Which finance solution will improve financial processes for the Energy market?

Research by Accenture shows that in most organisations, you will find numerous instances of financial systems, supplied by multiple vendors, fulfilling various roles and processes.

"Only 20% of energy industry respondents believe their companies take an integrated organisation-wide approach to analytics."

Whether it is Business Intelligence (BI), Corporate Performance Management (CPM) or Financial Reporting & Analytics, most CFO’s view these in a similar vein, these strategic systems provide access to the right information at the right time.

The issue of increased information from new and diverse data sources has become a major concern for CFO’s, hindering them in making timely and effective decisions.

The case for changing this process is compelling, but when approaching management for investment, the biggest obstacle is always cost. C-level executives do not want to spend money on internal systems that do not show an immediate return on investment.

Integrated reporting, BI or CPM is about demonstrating and disclosing the linkages between an organisation’s strategy, corporate governance and financial performance within the social, environmental and economic context that it operates in.

“Pursuing innovation internally has a far higher ROI than innovations from external customer facing systems.”

Management reporting is no longer based on reporting of information stored in silo-style systems. Customers in the energy sector are increasingly looking for an integrated reporting framework by implementing a foundation layer for which all data can be cleansed, maintained and used, no matter where or how the original data is captured.

TouchstoneEnergy’s integrated reporting framework is based on their own Infor EPM data warehouse solution.

Infor EPM is an integrated reporting framework (a successor to disparate and disconnected systems and reporting processes). Using software such as Infor EPM unifies data by converting it to useable management information. Budgeting, planning, consolidation and reporting all hint at what makes it possible if ‘integrated reporting’ becomes standard practice rather than an emerging best practice.

CFO’s and software seem destined to play a vital role in all types of integrated reporting and TouchstoneEnergy seems well positioned to help any organisation in the energy sector realise their true potential through these technologies.