Analytics and business intelligence platforms — enabled by IT and augmented by AI — empower users to model, analyze and share data. Analytics and business intelligence (ABI) platforms enable organizations to understand their data. For example, what are the dimensions of their data — such as product, customer, time, and geography? People need to be able to ask questions about their data (e.g., which customers are likely to churn? Which salespeople are not reaching their quotas?). They need to be able to create measures from their data, such as on-time delivery, accidents in the workplace and customer or employee satisfaction. Organizations need to blend modeled and nonmodeled data to create new data pipelines that can be explored to find anomalies and other insights. ABI platforms make all of this possible.
Gartner defines financial close and consolidation solutions (FCCS) as applications that enable CFOs and their teams to manage the organization’s group close, consolidation and reporting processes. The FCCS market equips organizations to (1) manage and drive financial control across their close cycles through configurable workflows and dashboards that support collaboration and provide a centralized auditable view; (2) execute financial consolidation across multiple legal entities (LEs) and geographies; (3) meet accounting standards for currency translation, intercompany elimination and top-side adjustments; and (4) generate reporting that adheres to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and regional compliance.
Gartner defines financial planning software as the key tool that enables better decision making and resource allocation by supporting planning, budgeting and forecasting processes. It connects relevant operational and driver data to profit and loss, balance sheet and cash-flow financial statements. The software offers enhanced decision support and analytics that can be customized to unique planning requirements through data integration, data modeling, workflow and reporting capabilities. These capabilities all enhance a user’s ability to effectively manage the planning process and financial performance.