Is Your EPM System Broken? Here’s How to Tell
You know something’s wrong with your EPM system when asking a simple business question results in… silence. Or worse, when the time it takes to get the answer renders the question irrelevant. So, what happens next? You stop asking.
That’s the first red flag: when your EPM system is no longer a partner in insight but a blocker to it.
At that point, your finance team is lost at sea, navigating without a compass, while your business drifts without direction.
And when that happens, you're not just facing an IT issue: you're facing a competitiveness crisis.
When Spreadsheets Come Back, It’s a Sign
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) systems are supposed to empower finance teams with agility, insight, and confidence. If your team has to fall back on spreadsheets to fill the gaps (whether for planning, reporting, or analysis) it means your EPM isn’t doing its job.
The stark truth? If your EPM can’t keep pace with the business, your business isn’t keeping pace with the market.
The Holistic Approach: Looking End to End
At Propriety Group, we’re often brought in when companies are in full firefighting mode:
The EPM isn’t delivering.
The business is evaluating multiple solutions.
They’ve tried patching it from the technical side, without success.
The first instinct is usually to call in technical experts. And yes, they’ll uncover what’s broken technically. But what often gets missed is what’s broken from a business perspective.
This is the gap we help fill.
Translating Business Needs Into Practical Solutions
Our role isn’t just about recommending the right software or implementing the latest platform. It’s about stepping back and asking:
What is your EPM actually supposed to achieve?
What insights do you need from it to drive decisions?
Is your solution embedded into your operations, or just sitting on the side?
Success isn’t defined by go-live. It’s measured by whether your team sticks with the platform or reverts to Excel after a few weeks.
If they do, the cycle starts all over again.
The Real Fix? Enablement
The key to breaking that cycle is enablement:
Ensuring the EPM system you’ve adopted is not a peripheral tool, but a core enabler of business performance.
That’s why we’re partnering with platforms like Board and Datarails. They’re targeting similar markets (fast-moving, insight-hungry finance teams) but with different strengths and fits.
Choosing between them (or others) depends on the nature of your operations, complexity, and the degree of integration required. We work closely with our clients to determine which platform fits their needs best, not just technically, but strategically.
Final Thoughts
A broken EPM system doesn’t always look broken. It might still “work” in the traditional sense, but if it’s not enabling better decisions, faster responses, and real-time visibility, it’s not doing its job.
Don’t wait for your finance team to give up and return to Excel. The sooner you evaluate your EPM setup from end to end with both technical and business lenses the sooner you can reclaim direction and competitiveness.
Do you need some help evaluating your EPM?
Get in touch today with one of our consultants and see how we can help align your business for success. Book your call here.
