ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Assessing critical capabilities in EPM
As part of its ongoing BI/EPM market research, Gartner recently published its 2015 report, “Critical Capabilities for Enterprise Performance Management Suites".
This report is another deliverable from Gartner’s overall Magic Quadrant process in which Gartner uses customer survey data to assess each vendor’s ability to deliver critical EPM capabilities matched to four specific use cases. |

The critical EPM capabilities include the following:
In the report, Gartner accurately states that the degree to which each of the above capabilities is important varies by use case. The use cases described in this research are for the following:
The latest report from Gartner is great news for EPM buyers because it permanently dispels the false notion that Cloud-based solutions are only for smaller organisations or simpler use-cases. That’s important because finance organisations don’t want to choose a Cloud-based EPM solution only to find that they quickly outgrow it as their organisation expands or their use-case evolves. The users have spoken through the research, and it’s clear that there are a number of vendors who's Cloud solution scales very well across company sizes and use-cases.”
This result, along with Gartner customer interactions, indicates a growing level of usage for Cloud-based solutions with larger organisations.”
- Financial Close and Reporting
- Complex Financial Close and Reporting
- Financial Budgets and Plans
- Complex Financial Budgets and Plans
- Disclosure Management — XBRL Reporting
- Disclosure Management — Performance Reporting
- Ease of Maintenance/Upgrade
- Ease of Implementation
- Ease of Use
- Hybrid On-Premises/Cloud Budgets and Plans
- Corporate Planning and Modelling
In the report, Gartner accurately states that the degree to which each of the above capabilities is important varies by use case. The use cases described in this research are for the following:
- Public or private organisations with less than $250 million in annual revenue
- Public or private organisations with $250 million to $1 billion in annual revenue
- Public or private organisations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue
- Individual business units within large organisations
The latest report from Gartner is great news for EPM buyers because it permanently dispels the false notion that Cloud-based solutions are only for smaller organisations or simpler use-cases. That’s important because finance organisations don’t want to choose a Cloud-based EPM solution only to find that they quickly outgrow it as their organisation expands or their use-case evolves. The users have spoken through the research, and it’s clear that there are a number of vendors who's Cloud solution scales very well across company sizes and use-cases.”
This result, along with Gartner customer interactions, indicates a growing level of usage for Cloud-based solutions with larger organisations.”