Or, how to align business, AI, and performance to transform planning into a competitive advantage
The same scenes play out regularly in hundreds of financial directions: Excel files circulating by email, formulas that break at the slightest change in scope, a management controller manually rebuilding reporting that three different systems should have produced. The result: weeks lost each quarter, data that's never entirely reliable, and decisions made with a market delay.
This observation has become a strategic topic, at the intersection of finance, data, and AI: EPM – Enterprise Performance Management.
Silamir Group supports organizations in transforming their financial processes. This experience, accumulated over some twenty years across dozens of projects and several generations of tools, has convinced us of one thing: next-generation EPM is a lasting game-changer. Here's why and how to choose the right path for your organization.
What is EPM?
EPM brings together all the methods, processes, and tools that allow an organization to plan, budget, forecast, consolidate, and analyze its financial, as well as commercial, HR, or operational performance.
Historically carried by heavy software suites (Hyperion, Cognos, etc.), the discipline is now experiencing its third generation: cloud-based, collaborative platforms unifying BI and EPM, enriched by agent AI. We are now talking about xP&AExtended Planning & Analysis) : financial planning covering all company functions.
EPM vs BI: What's the difference? BI answers the question «What's happening?» using dashboards. EPM goes further: it structures the processes of planning and scenario simulation that allow for action on future performance, not just observation.
Why EPM has become strategic
A few data points summarize the current pressure on finance departments well:
- Only 7 % of CFOs say they are confident in the face of economic uncertainty
- 68 % consider non-financial issues (ESG, CSRD) to be a critical burden
- 76 % confirm ongoing pressure to reduce their reporting cycle times
Behind these figures lies a very concrete reality in the majority of large companies: disconnected planning. Time lost in manual consolidation, risk of errors on critical Excel files, silos between departments, rigid models, lack of visibility to adjust plans quickly. These pain points particularly affect large companies and mid-sized companies with multiple systems, in sectors with high financial complexity: banking, insurance, telecommunications, industry, retail/luxury, supply chain, private equity.
EPM is no longer just about Finance
This is the most profound change in recent years: EPM now permeates all data-driven functions.
- Finance Budgeting, forecasting, cash flow, data reliability
- Commerce quotas and territories, sales forecasts, incentives, pricing
- RH payroll, variable compensation, workforce alignment with strategy
- Supply Chain : demand management, inventory, end-to-end visibility
- DSI CAPEX/OPEX and subscription management
- RSE CSRD reporting, carbon accounting, regulatory compliance
When deployed effectively, a single platform becomes the shared source of truth across all these functions, instead of a collection of spreadsheets that never communicate.
A rich market, undergoing a major restructuring
The EPM market is being reshaped around several families of publishers, each with its strengths:
- established leaders (Oracle, OneStream, Anaplan, CCH Tagetik, IBM), offering robustness and their presence with large groups; ;
- Agile visionaries (Pigment and Planful in particular, Board to a certain extent), which rely on cloud-native, real-time computing, and natively integrated AI; ;
- desk niche actors (Jedox, Prophix...), particularly suited for specific use cases or the mid-market segment.
There is no single “best editor” in absolute terms: there is the right editor for your context, organization size, multi-entity complexity, data maturity, existing application ecosystem, and AI ambitions. We establish all these parameters upstream of each project with our clients.
Silamir's Added Value
Silamir Group is able to recommend and then deploy the solution that is best aligned with each client's real challenges. But beyond integration, we know how to deeply transform a business process by deploying it, that's our added value:
- a double expertise business consulting and technological integration, forged for 20 years
- a Guided editor selection based on prior diagnosis
- a «Single source of truth» architecture» to reliably ensure data quality in the long term, regardless of the chosen platform
- a change management who guarantees strong user adoption
- a Post-deployment support to maximize value created over time
Each production launch is based on in-depth testing phases, conducted jointly with the chosen publisher, for a robust and sustainable go-live.
Concrete results:
- Personal services sector Centralized international financial piloting, integrated with Salesforce and Sage → real-time reporting, unified financial governance.
- Customer experience, 83 countries Global EPM deployment (SAP/D365 + EPM platform) → over 1,500 users onboarded, accelerated forecasting cycles.
- Pharmaceutical sector : Integration of 4 heterogeneous systems → time-to-report reduced by 50 %.
- Migration legacy → 3rd generation In logistics, active users multiplied by 4 (80 → 300), maintenance taken over by business teams; in early childhood, a complete overhaul of rules dating back two decades, migration completed in 3 months.
Does your organization need EPM transformation?
A few simple questions are often enough to reveal a lack of maturity:
- Do you still do most of your planning in Excel?
- Is your budgeting process truly collaborative?
- How long does a forecast cycle last, and what are the challenges?
- Do your services communicate around a common goal?
If several of these questions reveal gray areas, a quick audit of your processes will likely reveal significant gains.
How long does it take to improve your driving? Less than you might think. Our recent projects show that a targeted migration can be completed in a few months with a progressive «Start Small, Scale Fast» approach: we start with a narrow scope, prove the value, and then expand.
In a nutshell
EPM is no longer reserved for large international finance departments with unlimited budgets. It's an accessible competitive advantage, provided you are supported by a partner who masters both business challenges, all market technologies, and change management.
Do you see yourself in these challenges? Let's discuss your context: our teams perform rapid diagnostics to identify, within a few weeks, the priority gains achievable within your organization and the most suitable EPM solution to realize them.
Silamir Group supports large organizations in their EPM transformation, by combining business expertise, technological integration, and strategic partnerships with the leading software vendors on the market. Would you like to discuss your situation? Contact our teams
