General ledger data is immediately available upon import into the system

Description

This requires the CPM system to import data from the general ledger and immediately provide it to the user without any sort of pre-processing.

Example Use Case

Scenario: Acme Corporation uses CPM software for budget variance reporting. The company constantly needs up-to-date financial data for departmental planning and reporting which it sources from its general ledger. Their current CPM system requires an overnight process after uploading general ledger data before reporting and other calculations are updated.

Solution: They implement a new CPM system that requires no batch processing after the upload of new data. Instead of waiting for periodic updates or manually refreshing the data, stakeholders can use the most current financial figures for their tasks immediately after the data import. The system works a bit slower, but they determine that it is worth the trade-off from their old system.

Considerations

This is a classic comparison of an OLAP-based CPM tool and one that operates on a more real-time database. OLAP will require processing after upload - this could take minutes, hours, or overnight depending on the amount of dimensions, attributes, time, accounts, formulas, and so on. Once the data has been processed, the system is extremely fast and facilitates rapid analysis.

On the other hand, a system that requires no pre-processing will conveniently show new calculations on demand. For example, load up new actuals in the middle of the month and immediately see the results of a variance report. That is certainly valuable. However, depending on the amount of data, the system could be slow at rendering the calculations. This is because those calculations are happening in real-time.

Some products on the market have attempted to find a balance between the two, but unfortunately there is not one “best” approach to this issue. This is why different CPM vendors have adopted different philosophies when architecting their products.

Questions to Ask a Vendor

• Real-time Availability: Does your system offer real-time or near-real-time availability of imported data? If not, what kind of delay should we expect with the amount of data we plan to have in the system?
• Scalability: With your system providing instant results, should we be aware of any situations where our data requirements will slow down the system? If so, what do you consider to be slow? Seconds, minutes?
• Hybrid Model: Does your product do any pre-processing at all? If so, for what?