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Revenue Recognition’s Technical Aspects Make Adoption Difficult

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This is a guest blog post by RGP Director of Client Service, Stuart Fisher.

It’s official. The adoption of ASC 606 – the new Revenue Recognition accounting standard, is not going to be fun. Forty percent of finance professionals surveyed by Intaact would rather stand in line at the DMV than go through the process of preparing and implementing the new standard. The technical aspects, which are enough to make anyone cringe, raise many questions. Among them:

  1. How many performance obligations do you have?
  2. What are the impacts of contract modifications?
  3. Will you recognize revenue over time or at a specific point in time? Which recognition method is appropriate for your organization?
  4. What is your stand-alone selling price?
  5. Are you the principal or the agent?

Beyond these technical uncertainties, plenty of implementation challenges may affect a number of functions within your organization. For example … How many contracts need to be reviewed? Are current systems sufficient to accommodate the new requirements? How will reporting disclosures be affected? Is the data needed to comply available, and if so, is it available to the appropriate users? How will internal controls be revised or implemented to accommodate the need for new data and calculations? Who in your organization has the time and skillset to meet the aforementioned needs?

While there are a number of activities we would rather do, implementing the new revenue recognition standard is something many of us will need to do. In fact, the SEC has publicly stated that they are expecting more robust disclosures in upcoming filings. Through impact assessments, companies have learned how the standard will affect their organizations and will be sharing this information in their filings to update investors. To facilitate transparency and the timely absorption of the information by market participants, the SEC suggest incorporating an impact discussion into investor outreach activities.

If you have any questions about how your company should handle the new standard or how RGP can help you, please contact me at 973-401-2565 or stuart.fisher@rgp.com.

Stuart Fisher is the director of client service at RGP, a global consulting firm that provides advice and execution to clients of all shapes and sizes in more than 70 countries—including 87 of the Fortune 100. With a Big Four heritage, its 3,000+ accomplished professionals offer deep expertise across a broad range of integrated services. RGP provides its clients the agility to expand capacity and increase capability. And the support they rely on to help them achieve all that’s possible.

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Understanding Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for Analytics: An Expert’s Take, Part 3

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In two recent blog posts (Gartner Magic Quadrants, Part 1 and Part 2), we provided some clarity around the various Magic Quadrants issued by Gartner in the analytics and business intelligence market. In this post we want to go a little deeper into two specific reports. Earlier this year, Gartner released its new 2016 Magic Quadrant for Advanced Analytics Platforms—the de facto reference standard for buyers evaluating advanced analytics packages. This report is not to be confused with their similarly named 2016 Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics Platforms report. While both analytic reports cover analytic technologies whose lines sometimes intersect and eventually may converge in the future, there still are very clear distinctions separating the two technology categories.

Further clarifying the differences between the two reports, Gartner defines advanced analytics as “the analysis of all kinds of data using sophisticated quantitative methods (such as statistics, descriptive and predictive data mining, machine learning, simulation and optimization) to produce insight that traditional approaches to business intelligence (BI)—such as query and reporting—are unlikely to discover.” There are also typically chronologic boundaries to what is produced in each analytic application: BI typically addresses data exploration and visualization of current or historical happenings, whereas advanced analytics, specifically predictive and prescriptive analytics using sophisticated algorithms, can pronounce future outcomes in terms of propensities or likelihoods—strong natural tendencies to occur, or predicted outcomes rooted in probability, respectively. In other words, BI is more rearview mirror looking, and advanced analytics looks forward.

This year’s Magic Quadrant for Advanced Analytics Platforms included:

  • 2 Challengers: SAP, Angoss
  • 5 Leaders: SAS, IBM, KNIME, RapidMiner, Dell
  • 5 Niche Players: FICO, Lavastorm, Megaputer, Prognoz, Accenture
  • 4 Visionaries: Alteryx, Predixion Software, Alpine Data

                                                         Source: Gartner (February 2016)


While Gartner evaluates these vendors on two specific dimensions—ability to execute and completeness of vision—and many of the niche players often address only specific use cases, the market research report underemphasizes how fully these vendors can accommodate a comprehensive analytic ecosystem. It does not specifically address how easy these vendors integrate with either their own complementary products, or with other third-party vendors.

As a consultant and a former leader of an advanced analytics department in a large industry environment, I can assure you that integration and deployment of advanced analytics are almost of parallel difficulty to the actual analytics being developed. How many of these vendors easily pair with analytic decision management offerings, master data management solutions, BI tools, visualization engines, Hadoop systems, marketing automation systems, etc.? These things are hidden behind the results.

An absence of disclosure on the specific vendor component scores makes it difficult to evaluate a true operational fit within an organization and within the analytic goals set forth by potential consumer.

So what does this mean for organizations?

Organizations must take into consideration what their larger goals are for their analytic programs. Consultants who have spent many years developing analytic solutions, both as industry practitioners and consultants, can often help organizations weed through the hype and get to the practical solutions that yield tangible results.

Revelwood has chosen to partner with IBM to develop innovative analytic solutions, not because they appear in the leader quadrant, but because they offer the most comprehensive analytic ecosystem to support an organization of any size. They also are putting more research and development than any other company—nearly $5.5 billion in the last 12 months alone.

I encourage any organization to utilize an analytics consultancy firm that has deep experience in developing solutions that produce results and can last in an enterprise environment.

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Revelwood Labs – How We’re Adding Value to your Analytics Investment

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For over two decades, Revelwood has been offering leading edge, high value TM1 and Cognos Express products, solutions and services in the FPM marketplace. Up until a year ago, all of these offerings were managed under a single organization—Revelwood. Given the changing dynamics in the market, with a greater emphasis on self-service products and industry-specific solutions, Revelwood has restructured itself and launched a separate product division called Revelwood Labs. This allows us to put more focus, ownership and strategic emphasis on new products and solutions that meet our clients’ needs and those of the ever-expanding analytics market space.

This year, for example, we relaunched our former BPM Suite accelerator as an all new cloud-based solution (also offered on-premise) that leverages the best of Planning Analytics Workspace, TM1 Web, CAFÉ and Watson Analytics, yet still powered by the industry leading TM1 multidimensional database engine. Called Lightspeed, this solution helps our clients get up and running faster and smarter, with pre-built FP&A functionality and embedded best practices from hundreds of TM1 implementations over the years.

Also in 2016, we launched our first ever mobile app called Quantum. It’s designed to untether TM1 administrators from their desktops and allow them to access and manage their TM1 environments anytime, from anywhere. Quantum launched on the Android platform at IBM Vision back in May and comes out on the iOS platform for Apple devices next week. The iOS beta launch is by invitation only, so please contact us if you are interested. It’s incredibly convenient, easy to use and totally FREE!

More importantly, Revelwood Labs has developed a roadmap that will enable us to continue developing products and solutions that add significant value to our customers’ analytic agendas. Right now we are working on several industry solutions that incorporate the use of TM1, SPSS, Watson Analytics and other IBM analytic product offerings. We are also working on a next generation solution to Revelwood’s Performance Toolkit that incorporates the “best of” functionality from Dynamo!, Data Manager and Application Manager for the CAFÉ environment.

There is much to look forward to from Revelwood in the months and years to come. We are confident that the creation of Revelwood Labs will help us help you get more value and results from your IBM analytic investments.

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Understanding Gartner’s Magic Quadrants, Part 2

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In a recent blog post we talked about Gartner’s view on the Corporate Performance Management market, and why they retired the Magic Quadrant for Corporate Performance Management Suites in favor of two magic quadrants. They are the Magic Quadrant for Financial Corporate Performance Management and the Magic Quadrant for Strategic Corporate Performance Management.

Our clients and our team have found a lot of valuable information in two additional magic quadrants from Gartner. The first is the Magic Quadrant for Advanced Analytics Platforms. This report, by Lisa Kart, Gareth Herschel, Alexander Linden and Jim Hare, defines advanced analytics as “the analysis of all kinds of data using sophisticated quantitative methods (such as statistics, descriptive and predictive data mining, machine learning, simulation and optimization) to produce insights that traditional approaches to business intelligence (BI) – such as query and reporting – are unlikely to discover.”

In some ways, analytics can seem like “all things to all people.” But in reality, different types of analytics are being used today by a wide range of organizations. And they are seeing tangible results from those analytic applications. In fact, Gartner reports that “by 2018, more than half of large organizations globally will compete using advanced analytics and proprietary algorithms, causing the disruption of entire industries.” Let that sink in a minute. In approximately two years, analytics will play such a strategic role in some organizations that it has the potential to disrupt entire industries. Whether you are working in a large organization, or in a mid-sized organization, now is the time to evaluate and assess what predictive analytics and advanced analytics can do for you.

The second Magic Quadrant in this space is the Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence and Analytics Platforms by Josh Parenteau, Rita Sallam, Cindi Howson, Joao Tapadinhas, Kurt Schlegel, and Thomas Oestreich. In the report, Gartner outlines the shift in buying power for BI applications from IT to the business as a result of the evolution of self-service analytics. The authors write, “this significant shift has accelerated dramatically in recent years, and has finally reached a tipping point that requires a new perspective on the BI and analytics Magic Quadrant and the underlying BI platform definition – to better align with the rapidly evolving buyer and seller dynamics in this complex market.” The report also presents five use cases and 14 critical capabilities of a BI and analytics platform.

Clearly, there’s no lack of analysis available on vendors and solutions in the overall analytics space. In fact, just determining which Magic Quadrants are relevant for your project can be a challenge. We hope these posts provide some clarity and direction for you.

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What the Heck is Cognitive Computing?

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I’m often asked to define cognitive computing. Honestly, it’s not always easy to define. So first, let’s step back and take a look at the overall analytics landscape. Within analytics, you have descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive analytics. Descriptive analytics summarizes what happened. Predictive analytics studies recent and historical data and enables analysts to make predictions about what is likely to happen. Prescriptive analytics defines a set of actions users should take based on predictions.

Cognitive computing takes all of this much further. It’s an intelligent solution that helps people—or more specifically, knowledge workers—make better decisions. What’s really exciting about cognitive computing is that it learns as it goes. And it’s learning from your unique data, your specific business drivers and scenarios. So ultimately, the answers cognitive computing delivers to you are truly unique to you.

Think of it this way… Software, even customized software, is fairly formulaic. If this, then that. Or think of it as a decision tree. Or a hierarchy. The foundation of the software you are using is the same foundation your competitor is using. The data, of course is different, but at the end of the day, how different are the results?

Cognitive computing starts with that same foundation, but adapts as it learns. It adapts to your data. There is no one right answer, just the right answer for your situation. For example, IBM Customer Insight for Banking is used by both large national banks and regional banks. The questions they ask may be the same, but because their customers, their business goals, their marketing campaigns, their demographics, and many other variables are all different, the answers will be different. It is as different as purchasing a suit off the rack is as from purchasing a bespoke suit, custom tailored just for your measurements, your style, your taste, and your budget. Not just hemmed, or let out, or taken in here or there.

Of course, this definition really just skims the surface of cognitive computing. The magic of it, if you will, is the sheer power of it—Watson can perform cognitive computing against extremely large data sets. Whether it’s IBM Watson Health, or our first introduction to Watson years ago, when it competed on Jeopardy!, Watson can quickly sort through volumes of data that humans simply never could.

When I look at cognitive computing in this context, I like to pose this question: if your knowledge workers had the power of cognitive computing today—the power to quickly sort through untold volumes of data and find the right data to make the best possible decision—what could that mean to your business?

If the idea of cognitive computing intrigues you, consider attending the upcoming IBM World of Watson conference, which focuses on cognitive computing in action today, and where it is going tomorrow.

Read more blog posts on cognitive computing and AI:

Embracing Cognitive Computing

How will Artificial Intelligence Impact your Industry?

Pull a Rabbit out of a Hat — or At Least Insight out of Your Data

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How will Brexit Impact your Financial Planning & Analysis

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It’s been several weeks since the historic and disruptive Brexit vote, where the UK voted yes to a referendum deciding to leave the European Union. Stock markets around the world immediately had a knee-jerk reaction, and there has been speculation that banks—particularly U.S. banks—will move their London operations to other locations. As the dust around Brexit is settling and the world is beginning to comprehend and work through what a UK exit from the EU looks like and how and when it will happen. We sat down with Don Cole and Lee Lazarow at Revelwood to understand how Brexit could impact your Fx conversions.

First, let’s look at how Fx currencies are handled in typical ERP systems. Since these are tools that are modeled to reflect a company’s operating structure, many companies handle their Fx conversions as simply conversion rate times base currency. This provides a one-dimensional view of the data and provides no insight into the true financial impact.

Revelwood takes a different approach when working with our clients on Fx conversions. We develop a variety of conversions to provide real insight into the operating results. This approach enables companies to correctly analyze whether a loss in a region was the result of currency fluctuations, or actually sales or service losses. These conversions include each of the respective currencies (e.g. USD, EUR and GBP) at the following rates:

  • Current Year Actual Rate
  • Current Year Budget Rate
  • Current Year Forecast Rate
  • Prior Year Actual Rate
  • Prior Year Budget Rate

With a system such as described above in place, companies can easily adjust their planning assumptions to reflect the fall of the pound sterling since the Brexit vote. This level of visibility can help companies to understand what changes they can and should make to their current assumptions and/or sales strategies to make up for the financial loss due to the dropping currency rates, or how to at least avoid a big surprise at the end of the fiscal year.

In the longer term, once Brexit happens, there is likely to be major changes to pricing in the UK, and possibly in other regions. One of the key aspects of Brexit is it will decouple the UK market from the EU market, meaning that the UK will need to renegotiate many trade agreements with other nations. And while the UK is still a large nation, in theory it will have less bargaining power than that of the EU. But, that is still many years out. In the meantime, now is the time to re-examine how your company handles Fx conversions and make some changes to better manage the financial fluctuations in the world market.

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Life Lessons Learned as an Intern at Revelwood

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This is a guest blog post by Revelwood intern, Zachary Vinik.

When I told friends and family that I was interning at an established business they all made jokes. “You are just going to organize papers and deliver coffee to everyone.” My mom even told me that in her first internship she had to highlight any English words in hundreds of pages of computer code. I’ve never been happier that everyone else was wrong.

Walking into my first office job I pictured what I’ve seen on TV. A boss that is either too strict or too aloof. Coworkers that spend their time complaining about work. A college student that is treated like trash. Revelwood took those expectations and flipped them upside down. I found a boss that allowed me to go in my own independent direction, noticed when I took a wrong turn, and then subtly pushed me back on the right path. I found coworkers that didn’t just complain about work, but coworkers who seem to actually enjoy what they are doing. And I, the college student, was treated like a valuable member of the team.

The type of camaraderie that exists at Revelwood can only really be understood by being here, but I can attempt to show it in two stories.

My second day at Revelwood, I was doing basic Financial Performance Management (FPM) training. It was just Brian (a coworker) and me in the room. After many hours of basic training we were going over FPM job listings, and at the top of every listing there was a single line, “ad hoc reporting”. When it showed up on the first one I asked a quick question about it, Brian gave a quicker answer, and we moved on. When it showed up on the second one, I made a snarky comment and Brian smiled a little. “Ad hoc reporting” showed up on every listing that we looked at that day. By the end of it I could not read the word “ad hoc” without Brian and I sharing a laugh about it. Even today, whenever I see “ad hoc” on any document, I smile.

The second half of my internship, I was given a programming assignment. The first thought that popped in my head was something like, “Oh god. I’ve never done anything past high school assignments. How the hell am I supposed to do this?” I wore my worry on my sleeve, and Rob came over to the office I was using that day and took an interest in what I was doing. My original thought process was to lie and say something like, “This project isn’t that bad,” but I didn’t. I was honest with how difficult I thought the project was. Rob looked at me and instantly gave me relief. “Just try the best you can. Any result is a good result.” Everyone gave me help on the project when I needed it and in the end I exceeded both Rob’s, and my own, expectations.

Revelwood has these five core values, and when I was introduced to them within my first 15 minutes of stepping into the office, I ignored them. All I wanted to do was move onto, in my opinion, my actual training. Ending the internship has shown me that those first 15 minutes were the most important training I received while here. Everyone here is passionate, does the right thing, takes initiative, focuses on the team, and cares. Hopefully, with what I’ve learned here at Revelwood I will be able to take these core values wherever I eventually go.

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Creating IBM Planning Analytics Workspace Content (Part 2)

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This blog is intended to continue and build upon the previous blog How to Create IBM Planning Analytics Workspace Content. In this blog, I will provide an overview on building the remaining content (second and third row of visualizations) in the Dashboard below.


Dashboards


Create or Open a Book

  • Open up Planning Analytics Workspace, create a new Book or open up an existing book.


Steps to Create Units by Month

  • Drag and Drop a view from the Revenue Cube onto your canvas (we are using Revelwood’s Big Apple demo database for these examples).
  • Update the View so the Rows are the Products and the Columns are the Months that you want to report on.
  • Click on the amounts in your view, and select ‘Edit the Title’ from the blue Toolbar above your View and type in ‘Units by Month (000’s)’. The results will look like the following:


Steps to Create Units by Region

  • Click on the amounts in your view, and select ‘Duplicate’ from the Toolbar.
  • Drag and Drop that view to the right of the first view.
  • Swap the Product Dimension with the Region dimension, so the Regions are on the Columns.
  • Edit the Title to be ‘Units by Region (000’s)’. The results will look like the following:


Steps to Create Gross Margin by Period

  • Navigate to the Applications Folder of Revelwood’s Big Apple demo database.
  • Select the ‘Gross Margin by Period’ report.
  • Drag and Drop that report below the Units by Month (000’s) view.
  • Align and Size it as required.
  • The results will look like the following:
  • Click the amounts in your Units by Region view and select ‘Change Visualization’ from the blue toolbar above your View and select ‘Column’.


The result will be:


Summary

We’ve walked through the steps to create a simple Dashboard that includes Cube Views, Visualizations and Excel TM1 worksheets. Additional items that can be added to a Dashboard include; Media, Action Buttons, Web pages, Images and more. In short, IBM Planning Analytics Workspace is a powerful reporting tool providing you with new ways to analyze data, plan and access your content.

Want to learn more about IBM Planning Analytics? Email us and we’ll show you how powerful it can be for your company.

Read other Tech Tips blog posts:

Important Things to Consider When Changing your COA Structure

Securing Data from IBM Cognos TM1 On-Prem to IBM Planning Analytics

How to use IBM Planning Analytics Workspace

How to Create IBM Planning Analytics Workspace Content (Part 1)

Home » Analytics » Page 24

IBM’s Cloud Strategy and How Revelwood Can Help

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IBM is investing heavily in its analytics solutions, which means lots of things are changing for the better. At Revelwood, we see it as our job to help our clients interpret these changes to better understand how they might affect your organization in a practical way.

One critical component of IBM’s strategy has been the move to cloud. Not only has IBM acquired cloud-based companies like Softlayer to address the world’s infrastructure and platform needs, but it is migrating virtually all of its software solutions to the cloud, as well. TM1 moved to the cloud back in early 2014. Late last year, TM1 Cloud was reincarnated as IBM Planning Analytics (IPA), which includes TM1 and much more.

Here is a quick summary of the key components that are part of IPA:

  • TM1 – Multidimensional database engine (same as on-prem)
  • TM1 Web – Web environment, including Websheets, cube browsing, etc. (same as on-prem)
  • CAFÉ for TM1 – Excel add-in for TM1, including new functionality not available in Perspectives (Perspectives is also supported in IPA, but only for administrators as a means to publish Websheets)
  • Planning Analytics Workspace – a visual, self-service dashboard and lightweight reporting and data capture tool to interact with TM1 data (New!)
  • Watson Analytics – self-service cognitive discovery and prediction (New!)
  • Cognos BI – business intelligence and robust reporting against the TM1 data source (New!)

Moving to IPA on the cloud has its advantages, as well as some considerations to be aware of. For example, not all existing functionality in on-premise TM1 is ready for the cloud just yet. We’ll be covering more on IPA in upcoming blogs, so be sure to check back here often.

What we at Revelwood find most compelling about IBM’s direction is the dual “on-premise or in-the-cloud” strategy. Your organization can choose the right solution at the right time. We can help you understand the differences, develop a roadmap for migration, structure your renewal contract to include the cloud option and, of course, work with you on the migration itself. Just let us know and we’ll get the conversation started.

Who at Revelwood should I call, you ask? Great question. If you haven’t met him already, you should meet John Pra Sisto. John joined Revelwood last year as our first ever Client Success Manager. Yes, his entire purpose at Revelwood is to ensure that our clients are happy and successful. If you don’t know who to turn to, contact John. He can be reached at 201.984.3025 or jprasisto@revelwood.com.

Thanks for listening…we look forward to hearing from you.

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