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Global CFO Agenda - Corporate Myopia: Corporate Vision

Sadly, many companies operate in an environment where vital information on the true state of the business is delayed, obscured or even thwarted by competing and incompatible systems and agendas. This acts as a filter, blurring the commercial reality and leading to those nasty surprise warnings that board members and investors dislike.

This is a CFOs nightmare and this type of information anaemia is totally unacceptable. Analysts coined the term "attention deficit" to describe the situation where we are information-rich, but time-poor. Quite often, people just give up because they cannot wait or cannot be bothered going through a complex rigmarole to obtain, what should be, simple information. Perhaps this is another example of the instant-gratification culture derided in daily life, but in this case it is well-warranted. It cannot be Mission Impossible to deliver to businesses simple, easily installed and intuitive tools which offer senior management point-and-click access to the vital signs of corporate health. Nobody needs more shiny toys and gadgets - just speedy access to accurate business information. Can this actually be achieved? Atlantic Global believe so and that is our Corporate Vision. In the recent past, billions of dollars have been spent on technologically advanced, but ultimately unwieldy, systems that have failed to deliver any real and monitorable benefit in exploiting business information. Additionally, the return on investment (ROI) of many of these adventures has been theoretical and measurable only in terms of years, not months.

It is time for the IT systems to "cut to the chase". Demonstrate real ROI in sensible timeframes based on quantifiable business needs that deliver real benefits. Part of the difficulty with the short-sighted, big-spend programmes lay with monolithic software vendors and part with the client companies. Often IT vendors would try to squeeze the shape of a company's processes to suit the outcome they could provide: while organisations either failed to get a proper grip on what was essential business information to them or simply thought they could not get it in a timely manner. These projects are likely to fail, and will be rejected by client company staff, as they simply do not reflect the way the organisation works. They run the risk of stopping people actually "doing their jobs". To successfully determine the health of your company it is vital that you know, in real-time, the true status of your key factors, from the top-line strategy cascading down through plans, portfolios, programmes, projects, sets of projects and even tasks.

For organisations such as service companies and those running numerous research projects simultaneously, it is vital to be able to plan not only existing resource demands but also projected requirements for time and skills, plus likely expenditure. These are things that CFOs should rightly have just a click away, not simply to be aware of the current "state of the union", but also a part of a cost-efficient platform for future planning and growth. Without adequate visibility you cannot exercise control - and without that you cannot know if you have reached the milestones needed for sustainable growth. This is not only about good management, it also reflects the increasing pressure for higher standards in corporate governance outlined by the likes of Higgs and Sarbannes-Oxley which now makes visibility and transparency a corporate imperative. Information support systems need to address this. How much money has been spent on laborious due diligence work that should have been able to be accomplished with the press of a button? Access to valid, compatible, real-time information could save countless millions in corporate marital mismatches - and often the ensuing divorce. Anyone concerned with providing maximum commercial value and benefits to clients will hope that significant lessons have been learned and we are not going to witness another headlong rush toward a mythical software panacea that is long on promises and nowhere on delivery. Simpler options are needed, where the ROI and implementation are more rapid, while evaluation criteria are succinctly stated and clearly visible.

The way the value of the ERP market shrunk by nine per cent in 2002, according to Gartner, indicates that companies are no longer willing to hand over blank cheques for complex systems, but would rather focus their spend addressing specific needs with smaller solutions. Commenting on the recent survey, Guy Washer, MD of Benchmark Research, said: "The results indicate users are aware that information is not reaching the right people quickly enough in a form that they can use". "They now want ways to deal with this and are prepared to invest in solutions that allow them to take information from MRP and ERP to desktop software that everyone is able to use."

That view is echoed by Chad Eschinger, a Gartner analyst, who said: "With ERP, the big bang implementation that was going on in the late 1990s tainted the user experience." Shunning the approach that wants to rip your legacy systems apart and would have you and your IT department beating your heads on the desk, Atlantic Global has evolved an integrated set of business modules, named Corporate Vision, designed to improve business efficiency and effectiveness by enhancing key business processes such as planning and resource management, time and expense tracking, skills management, risk management and information request tracking. It delivers. Speaking on his experience of using Corporate Vision at a User Group meeting in London in July, 2003, Senior Director of Professional Services at Aspect Communications said: "Since installing Corporate Vision we can, for the first time, get a clear picture of our operations and we are rapidly improving our profitability as a result."

Building upon the success of their existing operational business management products, Atlantic have now applied their pragmatic approach in support of strategic management by launching Corporate Vision - a new product which seamlessly integrates all the functionality of the different modules, is quick to install and intuitive to use. Corporate Vision has already been tested extensively with blue-chips such as Pfizer and Norwich Union. It is a radical departure from conventional solutions and is aimed squarely at the efficient delivery of business objectives.

This new addition to the Atlantic Global Solution range has been developed over the past two years and its unique design will enable organisations to manage resource and expenditure budgets together with business and project delivery milestones, providing clear visibility at all levels within the organisation. It will also profile the demand and supply of resources using a simple, easy to use interface. This is all delivered through a web interface that accommodates today's mobile workforce. This approach not only eases the lot of hard-pressed project managers, planners and IT staff, but also helps to synthesise disparate streams of information which currently lack the coherence to hold any real commercial value. By integrating Corporate Vision, management has a snapshot view of the essential milestones in the broader corporate context.