Market Perspectives

The 15th annual Ventana Research Digital Leadership Awards recognize organizations and individuals that utilize technology to advance business and IT. The Awards showcase professional leadership and their use of business applications or technology that led to improved organizational efficiency, productivity and performance. These leaders and pioneers have contributed to their organization’s success and championed improvements across people, processes, information and technology.

Ventana Research has awarded Ralph Schatten at KPMG AG its prestigious 2022 Digital Leadership Award in Office of Revenue for using Board to develop a sales and revenue forecasting system. This award recognizes the individual, organization and vendor that best exemplifies leadership in the technologies supporting the sales organization. All award finalists in the Office of Revenue expertise area were considered for this prestigious award.

The continuous pressure to generate revenue and outperform cannot be addressed successfully without strategic investments into the people and processes that drive new sales and customer retention. Effective methods to manage revenue performance are required, ranging from coaching and compensation management to the optimization of quotas and pipelines in every channel of revenue. In today’s competitive environment, attempting to utilize sales force automation through spreadsheets and email rather than dedicated, purpose-built applications is ineffective. The path to maximizing your organization’s revenue potential starts with a close evaluation of dedicated applications that help with continuous improvement and alignment in revenue operations as well as performance in digital commerce, partner management, revenue performance management, sales engagement and subscription management.

KPMG, a multinational professional services network and accounting organization, set out to make the company more agile and resilient and build a flexible, truly digital finance organization that could contribute to the secure management of the company. The organization focused on realigning and building a digital finance approach, making information available to authorized users anywhere at any time. KPMG selected Board as a key planning and management tool in finance to ensure that any early warning signs and key performance indicators are used as tools to guide management in addressing variances and opportunities. KPMG can react and counteract against problems faster and navigate in a more resilient and agile manner. Board easily connects to the digital finance core, providing a full-stack planning solution that enables KPMG to actively plan and have a role in the management of the business.

Ventana Research selected KPMG for the 15th Annual Digital Leadership Award in Office of Revenue for its adoption of a sales and revenue forecasting system that links the activities of the KPMG business development and sales team to finance and overall planning targets. As events transpire, gaps to plan are quickly identified and, importantly, qualitative explanations provide context. This connection of finance to sales reduces surprises and aggressive directional changes, enabling continuous feedback to sales and business development as to where to focus their efforts. This incorporation of incremental changers with context ensures that, at a minimum, targets are met and often exceeded.

For the Office of Revenue, it is important for organizations to go beyond transformation and work towards innovation. Board addresses the challenges of creating a dynamic link between events at the front line of sales and business development with finance and overall corporate objectives. Organizations that wish to avoid aggressive directional changes will appreciate the timeliness and contextual detail that the Board International planning platform provides in creating greater alignment between finance and sales.

Organizations looking to maximize the value of business and technology investments across people and processes should consider how the Office of Revenue can optimize its digital potential. If you have not examined how Board can help your organization, it is well worth your time. Congratulations, Ralph Schatten at KPMG, for your leadership.

Ventana Research offers expertise and research-based guidance in the Office of Revenue to help you build core competencies that will increase your organization’s sales potential and revenue processes. To attain excellence in sales, it is critical to evaluate investments based on their potential to augment – rather than detract – from sales processes. Change is required to maintain sales competitiveness and to enable business resilience and organizational readiness to achieve the outcomes your organization deserves.