2. • Leading global and retail
banks across US and EMEA
• Biggest names in digital media
and entertainment
• The world‟s largest telecom
operators
• Technology noted as visionary
by leading analyst firms
• Our finance applications help our
customers to centralise control and
financial reporting to empower
decision making
• Expertise in deliver high performance
finance engines, using in-database &
in-memory processing to deliver
results quickly
• Over 15 years of experience delivering
finance transformation projects across
industries
About Aptitude Software
Aptitude Software combines finance expertise) with leading Big
Data technology to help our customers achieve new levels of
financial insight, control and transparency
3. The CFO‟s 2014 Juggling Act:
Reduce Costs While Driving Profits
As we transition from downturn to
growth, enterprises are focused on
delivering profitability, but not while
losing control of costs
5. Business is More Complex Than Ever
• More products
• More customers
• More channels
• More competition
• More systems
• More data
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
More than twice as many?
More than 50% more?
Between 10% and 50% more
The same
Less
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
More than twice as many?
More than 50% more?
Between 10% and 50% more
The same
Less
Number of Products Versus 5 Years Ago
Number of Customers Versus 5 Years Ago
6. The Charge to the CFO:
“Do More With Less”
Chief Executives regard CFOs as their „second in command‟, because of
the importance of financial control and financial insight
Gartner „Survey Analysis: CFOs' Top Imperatives From the 2013 Gartner FEI CFO
Technology Study‟, John E. Van Decker, 2 May 2013
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Facilitate analysis and decision making
Ongoing monitoring of business performance
Creating an effective environment for sharing
relevant information
Quality of data used for business decisions
Measuring product and customer profitability
% of respondents
CFOs' Top Imperatives for Enterprise Technology Investment 2013-2014
7. Big Data ≠ Profitability
Only a few leading firms are using Big Data to drive profitability, even
though they have developed the ability to capture and correlate data
“Profitability should not be conflated with
omniscience. […] Big Data has arrived, but
Big Insights have not!"
Financial Times Magazine „Big data: are we making a big mistake?‟ Tim
Harford. 28 March 2014
8. What Does “Big Data” Mean to
the CFO?
There is a large gap between recognized importance (of using data)
and its actual use… particularly in Finance !
IBM „Pushing the frontiers‟ CFO Insights from the Global C-suite Study.
February 2014
Capabilities/tools used to support Finance
Intuition Spreadsheet ERP Analytic tool
14% 52% 19% 15%
50% 100%0%
9. Generating Insight into Profitability of
Individual Customers is Complex
Calculating profitability accurately requires granular data, a multitude
of complex allocation methodologies, and a massive amount of
processing
10. Case Study: Leading Retail Brokerage
• Leading US retail brokerage
wanted to determine cost and
profitability drivers for different
product offerings
• Existing finance/allocation
systems were geared towards
serving reporting needs and
aggregated data
• Packaged app couldn‟t handle
the volume and variety of data
necessary to run calculations
Customer Challenges
› Legacy allocation systems
› Used for financial reporting
purposes
› 12 hour set-up time
› +24 hour batch window
› Required custom coding to
change allocation routines
› Lack of transparency into logic
› Lack of flexibility to
36 hrs !!!
11. A Big Data Killer Application
Enterprises that can calculate the
detailed profitability of customers,
products, channels in minutes rather
than days have a distinct
competitive edge
12. Understanding Cost and Profitability
The need for profitability insight exists across industries (although
taking different forms)
Financial services
Ensuring targeted offers are
profitable.
Making smart investments in
mobile banking.
Calculating non-traditional
business metrics e.g.
household profitability.
CFO & LOB EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT
Telecommunications
Making infrastructure
investment decisions –
allocating cost of base
stations by product/customer
usage.
Profitability of individual
components of products
bundles.
Healthcare
Regulatory reporting to
understand cost to serve
patients, profitability of
total delivery.
Understanding cost of care.
Driving profitability within the
constraints of regulation
(medical loss rations etc.)
Retail
Understanding warehouse
activity and occupancy costs
per product (SKU) and
product instance profitability.
Direct product profitability.
Vendor profitability.
Optimizing supply chains and
warehousing cost.
13. Aptitude Allocation Engine for
Profitability Insight
Makes Possible the Previously Impossible
• Measure cost and profitability at
levels of detail, flexibility and
speed never before possible
• Addresses depth and scale of
insight not met by ERP systems
or packaged applications
• Enables CFOs and business
leaders to leverage data to drive
strategic decision making
Designed to run
in-database on
leading Enterprise
Data Warehouses
– optimized for Big
Data!
14. Summary: CFO Challenges
• Leading enterprises are now heavily focused on driving
profitable growth – this is the new imperative
– Complexity, volume and competition make this difficult
• Enterprises rely on Finance teams to:
– Close the books quickly and accurately – of course
– But NOW to deliver financial insight and drive profitability
• Leading CFOs know to be data-driven and look to Big
Data technologies to achieve their goals
Editor's Notes
CFO’s have been criticised for being backward looking, behind the curve (in just reporting the results after the fact) and not driving enhanced business value and improved margin for the enterpriseThe CFO faces many problems and pressures: Too much time spent on data collection, integration, validation and reconciliation Fragmented processes used to generate GL entries (that are summarised, lacking detail and attribution) Decision making and financial controls are limited by IT complexity and lack of trusted detail Poorly linked financial and non-financial data holds back insight into profitability Moving targets to comply with new regulations Pressure from the business to implement new business models within financial systemsAll while: Reducing enterprise cost Making faster decisions Increasing transparency and control Delivering value added analyticsThe answer is clear: CFO’s are embracing the data warehouse Unlocking profitability insight from Big Data Making the warehouse the single source of financial truthThese were the drivers for our software business and partnership with Teradata
Aptitude Software is a software company focused on enabling CFO’s and other Business Leaders of large enterprises to achieve new levels of financial insight, control and transparency with their Big Data – linking insight to the business model, business performance and P&L.We combine Big Data technology (Aptitude) with Finance Expertise to create a Single Source of Financial Truth [in the warehouse] and transform CFO and Business Leaders decision making, and operational control, for (i) quick executionand (ii) competitive advantageWe do this by delivering Specialist, and Business Focused, Finance Engines to address (a) new regulations, (b) new business models and (c) the difficult 20% of pressing business requirement not met by ERP (that holds 80% of the value)Today we are going to talk about how the data warehouse, with optimized in-database applications, can be that backbone of financial insight for the CFO and make the CFO a value creator for the enterprise.
Gartner backs the previous slide up by clearly showing that the top imperatives for a CFO are nearly all linked to Profitability InsightProfitability conscious decision makingBusiness performance monitoringSharing profitability driver informationQuality of data used in decisions – have it tied to an underlying profitability model owned by the CFOMeasuring product and customer profitability This drives the CFO and Business Leaders to centralize data and profitability processing [in the warehouse] to explore sensitivity, ‘what if’ and provide essential and valuable decision support from the warehouse investmentFor the first time – the CFO can start to trust and use the data warehouse by bringing in the GL costs and revenue for detailed allocation at a transactional level – a Single Source of Financial TruthGenerating insights from this transactional data is a top priorityOther studies show that CIOs have also shifted their focus onto profitability analysisDespite the overwhelming recognition of the importance of measuring profitability, we know from our experience that many firms can NOT do this quickly and at the level of detail the modern enterprise requiresThis is what we have solved with our Teradata in-database Aptitude Allocation Engine for Profitability Insight
So, what does Big Data mean to the CFO…Leading companies recognize the need to be data-centric and the opportunity of Big Data, BUTis a large gap between recognized importance (of using data) and its actual useThis C-Suite study highlights an astonishing 66% of Finance decisions are only supported by intuition and spreadsheets!Together, Teradata and Aptitude Software, are driving the focus, capability and best practice towards the use of specialist (centralized) analytical warehouse applications such as the our Allocation Engine for Profitability Insight
