CXO Software Innovation Showcase 2018

Financial reporting, whether for internal stakeholders or public consumption, forms the bedrock of the finance function and is often the primary and most visible measure of the finance function’s professional competence and standing. But for many organizations the financial and management reporting process is teetering under the strain of new business models, the clamor for deeper business insights, an over-reliance on spreadsheets that are spiraling out of control as well as financial and non-financial data sources that are scattered throughout the enterprise.

For most finance professionals the ERP system or their financial management system is historically the undisputed center of their ‘universe’. But while the general ERP remains the most trusted source of financial information, modern finance functions need to contend with a variety of Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) and Business Intelligence (BI) systems as well as an increasingly diverse range of data sources visited on them by regulation, compliance and the machinations of the digital economy.

It is no wonder that over half of the respondents to FSN’s 2017 survey, “The Future of Financial Reporting” said that reporting involves huge amounts of manual checking every time a change is made, and 60% believe they spend too much time cleaning and manipulating data. Their willingness to burn the ‘midnight oil’ to ensure the financial reports are delivered accurately and on time is admirable, but it isn’t sustainable. It leaves very little spare time for modern finance professionals to fulfill their wider role as business partners and advisors.

It’s a familiar tale to CXO Solutions BV, an innovative organization founded in 2007 by EPM and finance professionals frustrated with the lack of financial reporting functionality of historic Excel and BI based approaches to performance reporting. The founders set about creating CXO Software to provide pre-built and configurable Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) adapters that connect intelligently to multi-dimensional financial data, inherit its hierarchies, structures and metadata, without having to rely on the IT function or incur excessive cost.

Their solution, which focuses exclusively on the needs of finance professionals is innovative and unique. In this showcase we highlight just three innovations in CXO Software, namely, its ability to coalesce multiple sets of data into a single trustworthy environment for reporting; its embedded ability to provide an engaging environment for ‘conversation’ and collaboration and, finally, its ability to support business partnering with ‘out-of-the-box’ reporting and intelligent data visualization.