Tidemark's Fall '14 Release Introduces Predictive Business Analytics in the Era of Big Data, Closes the Gap Between Operations and Finance

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Nov.12, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Tidemark, maker of modern financial planning and enterprise analytics apps, announced today the Fall '14 release of its cloud-native, mobile-first platform. The new capabilities empower CFOs and their teams to bridge the gap between finance and operations by applying modern financial planning and analysis (FP&A) to keep pace with the changing business environment. This platform release includes a new technical breakthrough, the introduction of Predictive Business Analytics features, which is specifically designed for the era of Big Data. Tidemark's new Predictive Business Analytics features provide the ability to integrate information from different sources to explore, predict outcomes as well as forecast in real-time, and act on the numbers that impact the bottom line.

In the context of finance, Big Data is external and internal information that -- when assessed properly -- offers an organization a new layer of context that provides insights that impact growth-targeted metrics and performance indicators, such as the largest revenue risk or promotions that peak customer sentiment and loyalty. Similar to the change and disruption of IT, HR, and marketing departments, in the era of Big Data Finance, Predictive Business Analytics now has the opportunity to empower the finance department to enable future-looking enterprise-wide visibility to drive transformational change.

Unify Finance and Operations

Big Data offers a new vision and promise for some organizations, but for traditional finance departments that are constrained by legacy technologies and cube-like modeling, it can also mean new pressure to answer the questions that seem impossible with traditional FP&A solutions. Changing these outdated processes to make budgeting, planning and forecasting (BP&F) extend beyond traditional boundaries requires a modern solution that results in finance and operations becoming more collaborative. With greater enterprise-wide visibility other departments benefit from more self-reliance. Now frontline managers can stay close to what matters most by taking advantage of operational insights derived from a continual cross-functional collaboration with finance.

"Listening and working closely with our customers, we understand that no company can succeed in adapting to the digital economy by planning based on looking in the rearview mirror," said Christian Gheorghe, Founder and CEO of Tidemark. "In order to continue delivering on our promise to re-imagine FP&A, we're introducing a more flexible environment that makes use of Big Data and the crucial context that surrounds it so our customers can ask questions they never thought could be asked. They can now unleash the real potential of their organizations by acting on what was once called the improbable and the impossible by producing accurate plans and forecasts that reflect real-world factors that shape the company's future."

Answer Previously Impossible Questions to Run in the Now, Impact the Future

While other FP&A solutions focus on historical data and pre-defined data models that limit the possible answers an organization can arrive at, Tidemark Fall '14 is designed for users to utilize Big Data Finance by tying together both internal and external information. Teams will be able to drill through to the most granular level -- such as SKU items in regional stores for large retailers -- to analyze various scenarios, use machine-learning to understand the causation and correlations for full context, and predict the paths likely to produce the most desired outcomes. The new features and functionality include:

• Big Data consumption and analysis: use detailed internal data such as point-of-sales information, and external data such as Bureau of Labor statistics, Twitter, and Bloomberg commodity price data, to enable new insight into business decisions and planning alternate profitability scenarios.
• Machine learning-driven correlation, causation and prediction: act on new levers to move the business forward by utilizing our cloud as a computational platform with Spark™ machine-learning algorithms, including: classification, regression, collaborative filtering, clustering, dimensionality reduction, feature extraction and transformation.
• Dynamic aggregations and intersecting hierarchies eliminate constraints on volume or dimensions: aggregate and analyze across multiple hierarchies and attributes with Tidemark's in-memory computational capabilities that break free of cube-based processes, while enabling contextual variance explanations at the most granular levels.
• Business initiatives planning with Timeline View, Lookup, Impact Metrics and Drill Through: drill from summarized planning data down to the SKU and line item detail (in verticals such as Retail and CPG) all within Tidemark to enable business managers the ability to continuously monitor the details of their decisions in context with their roll-up plans to make adjustments in real-time. 

Make Finance a Participation Sport by Eliminating Spreadsheets and Moving to Modern FP&A

The new features of the Fall '14 release, when combined with in-context analytics, storylines and playbooks, offer the office of finance the tools they need to break old processes and manage the shift away from historical data based planning. Users can now rapidly adjust plans and forecasts anytime and evolve from quarterly or yearly-only planning cycles. No longer bound by rigid data structures or models, organizations can now pull in data from all departments, run predictive scenarios, analyze and summarize data visually to distribute information to anyone in the organization on any type of device, desktop or mobile.

"Prior to Tidemark we were very excel-oriented and had time consuming processes," said Tina Workman, VP of Accounting and Assistant Treasurer at Shelter Mutual Insurance Company. "Now with Tidemark we'll be able to manage complex processes faster, consolidate budget information, organize critical data by cost center, and visualize all of it to show and explain our plans and forecasts to our budgeting committee and executive team."

"The Office of Finance is undergoing significant change as the digital economy continues to put new pressures on organizations to adapt to a world full of new information and real-time data to help manage their business," said Mark Smith, CEO and Chief Research Officer of Ventana Research. "CFOs and management teams see this shift and are exploring big data and predictive analytics to gain visibility into their enterprises, find new ways to create new revenue opportunities, and transition into the digital era of data and analytics."

Tidemark Fall '14 is available today to all Tidemark customers. For more information visit here.

About Tidemark
Tidemark is a new breed of enterprise performance management (EPM), bringing modern, cloud-first financial and operational business planning and analytics to the enterprise through unique, intuitive apps, enabling organizations to significantly improve decision-making, reduce risk and improve business performance. Tidemark arms every decision maker with access to valuable data, deep analytics capabilities, real-time collaboration, and actionable visualizations on any device, enabling a culture of performance. Leading companies transforming their businesses with Tidemark include Netflix, Chiquita, Hostess Brands, Chuck E. Cheese's, HubSpot, ServiceSource and Brown University. Tidemark is funded by Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, Tenaya Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank. To learn more about Tidemark, please visit www.tidemark.com or follow us on Twitter @TidemarkEPM.

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