Why Investing in EPM is like ‘Buying a Yacht'

Last week I was on holiday in Sardinia and the gods were definitely shining as we just happened to be there at the same time as some friends who have a yacht out there.

We spent a couple of days on board with our friends relaxing in total luxury, being pampered by the crew who did a superb job in making us feel very, very special.  A big thank you J & K.  One of my everlasting memories will be the expectant look on the faces of tourists on the dock as we backed into port, trying to work out if we were famous movie stars or rock gods and then walking on by when they realised I was just normal fat bloke with a nice red British lobster tan  :)

On the way home, I was browsing on the web and looking at the price of chartering yachts and I found a lovely boat called "Va Bene",  which is owned by a hero of mine: Eric Clapton.  Checking the price for a week in August - £200,000 for 7 days !!!!!!

Sadly, the first thought in my mind was "I could implement a decent EPM project for less than that!"

So it got me thinking, what is more value for money?  Would I want to spend a week on Slowhand's lovely boat or implement a world class planning or reporting solution.....

The thought process to justify either is fairly similar.

You see, if you ever thought about owning a yacht and cruising the med, you'd never do it.  Aside from the initial cost, they constantly need maintenance and the running costs are horrendous.

Financially, owning a yacht doesn't make sense but for the time you are on board the yachts, you feel like you're on top of the world.  The special feeling you get cannot be measured in value, it's priceless.  If you can afford it, just do it...........

Similarly, the business cases for EPM projects are also difficult to justify if you look purely on financials.

Some companies try to justify on headcount savings but realistically the heads that get saved in 'Excel churning' should be used elsewhere more productively in analyzing the results rather than producing them.

I have seen some business cases trying estimate savings around reducing the risk made from errors in spreadsheets and even percentages of profit improvement driven by better decision making......REALLY!  The irony here is that these business cases have come from the finance department who should know better.

There is no question that in the mid to large modern finance function; you cannot support the business with just Excel as your tool.  It's pointless to make up numbers so why bother.

Conclusion!

If you're a reasonable mature finance divisional head who is frustrated at the amount of time it takes to plan or report, are nervous about the quality of numbers produced by your team by their 1,000 spreadsheets...........buy an EPM solution.

Alternatively, if you’ve already made your millions and fancy cruising around the med ..........buy a yacht!