect Business Intelligence Case Study: Global Commercial Project, Mining Industry One of our customers recently implemented a contract & shipment management system. Whilst great at...
8 Budgeting pains with Excel and 11 benefits when its fixed Excel: IT hates it! Finance loves it! Most large organisations use Excel for budgeting and forecasting. In our experience it is a...
3 Steps to Automate your Annual Financial Report with Business Intelligence I recently met with Graeme Hoy from the University of Canberra to understand more about how CALUMO software was helping them out. ...
World’s Best Reporting & Planning Software Gets Rave Reviews from UNSW I recently asked Alister Cairns from UNSW if he could write a few words about how CALUMO has helped UNSW. What I...
Top 5 Lame Excuses for NOT Implementing Business Intelligence In my fifteen years of experience implementing BI, I've also seen a lot of projects postponed and delayed. Here are the top...
Risk Management and the CFO I attended the NSW CFO Symposium in Sydney last month. There were a number of great presentations and its good to see...
Human Capital Investment: What’s the bottom line? We all know that training is important and clearly a good thing for both employees and companies. But how do you sell...
Extreme Business Intelligence? This is a great example of using gestures to interrogate your data. You can drill down, scroll and focus on charts of...
What is CALUMO Rosetta ? Rosetta is a lot of different things to us at CALUMO. Its a way of measuring BI systems success. Its a way...
Decision Fatigue – How to avoid it I subscribe to James Adonis's fortnightly email and this week was excellent. This article is about the best time to make a decision...
This new Mobile BI (Ooo, shiny!) seems somehow to lack, well, newness. In this post, Professional Services Manager Richard Parsons argues that there are more important things on which to focus than "new Mobile BI"....
SQL Server Analysis Services Operations Guide Every Business Intelligence Developer Needs! Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services is an industrial strength OLAP engine that is fast and scalable. With CALUMO it is easy to...
Peter Homan reflecting on Business Intelligence At a recent function held by CALUMO we "door-stopped" Peter Homan to share some of his insights on Business Intelligence and working...
A “Few” thoughts on evaluating Business Intelligence vendors I have a confession to make. I am a huge fan of Stephen Few. You won't see me write huge fan†very...
Business Charts – Learning from Bread and Butter With the many ways in which data can now be visualised, it can be confusing for business users to determine how best...
A simply way to provide contextual help in spreadsheets At CALUMO, we love to work with Excel. It is a great application for building reports, budget and forecast templates, for building...
Just how easy is it to create a nice looking report with CALUMO? A few people have asked me recently, "Just how easy is it to create a nice looking report with CALUMO and make...
The truth about why IT want to kill Excel after 25 years Excel is 25 years old! That's a very long time for any application to still be alive let alone integral to every...
Is Microsoft Excel the bad guy at ANZ and Oracle their saviour? Verses Verses I came across this article and immediately thought CALUMO can help ANZ through their Excel Hell issues. It is a...
Super FAST cubes with CALUMO I was talking Paul Cavanagh-Downs, one of CALUMO's awesome consulting team today. He showed me a web based CALUMO report he built...
Analysis Services – Vision & Roadmap Update from Microsoft Look out world! Microsoft has finally given a pretty good roadmap for the next major release of SQL Server Denaliâ€. SQL Server...
You said you loved the TM1 Advanced Developer Course, but wanted MORE….. So, we listened, we redesigned our course, and now we are giving you more! ✓ MORE exercises (27 exercises!) ✓ MORE chapters...
Game theory and Business Intelligence, no really I followed a recent tweet from our Professional Services Manager recently linking to a blog here on game theory as it relates...
Best BI REPORTING Tool – BI is a tool I couldn't help but notice this thread. Who couldn't if you're in the Business Intelligence Professionals group on LinkedIn. It is 9...
Dynamic Security in SQL Server Analysis Services I was talking to Steven Gibbs from UNSW the other day and he told me how he improved query time for users...
End of Main Stream Support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 On April 12 2011 support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 by Microsoft expired. This shouldn't come as a surprise (it did sneak...
Why the National Trust use CALUMO for Reporting, Budgeting and Forecasting Will Holmes À Court, CEO of National Trust of Australia (NSW), a not for profit (or loss) organisation presented how they use...
The Sky’s the limit with CALUMO Skylights CALUMO Skylights open up a whole new way of integrating web content within Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Word. When combined with CALUMO...
Rocking the Budget in Education with CALUMO and Analysis Services at UNSW A couple of weeks ago, Alister Cairns from University of New South Wales came to Club CALUMO, CALUMO's user group and presented...
BIDS Helper and how it helps me I was busy modifying CALUMO's data warehouse today. There was an existing field in a table in SQL Server that I need...
