What is cloud based enterprise performance management?

4 min readMar 5, 2021

A brief definition of the major terms and concepts relating to EPM.

The Goal of EPM

Enterprise performance management gives managers and employees the insights and actions they need to deliver organisational success in a fast moving world. This transparency of how each part of the business impacts on the other can reduce performance barriers and encourage mutual goal orientation between employees and managers.

More focus on analysis not data preparation

There is an expectation on employees to balance time consuming and low-value tasks such as data manipulation with high-value activities such as planning. Typically 80% of any analysts time is spent simply cleaning and preparing data leaving very little time for deep analysis, which means more chance of missed opportunities.

EPM allows employees to spend more time on high-value activities, by integrating automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning to uncover hidden patterns and insights faster and more accurately. This strengthens the analysts role as a strategic advisor to the business as their decision making quality is not just improved but quantifiable and justified.

The power of EPM in the Cloud

Cloud based EPM integrates management processes across the organisation by aligning strategy and execution in a single platform. Many organisations are moving towards a hybrid multicloud approach where there is a blend of on-premise software as well as use of multiple cloud providers such as Amazon Webs Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Microsoft Azure and the likes of Alibaba Cloud. Cloud based EPM gives you the flexibility to integrate diverse sets of data from multiple architectures and core ERP systems wherever you are in the world. Geography and time zones are no longer constraints to having real time analysis and decision making ability.

What are the main elements making up modern EPM?

We will go through these elements in more detail in a subsequent article:

Budgeting, planning, forecasting
Financial consolidation
Integrated artificial intelligence and machine learning
Governance, risk and compliance
Single source of truth
A deeper understanding of costs and profitability

The three key advantages of Enterprise Performance Management

To close off, here are three key advantages you can expect from your EPM implementation:

Automation of financial planning, reporting and consolidation processes, eliminating errors and labor-intensive work.

Acceleration of cycle times, delivers valid figures and creating more time for value-adding strategic work and analysis.

Unification of finance and operations according to a single plan, as integrated planning enables improved cross-departmental collaboration.

Source: jedox.com

Making the most of your EPM journey

As with all processes, successful EPM implementation needs the support and buy in of the organisation as a whole. By integrating the latest technology with the skills and motivation of your employees, enterprise performance management is the engine for transforming your business operations making you agile enough to navigate the changing world we live in.