Google has confirmed it will acquire the relatively new business intelligence business, Looker for $2.6 billion and integrate it will its Google Cloud product line which may industry experts believe is a much-needed addition to their portfolio. The new deal represents Google’s third-biggest acquisition in its history.

Industry experts believe it is a very smart move for Google, suggesting that the deal represents a sign of the value of technology moving towards a cloud-focused future. The founders of Looker developed the business in 2011 with one particular objective, to support businesses with high volumes of data and provide real-time insights. Many companies were struggling to manage data from a range of business apps and social networks spread across multiple systems. Looker delivered an innovative Business Intelligence platform with a core connected to data warehouses such as Microsoft SQL, enabling no transferring of information into the vendor’s hub.

Looker also designed its own language, called LookML, meaning there was no requirement to understand complicated SQL statements. This product alone enabled Looker to quickly establish itself within the marketplace and gain the interest of over 1,000 customers.

The Deal With Google

Industry analysts are quick to point out the similarities between Looker and Google. Both are cloud-focused operators and have over 300 customers in common. Moving forward, there is huge potential for further expansion of the Looker platform. This could include integrating Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning systems from Google.

Adam Wilson, the CEO of Trifacta explains that the rate and scale of which analytics is shifting to the cloud has been unremarkable and the acquisition of Looker is a fine example of further market movements. Wilson believes that growth opportunities today within the cloud are dominated by analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Industry experts believe the Google Looker acquisition will spark further developments within the industry, highlighting that companies need further flexibility to be capable of competing in the digital scene today and many traditional systems may be hindering their progress.

One factor that will result from the acquisition with Looker is that it will open Google to other leading cloud companies. Most of Google Cloud is focused on a series of specific products but the Looker BI platform will connect with a range of other vendors. Looker works with Salesforce, Marketo and Zendesk but it also integrates with Amazon Redshift, Azure SQL, Oracle, Snowflake and more. This integration with other vendors will help Google work within the enterprise market.

Many experts believe this was a deal that Google needed to make. Looker is a younger business that was developed on a cloud system and is a perfect addition to Google Cloud. Not only does it offer innovative technology but it also provides the experience to enable Google to improve its process of positioning its product offerings to other businesses.

With a complete autonomous cloud database and other cloud services, Oracle is intending to support customers with new activities, improving operations and at the same time reducing costs and risk to a business.

Oracle cloud senior vice president Steve Daheb recently stated that Oracle is starting to see things at a tipping point stage, a point after which unstoppable changes will happen. Daheb believes businesses are integrating with new emerging technologies at the fastest rate we have ever experienced.

Daheb explains that these new technologies, whether it be AI or blockchain are enabling us to continue innovating in methods that were previously not even considered. This ultimately is the main strategy of the Oracle cloud and its future development plans.

Oracle Autonomous Databases

Oracle offers a mix of leading cloud services, high potential extensions and further long term plan to develop innovative ways to compete with the big players, Amazon and Microsoft. One particular service is the Oracle Autonomous Database which launches, manages and upgrades itself with no human activity required, covering tasks that are generally done by skill data professionals.

Daheb believes that businesses are actively looking for new technologies to support business development, how they can innovate and create varied experiences for employees and customers. Daheb refers to their customer Hertz and how their process of creating a provision for a database would generally take them up to ten weeks to complete. The Autonomous Database, however, allows Hertz to complete the same process in under ten minutes, freeing up significant time and resources.

Daheb also refers to another client call QMP that specialises in laboratory management and we’re looking to improve the response in getting lab results more efficiently. With the Autonomous Database, an average two-week wait for blood results now takes under 40 minutes. This time reduction creates multiple benefits to prescribing quicker, reacting to problems faster and most importantly improving the service for patients.

According to Oracle, Autonomous Databases are saving nearly 80% of the time a business would spend on provisioning a database. The time saved from using this service is then applied to more meaningful and insightful actions and fine-tuning certain parts of the business. Innovation is sparking significant changes in the business in terms of speed and response and providing quicker access to insights.

BI is a vital tool for finance executives supporting businesses with managing large data pools and measuring overall business performance. Todays’ chief financial officer needs to be more than just a finance executive. To really offer a strategic solution for businesses, today’s finance managers need to really embrace the benefits of applying data science to their business.

Business Intelligence provides companies with the organisational, analytical and technical capabilities to measure insightful data. In regards to finance, BI takes financial and operational information and transforms this data into integrated dashboards, KPIs and most importantly, business insights. Many industry experts believe BI could be a vital tool for CFO’s, creating a financial tool to generate automated data analytics and predictive insights for businesses.

How BI can support the challenges that face CFOs

Finance Operation and Reporting

The collection and consolidation of finance and operation data and transformation into eligible reports is time-consuming and can be difficult. The process can be tedious and require a significant resource, leaving little time and space to act on the findings and data generated.

Many CFOs are fixed in an Excel-focused system, involving manual reporting and the storage of large volumes of data and little time and resources to analyse any findings. BI can provide CFOs with the capabilities to measure data from a range of sources, making the entire process more effective and useful for a business. BI can create automated reporting streams and provide added value to supplementary Excel tools, adding more qualities to cover any potential limitations. In terms of a CFO, BI offers automated financial statement preparation and distribution, enable operational reporting, generate working capital analysis, calculate revenue recognition for complex revenue streams and provide predictive analysis benchmarking.

Executing Transactions

For private-equity backed CFOs, BI can support the navigation of transactions or reveal reasons to halt any transactive processes. BI tools can offer more detailed, granular information on costs using multiple transaction data sets. This level of detail can provide vital information or a business on target returns on investment and enable sales and operation teams to act accordingly. BI systems provide this added detail and quickly, enabling finance professionals to respond effectively. Aside from transaction targets and assessment, BI is a valuable tool for merger integration and divestiture management. BI provides a business with critical information and the necessary analysis and monitoring capabilities to deliver further growth and efficiency.

Performance Improvement

BI provides a range of optimisation scenarios and can really create a value-add enhancement for a business. BI can be an essential tool when a company is underperforming. BI can support CFOs within scenarios where excessive, confusing data pools that measuring the reasons for underperformance very challenging. BI tools are designed in a way to be responsive and capable of measuring in real-time, generating invaluable information to determine the underlying reasons for financial changes. BI can extend to other vital performance factors such as payroll trends, invoicing, inventories, customer contracts, procurement and spending patterns.

With so many clear benefits it would be assumed that more CFO’s are embracing BI. There are several recurring issues that are hindering the uptake of BI with CFOs.

Investment: The initial outlay of BI tools is expensive but the costs related to BI implementation may not be as high as perceived by CFOs and there are returns available from BI investment.

Knowledge: For many CFOs, BI is regarded as another complicated tool that challenges many finance professionals. In reality, BI supports large volumes of data, simplifying the entire process.

Concern: More technically-minded CFOs are still quite cautious about implementing BI due to expected challenges in terms of the timescale of implementation. In order for BI implementation to be successful, it requires a senior professional who completely supports data-driven decision making.

Many CIOs and IT professionals are completely aware that they need to invest in artificial intelligence and other similar technologies to ensure they continue to be competitive for the future. Research shows, however, that the transition takes exceptionally longer than expected.

A recent study released at the Gartner Data and Analytics Conference stated that 30% of audience participants were planning to develop AI capabilities themselves. A further 50% of the audience said that planned to use applications with AI capabilities built-in.

At this month’s SAPPHIRE Now event in Florida, SAP confirmed a number of innovations to the SAP s/4HANA ERP platform to make it simpler to integrate artificial intelligence and robotics to transform applications.

SAP explained that the new release which is due to be available this month will incorporate 100 AI and robotic automated process capabilities, supporting the business’s aim to automating half of its manual tasks within its ERP platform by 2021. The new system will include features that will enable SAP shops to stimulate new business and commercial processes, so they can measure factors such as the subscription impacts and usage pricing. SAP states that the changes would enable intelligent product design and quicker go-to-market time as improved personalised products and services. Some of the new AI capabilities SAP has highlighted includes intelligent accruals management, financial journal entry and innovative robotic process automation.

Another ERP major, Oracle confirmed a range of new AI releases within its product range, announced at the Modern Customer Experience event in Las Vegas earlier this year. Oracle states that the AI improvements would include expense reporting assistant, project management digital assistant and enhanced financials controls.

Implementing new AI capabilities to the SAP and Oracle platforms are a vital part of long term plans for these major vendors. Amit Zavery, the executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Platform states that every company is now looking into data science and machine learning as a vital method to create a competitive advantage. Zavery points out that lack of tooling and machine learning capabilities can, however, cause many of these projects to be unsuccessful.

According to research by Gartner, many companies start data science and machine learning projects using free or low-cost software and cloud services but generally tend to move onto commercial systems. Gartner predicts that AI technology will be integrated into nearly every new software products by 2020.

The personal greeting on websites is becoming a more common tool and often is the first interaction a user has with a business and therefore can be a vital influence in understanding how customers are treated at this particular business. Quite often, it will be a chatbot or a digital assistant providing this service, rather than an actual human.

Digital assistants are text-based platforms that are created to work within a single purpose application. Services are continuing to improve algorithms based on user behaviour and language conversion to enhance digital assistant development and improve the overall user experience. Many industry leaders believe that digital assistants will have a great influence on the way financial professionals operator. Digital assistants can enable finance teams to simplify and automate certain repetitive tasks, enabling finance professionals to spend more time on value-focused activities.

Technology businesses are integrating voice assistant into software support with processes such as recommending suppliers, completing expense reports and providing support on which invoices to pay first. Oracle is implementing innovative digital assistants into a product to assist in capturing and monitoring expenses, claims and generate useful algorithms that recommend the most suitable suppliers to engage with.

Automation to enhance business efficiency

Oracle believes that digital assistants will begin to support improvements to year end, budget management and financial forecasting. Businesses will start to use intelligent assistants to remove duties previously performed by employees, enabling teams to use their skills to develop insights and create more informed business decisions. A fine example of digital assistants in action is at Exelon who implement digital assistant to create a rapid customer service experience. Exelon was looking for quick digital assistant implementation to cover a number of platforms that include web, social media and voice assistants like Alexa. Exelon utilised the rapid digital assistant tools from Oracle Mobile Cloud and created faster response times, reduced costs due to lower call centre expenses and over 10 million users covered via the service.

In the finance industry, digital assistants can offer similar functions to automate and cover repetitive processes that are generally time-consuming for employees, time that could be used to focus on high-level jobs that influence the financial performance of a business. Digital assistants will potentially provide informed answers to specific questions such as ‘annual spend on travel and expenses’. Information like this can allow a financial manager to determine how much budget is available for employee spend.

Industry leaders believe that digital assistants will soon be able to automate complete financial processes, eliminating the need for human involvement. Financial employees will be given more freedom from repetitive jobs and the ability to spend more time on the critical and necessary work. This means more benefits in terms of a business and its financial strategy as well as keeping employees more engaged and challenged at work. Innovative digital assistants are likely to be a vital part of empowering employees and enhancing business performance.

The head of finance at Anaplan has recently highlighted what actions should be taken by finance managers when implementing machine learning into their business.

Technology has improved dramatically in recent years, with machine learning viewed as a strong market within technological change. Machine Learning has entered nearly every market worldwide and for some is a vital tool used to transform business activities by enabling significant changes in managing large volumes of data.

Although there may be more focus on the growth of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning is growing rapidly, with a number of industry examples of businesses incorporating Machine Learning into their business activity.

From social media to voice assistants, many of our systems we use are continuously implementing machine learning to understand our behaviour and personalise our online experience. Machine Learning can go even deeper, however, with revenue management systems using ML to create an algorithm to generate pricing and inventory suggestions.

More businesses are incorporating the benefit of ML, with other companies prioritising plans to incorporate ML into their business activity, particularly within the finance market.

Many finance experts believe ML can enhance financial planning and analysis, wealth management, and how finance managers can control advanced analytics within their company.

What are the opportunities in Machine Learning?

Machine Learning is highly flexible and can potentially be integrated into a range of technologies. Looking specifically at the finance market, data is by far the most critical part of the industry. ML can supply finance teams with more capability to reveal and measure business potential and associated data that allows financial managers to make more informed and insightful decisions.

A good example of ML in finance is with the wealth management technology platform Forward line. The platform is utilising both AI and ML systems to support wealth managers in organising and measuring their data, providing real-time information to make informed choices for their customers.

What to consider with Machine Learning?

Implementing new systems does involve significant investment planning. With this in mind, it is essentially a business ensures they gain the full benefits of ML.

What is the quality of your data? – Data is essential for financial businesses, but as numbers increase, data can get diluted and a little chaotic. Prior to implementing any ML system, businesses need to prioritise the process of cleaning their data and ensuring it is reliable and accurate.

Do you have data governance?

During the ‘data cleansing’ process, there will undoubtedly be inaccurate forms of data and a number of errors. Finance teams must ensure this data is repaired prior to implementing any new technology.

Ensure you understand external and unstructured data

Ensure your team understand your data and what insights it could offer for your business. ML technologies can then support this process and take it to the next level.

Prepare for connected planning in your business

As data grows and diverges across a number of business areas, it is critical to ensure teams can communicate and collaborate on the information provided. This generally involves implementing dynamic planning systems and collaborative business processes, connecting teams with each other in real time. With this in place, ML technology can create insights and communicate between multiple areas of a business.

Ensure you allow time for effective business planning

Developing a business plan is definitely something that shouldn’t be rushed. It is critical that companies establish a realistic time-frame to achieve their end goals.

There is undoubtedly an emerging trend of innovative technology and the rise of more sophisticated machines. Despite the concerns, there is unlikely any threat of machines replacing the human workforce. In reality, most systems will always require some form of input from humans. As finance organisations expand their interests in machine learning, a key factor is ensuring they understand where human input is necessary. Finance leaders need to deliver plans in how machine-learning and human activity will interact in the future.

Domo, a leading provider of cloud-based operating systems in business confirms it has received the 2019 Top Rate Business Intelligence award by TrustRadius.

Megan Headley, the VP of Research at TrustRadius explains that Domo was awarded the Top Rated Business Intelligence Software award based specifically on customer feedback. Headley believes that customers really value the robust data visualisation options and the diverse range of connectors available on the platform. The number of reviews received by Domo placed them well ahead within the Business Intelligence Tools category, with its potential to connect businesses by integrating people, data and systems, resulting in real-time decisions provided by data.
Domos’ goal is to deliver an effective operating system for businesses, connecting people, data and systems. Domo aims to empower these networks, through improving collaboration, leading to more informed decisions from any device. Domo currently works with some of the leading global businesses covering a wide range of industries including finance, manufacturing, media and retail.

Customers explain that the platform empowers end users, removes the pressure and stress for IT professionals delivering reports and creating a data warehouse without developing an extensive in-house team.

Other customers explain that Domo is very useful in creating a data-driven system for a business and for those that lack the technical experience to move further into the cloud environment.

Business Intelligence or Data Analytics is essentially aimed at delivering information to enables employees to make informed decisions. Customers believe Domo provides simplicity in consuming this information and really appreciate the value of the data provided. Domo delivers insights to make informed decisions, removing any assumptions that are made in business decisions.

TrustRadius is one of the most reputed online B2B software review platforms. Every month, over 400,000 customers use nearly 170,000 confirmed TrustRadius reviews to complete their product purchase. The TrustRadius Top-Rated Awards were launched in 2016 and have become a recognised award for B2B technology products. The awards are based completely on user feedback.

UK business Bedford Consulting has been selected as the EMEA Regional Partner of the Year by Anaplan, leading provider of software solutions for multiple companies including corporate performance management and operations.

With its headquarters in the US, Anaplan has in excess of 1,000 global customers. As is the case with other vendors, Anaplan has a system that includes a range of partners that support its customers with overall design, build and implementation of their new products.

The annual awards specifically focus on celebrating and highlighting the leading performing partners across the Anaplan network. The main award for the EMEA region went to Bedford Consultancy, a business that specifically works in project implementation and overall business change on the Anaplan platform. Bedford consultancy has its headquarters in London, with additional office locations in Belfast and Dusseldorf.

Neil Doyle, co-founder and chief executive at Bedford Consulting explains that their business was one of the first Anaplan partners within the UK and since then have been involved in a range of implementations with some of the biggest businesses worldwide, completing over 200 projects to date.

Bedford Consulting works mainly with Anaplan in ‘Financial Planning, Analysis, Sales and Operation, Workforce Planning and Financial Consolidation’. Doyle explains that they support clients throughout the entire project process and are greatly involved in the pre-sales stage as well as within project delivery. Doyle believes their long-standing partnership with Anaplan is now really paying off, with the latest award being their second major achievement in the last year. To begin with, Bedford provided support for both Cognos and Anaplan implementations but two years ago decided to work exclusively with Anaplan, transforming into the biggest focused partner within the UK.

Other Awards

The APAC Regional Partner of the Year Award went to QUNIE, a business consultancy supporting the NTT Data Group. Twelve Consulting were named the Americas Regional Partner of the Year and Deloitte was awarded the Global Partner of the Year award.

Ron Dimon, the MD and lead alliance partner for Anaplan at Deloitte US stated that their client uses Anaplan to support improving profitable revenue growth, enhancing operational activity and creating new insights into improving their overall business.

Other leading consultancies that are currently partnered with Anaplan worldwide include Accenture, Bain & Company, EY, PwC and Wipro.

Technological innovation is transforming how finance professionals successfully operate within their business, creating enhanced information about how to improve the overall performance of finance teams.

The data insights collected from real-time data presented via modern user-friendly platforms is enabling CFO’s and their supporting finance teams to make critical business decisions that can really transform business performance, improve work efficiency and as a result, reduce costs incurred within a company. By utilising these tools, select businesses are moving ahead of their competitors and CFO’s are presented with a platform that allows them to deliver a more responsive and flexible finance team that is capable of measuring and predicting trends and responding quickly to any new opportunities or potential problem.

There are multiple benefits of new technology tools but it can be challenging to maintain the rate of progress and the increasing amount of data stream available to a finance team. With larger sources of data available, it is vital that teams create a structured system of business intelligence to utilise the most out of this data, enabling the company to spot any issues and opportunities. Information needs to be stored in integrated networks so teams are capable of using the data to produce quick reports and analytics that supports decisions within the business.

The demand for efficient and quick response for data presentation is driving continued changes within Business Intelligence (BI). The industry is focusing on creating data more effectively in improved dashboards. The further development of new technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) has resulted in further needs for integration into more systems. This demand has created what some analysts refer to as a RoBusiness Intelligence (RBI), referring to the shift of conventional BI into a new robotic phase solution that ultimately will improve overall decision making and enable users to enhance business performance through responsive and intelligent technology.

Utilising these new technologies and the insights they offer are critical for businesses to really continue to progress in the future. Business Intelligence has allowed finance professionals to use real-time data to make informed and influential decisions. Using robotic analytics will go even further, transforming the entire business chain with deeper and more informed information and intelligence. RBI systems can utilise the most innovative technologies to completely transform business performance and provide new services that can respond to market changes.

The benefits of Robotic Business Intelligence to Chief Financial Officers

With new integrated technologies available for data and analytics CFOs will have additional time to focus on strategic processes, improving business performance and assessing any potential trends that could disrupt business development.

CFO’s who can use the latest technology to analyse their business will be provided with fresh insights. Through intelligent data and insights, they will have the opportunity to transform their team and the entire business. Progressive changes in BI means technologically-minded CFO’s will have the chance to add greater value to the business by developing previous findings and creating innovative solutions for the future. Industry analysts believe that CFOs that embrace the digital technology available will be critical to providing and interpreting information that can transform and revolutionise an entire business.