Recovering investments

Up front, there is nothing wrong with thinking commercially and pursuing ambitious goals. Every company wants to be commercially sound. But everything has its price.

And yes, EPM is hot. That's where it starts. In recent years, private capital providers have invested heavily in existing and new EPM parties. But all those investments have to be recouped. So software vendors and their implementation partners are under pressure to sell new software. With dire consequences.

The EPM customer

The average EPM customer is a hardworking company with limited financial resources. That customer has an EPM need, but usually does not know himself exactly what he needs. For that, he relies on the consultants. After all, that's their job: to give objective advice and offer the right solutions. Only, that often doesn't happen. They do not think in the interest of the customer, but look through their own commercial glasses. Let me give an example.

HFM

HFM, Hyperion Financial Management, is still the most widely used consolidation software . Until about 6 or 7 years ago, 90% of the Netherlands still ran HFM. However, many users ended the maintenance contract for HFM to switch to other software. On the "advice" of their implementation partner.

I don't understand that. In 8 out of 10 cases, HFM is still an excellent product, far from being end of life. Every consultant knows that HFM will still be supported at least until 2034. So why are you giving this advice? I can only think of one thing: the project portfolio needs to be filled. New implementations involve many expensive consulting hours. Especially when it comes to highly technical EPM software.

Growing pains

The focus on growth and sales also comes at the expense of service. I have seen implementation parties grow from 25 to 100 to sometimes as many as 200 consultants. They took on huge numbers of junior and medior consultants. With all due respect to these employees, but as a customer you don't always become very happy with that. You'd rather see the very experienced top consultants doing your project.

And that's not the only growing pains. In organizations that grow rapidly, attention shifts to the internal organization. This does not become faster and more agile. All sorts of hierarchies arise. So that has to be managed. The attention is no longer fully with you as the customer.

Support

You also often take a step back in terms of support. Many fast-growing EPM companies get their support - consciously or not - from Asia. This provides a different customer experience than you are used to from support teams here in the Netherlands. They usually solve your problem faster, better and cheaper.

Larger supply, but better?

The sales mindset also affects the offering. Software companies are constantly expanding their functionality. They want to be able to offer a total solution that includes everything. But most software companies are good at only one or a few EPM disciplines. Excelling in everything is simply impossible. I mentioned this earlier in my blog on EPM software selection.

That same drive to sell as many solutions as possible is also seen among the big consulting firms. They see that EPM is hot and want to get a piece of the pie by building their own EPM practice. I wonder if they will be successful at it. EPM is and will always be a profession and a niche business. Everything depends on the right, experienced EPM consultants. And those are simply scarce.

Easy talk?

You might think: Easy talk, this Bart van Velzen. That's right, at Bart & Partners we don't feel the hot breath of investors breathing down our necks. But we chose that ourselves. Nor do we let ourselves be tempted to go global. We're just Dutch, our clients are Dutch, done.

Nor do we sell EPM software. So we don't have any commercial interest in the advice we give. Again: a conscious choice. We only want to offer EPM solutions that are100% in the customer's interest.

Smart, Simple, Solid

Don't we want to grow, then? Yes we do. We too have expanded significantly since our launch in 2019. But not at the expense of our principles. We remain true to our vision, which can be summed up in 3 words: Smart, Simple, Solid.

From those glasses we also look to the future. Don't be fooled. Not even by the new technologies like AI, prescriptive modeling and XP&A. But more on that in a future blog.