
Improving Corporate Planning through Insight Generation
I want to take a quick breather from writing about corporate innovation and return to another topic of this blog: big data and insight as a service. Host Analytics, one of my portfolio companies, recently completed a $25M financing round. Host Analytics offers a cloud-based Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) Suite that streamlines a corporation’s planning, […]
CFOs: More Strategic Than Ever
I was digging through my reading pile and found this about nine-month-old report by Accenture and Oracle entitled The CFO as Corporate Strategist by Donniel Schulman and David Axson of Accenture. Those who follow Host Analytics might remember David Axson at several of our user conferences. (Note: the 2015 conference is May 18-21 — save the date!) […]

SAP Rumored to Launch Hana-Based Cloud Planning Solution Next Week
Well, it’s pretty clear that SAP will be announcing something in Chicago on Monday, judging by the above re-tweet from SAP head of EPM product management David Williams, and by the content in the SAP Conference for EPM program, itself: … Continue reading →

Why, as CEO, I Love Driver-Based Planning
While driver-based planning is a bit of an old buzzword (the first two Google hits date to 2009 and 2011 respectively), I am nevertheless a huge fan of driver-based planning not because the concept was sexy back in the day, but because it’s incredibly useful. In this post, I’ll explain why. When I talk to finance people, I tend […]

Did You Just Make a Plan or a Budget?
Congratulations! If your company is like most, you’ve recently finished a (hopefully) solid 2013 and, from an EPM perspective, completed your 2014 annual planning process. Before we get too excited, however, let’s ask one quick question: did you just make a plan or a budget? In business, we tend to use the terms “plan” and “budget” as synonyms. […]

Kellblog’s 10 Predictions for 2014
Since it is the season of predictions, I thought I’d offer up a few of my own for 2014, based on my nearly three decades of experience working in enterprise software with databases, BI tools, and enterprise applications. See the bottom for my disclaimer, and off we go. Here are my ten predictions for 2014. Despite various ominous […]

Accenture’s Key Considerations in SaaS Financial Applications
The first stop in the Host Analytics cloud EPM roadshow was held today before a packed house at the lovely Four Seasons Hotel in Palo Alto. The event featured a keynote address from Accenture Managing Director Tamara Emerson. One of her slides was about considerations whether you should look at SaaS/cloud financial systems. Here is […]

Vendor Event: Why Does Everyone Need Analytics?
Wednesday, April 25, 2012 10:00 am Pacific 1:00 pm Eastern Presenters Ray Wang Principal Analyst and Chief Executive Officer Constellation Research, Inc. Patrick Morrissey Vice President Tidemark Jennifer Maddox Director of Product Marketing Tidemark Why the Move from Transaction to Experience Requires Better Analytics Business leaders seek better insights for smarter decision-making. Unfortunately, today’s traditional […]