Enterprise finance organizations have traditionally focused on financial planning and budgeting, financial consolidation, and audit and compliance activities, with relatively little emphasis on the application of advanced analytics. Compared to marketing organizations, for example, which have long made use of predictive modeling and optimization to improve customer relationship management and marketing effectiveness, finance organizations have generally been slower in their use of data-driven models for improving the effectiveness and/or efficiency of their processes.
This special issue of the IBM Journal of Research and Development will emphasize new analytic methods, tools, and case studies that are foundational to transforming enterprise finance organizations to become the center for decision-making for corporate performance management.