Effective Financial

Performance Management Briefing note

TCM Infosys Ltd.

info@tcminfosys.com | +44 (0) 845 50 50 350 | www.tcminfosys.com

The past several years have seen a fundamental restructuring of the economy, resulting in major changes to the way companies conduct their business.

While these changes can be felt throughout the organisation, the finance function has been particularly affected, with major regulatory and reporting changes and challenges, and greater responsibility for helping to identify and mitigate risks to the business.

This increased responsibility and focus on financial success has put pressure on finance teams to develop and streamline their processes to drive profit and growth across the business.

Effective financial performance management in today’s competitive environment has become vitally important.

Today’s finance teams frequently deal with multiple priorities that can include everything from overseeing financial transactions to the creation of customised reports for individual decision-makers. Nevertheless, the three core functions remain:

• financial consolidation, close and reporting • budgeting, planning and forecasting • analysis

The consolidation, close and report function is essential to the entire financial process. It is imperative that data is accurate, timely and integrated with data from elsewhere in the organisation. Finance teams often struggle with slow, manual spreadsheets, particularly when data has to be obtained from diverse entities and often involves multiple currency conversions. The final product must also conform to statutory reporting requirements and deadlines.

The budgeting, planning and forecasting process is no longer a static exercise that happens once or twice a year. As businesses fight to maintain or sharpen their competitive edge, many are opting for more frequent or rolling forecasts. This creates a further burden on the finance team, as they are now required to gather, validate and compile more data more frequently.

The third core function is analysis of the data, which in the FPM process, is the opportunity to review and assess the data, seek out areas of opportunity and identify where improvements can be made.

Ventana Research defines financial performance management (FPM) as the “process of addressing the often overlapping issues that affect how well finance organisations support the activities and strategic objectives of their company and manage their own operations. FPM deals with the full cycle of the department’s functions, including corporate and strategic finance, planning, forecasting, analysis, closing and reporting.”

TCM Infosys Ltd.

info@tcminfosys.com | +44 (0) 845 50 50 350 | www.tcminfosys.com

TCM and Financial Performance Management

Financial consolidation, close and reporting

TCM provides a flexible solution for consolidation at group and subsidiary level, and can use multiple hierarchical structures. TCM provides legal and management consolidation, preparing all major standards (including UK GAAP, US GAAP and IAS) from one source. TCM also includes an ICB module and a journals module, including journal templates, secure audit trail and journal reporting.

Budgeting, planning and forecasting

TCM provides a powerful solution for the most complex budgeting and forecasting applications. TCM allows users to develop parameter-driven budgets, forecasts and strategic plans, drill down to see the underlying information and generate reports. As standard functionality, TCM includes scenario modelling, which allows users to determine where efficiencies can be created to directly affect profitability.

Analysis

Users can analyse information in report format and through a free form analysis tool with full drill down and drill up functionality. TCM is seamlessly integrated with Excel, allowing users to input, interrogate and report information. And TCM’s industry-first functionality allows users to input and report commentary down to a single data cell.

TCM enables finance teams to align resources, identify opportunities and ensure compliance throughout the process, all based on one powerful solution that increases productivity, improves the time to close and provides a competitive advantage.