In a move to expand its services further, the British software provider Aveva Group has confirmed the purchase of SoftBank supported business OSIsoft for a total value of $5 billion.

Industrial businesses have started integrating additional software into their manufacturing to reduce costs and improve their overall supply chains, benefiting businesses like Aveva.

Aveva has stated that it plans a rights issue valued at approximately $3.5 billion to support the complete purchase of OSIsoft. OSIsoft makes software that captures data from ships, chemical boilers, power plants and other sites in industries within oil and gas, mining, paper and water.

According to Craig Hayman, the CEO of Aveva, the acquisition of OSIsoft will accelerate the Enlarged Groups position in the digitisation of the industrial world, which is being strengthened by a rising need for sustainability, cloud, data visualisation and artificial intelligence.

The last significant deal made by Aveva was with Schneider Electric over three years ago when they secured a 60% stake in the business. The British based business stated it would fund the deal using a mix of rights issues, cash on balance sheets and new debt. OSIsoft’s PI system which collects, assesses and shares data from a range of sources, will form a separate business unit of the extended company. 

Patrick Kennedy, the CEO and founder of OSIsoft will continue to remain involved in the business after the takeover through being appointed as the new chairman.

Oracle recently announced it has joined the race to acquire the US assets of very popular app TikTok. Microsoft is also in contention, whilst Twitter has been suggested as another interested party.

In response to this news shares in Oracle rose by 2%, however, some analysts believe TikTok wouldn’t be a good fit for Oracle. The Founder and chief investment officer at Joule Financial recently stated that he didn’t understand their intention of purchasing TikTok, suggesting that the interest in the app isn’t a good fit for where their business is going. 

Other analysts, however, believe that TikTok does make sense for Oracle. Industry professional at strategic consultancy the Centre for Innovating the Future believes by integrating TikTok into their servers, Oracle could create new opportunities in new industries.

In the post-pandemic era, many businesses are trying to be innovative and look at ways to reinvent themselves. Within the technology industry, there are clearly risks, but there are also opportunities and Oracle may be looking at TikTok with their own ideas of how they could use the application and are yet to reveal these concepts to the wider market.

The Chinese app is considerably popular among the younger generation. A sale to a US-based business would likely increase its appeal to Americans that may have steered away from the business due to concerns over data privacy.

According to Chinese based technology business ByteDance, TikTok is valued in the region of $95 to $140 billion. If Oracle is to acquire the application it would help the business diversify its portfolio and enhance its market valuation. Analysts believe the acquisition of a high growth business like TikTok would support Oracle in improving its growth rates and increase its total valuation multiple.

Innovative technologies including artificial intelligence and machine learning are transforming financial businesses and Big Data sits at the core of these new industries.

With the support of AI, businesses can efficiently assess data for insightful and relevant information in a fraction of the time. AI can identify specific trends and patterns and display this information clearly for businesses to digest. In the financial market, banks have a considerable amount of data related to their customers. Information on specific behaviours enables banks to determine what financial services to offer. Big data can be used effectively to measure investment options and also plays an important role in risk management. Financial products can then be created to effectively fit the requirements of their customers and essentially generate better returns.

As industry professionals point out, even the highest quality of information is not the same as knowledge. Investors make their decisions and act on knowledge, but cannot make decisive actions based simply on the information. Big data has huge potential, but can be rather useless if individuals cannot collect, process and understand the information.

What are the benefits of Big Data in Finance

The rise of digital technology in the finance industry provides a range of benefits to customers. Financial businesses are utilising big data to meet customer expectations and create a wider range of bespoke solutions. Some of the benefits include:

More Customer Satisfaction

Insightful and higher volumes of data mean financial businesses can provide more personalised investment choices. Big data enables quicker and more efficient services, saving vital time for customers.

Improved Security Measures

Security measures like fraud detection and unauthorised access can prevent potential cyberattacks. Financial institutions have security systems to notify customers of any suspicious activity.

New Research Tools

Many financial businesses provide tools to allow in-depth and technical analysis. These tools provide opportunities to predict changes in prices based on historical data trends.

Automated Investment Plans

Applying algorithms to improve returns on investments is becoming more popular. Data systems driven by AI have enabled investors to automate a lot of their investment strategies. While an automated investment cannot necessarily guarantee better results, it is a trend that has attracted several new investors to the industry.

What are the challenges of big data in the finance industry?

While there are many benefits, there are some challenges linked to implementing big data in finance.

Rising costs related to innovation

Big data requires a high volume of infrastructure. The data generated from businesses is stored in warehouses and the costs associated with new servers to store data can spiral quickly. There are also other expenses related to cooling systems and other ongoing maintenance. Financial businesses have to continue paying an ongoing fee to subscribe to big data services but may also be forced to continue paying additional fees related to upgrades.

Unstructured Data

A significant amount of data collected from personal devices is predominantly unstructured and the overall quality of this data can greatly vary. It can be challenging for financial businesses to determine unrelated data points and understand the business value of this data. It can also be equally complicated to understand which data to utilise and which to ignore.

Strict Regulations

Government measures have become stricter in terms of the regulations on big data. Financial companies have been forced to adhere to stricter rulings on collecting information on customers and their behaviours.

NetSuite recently published their latest survey regarding priorities in the finance industry. The results are based on specific information from finance professionals and explore how finance teams have managed during the pandemic. The survey repeated certain themes and questions from the previous report to assess how priorities may have changed in recent months. Some of the key findings are listed below:

Over 40% of respondents said that finance teams were operating at the highest ability, providing all the services their business requires and expects. Over 45% of finance professionals believe the influence and position of the finance department has expanded in recent months. All respondents agreed that spending continues to remain down but suggest that the pandemic has had little impact on expected debt capacity.

The survey showed that just 26% of respondents are looking for the majority, if not all of their finance team to make a return to the office. The findings suggest that some businesses have found the transformation to remote work rather challenging. To some organisations remote work has been difficult and has impacted both productivity and efficiency.

While about half of respondents highlighted culture as a barrier to working from home effectively, the reliance on sending documents to the central office was the top reason. Both of these factors can be solved, particularly the document concern with the right technology in place. Culture, however, is more complicated but is possible.

Investment by organisations continues to remain down, apart from in the IT and Technology sectors. Businesses are still looking for ways to reduce their spend in response to the pandemic. Over 70% of respondents are continuing to identify methods of savings, a big rise since the previous year. A similar rise was noticed in terms of managing the expectations of board members and the CEO, suggesting a possible rise in importance of the finance industry.

Marketing is an interesting area, with businesses approaching the sector in various ways. Over 30% of businesses are interested in increasing their marketing spend, whilst nearly 40% are planning to reduce their investment in marketing. Closer inspection reveals that marketing techniques are changing, with a shift in spend on physical events towards virtual projects. With marketing budgets being reduced for many organisations, business leaders are exploring alternative and more innovative ways of continuing to market and promote their business.

Finance teams are continuing to look at some investments, with nearly 50% viewing new training as a vital area and a further 42% interested in improving their tools and cloud-based services.

The survey also explored the impact of the pandemic on financial processes. A little over three quarters stated that scenario planning has become more complex, and approximately 60% believe that managing cash flow is more challenging than ever. 

One of the most notable highlights of the report is that there continues to be mixed opinions in terms of what approach should be taken in returning to work for finance professionals. In the coming months, there may be more clarity on a best practice for finance teams, but either way, confidence seems to be returning and respondents indicated that they can clearly see success in the coming months.

The former software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform provides energy solutions services, including billing, customer relationship and financial management.

UK-based ENSEK, a specialist provider of software services for energy suppliers has confirmed it has acquired the consultancy and data analytics business NrgFin.

The new deal represents a part of ENSEK’s growth strategy to expand further into other nations, with this specific deal allowing the business to expand further into Europe and increase its growth potential within the UK.

The SaaS platform enables energy providers with a selection of services, including CRM,billing, industry data trends, revenue and financial management solutions. NrgFin, based in Benelux provides finance solutions for a number of energy suppliers and consists of a range of established businesses including Essent, Elegant and Total Gas & Power.

Jon Slade, the CEO of ENSEK explains that the acquisition is a significant and exciting step for the business. Slade explains that the energy retail industry in Belgium and the Netherlands provides many opportunities to connect with the UK market. Slade highlights that they are excited to be working with new partners, integrating their services and enhancing the number of growth opportunities available.

CFO’s are making plans to prepare for a new age of finance transformation – the post-pandemic finance. How has the industry changes over the last two decades?

For many businesses, a post pandemic finance industry involves making a significant move from just focusing on automating vital financial processes. A post-pandemic finance industry requires a more strategic approach, it involves teams and businesses responding in a collective manner, and quickly. 

While traditional corporate performance management services such as Oracle’s Hyperion have supported finance professionals in automating important processes for many years, they aren’t necessarily the perfect tools to support a post-pandemic finance industry. This is largely down to the fragmented structure of these systems and the associated costs with upgrades that result in added pressure on finance teams to manage processes, rather than focus their attention on data, analytics and important decisions that need to be made in a post pandemic finance industry.

While vendors are transitioning towards the cloud, the systems continue to remain relatively fragmented and a number of these applications lack some of the vital capabilities of the traditional on-premises systems.

Which areas to consider in determining if your legacy tools are sufficient for post-pandemic finance. 

• Are the legacy tools used in your business reaching their end of life? 
• Does your finance team need to shift data between various applications to provide actual and variance budget analysis?
• Are upgrades for new releases expensive and potentially disruptive to your business processes?
• Does your business need to use additional modules to support your centralised management processes?

Whilst there are some limitations for newer cloud solutions, Oracle and SAP have confirmed plans to remove support for a number of on-premise applications and are applying more pressure on their customers to shift towards cloud applications. IT professionals and other industry analysts are encouraging finance professionals to explore other alternatives before making the move towards legacy vendor cloud services. Industry experts highlight that there are a number of viable and effective alternatives available with modern infrastructure, new capabilities and the ability to support on-premise and cloud services.

One alternative providers is OneStream Software. OneStream provides a innovative corporate performance management solution, known as the OneStream XF SmartCPM platform. OneStream XF combines and simplifies financial consolidation, planning, reporting and analytics for a number of organisations.

OneStream is the first solution provider that offers corporate standards with the added flexibility for businesses to be capable of reporting and planning at various levels of details without affecting their corporate standards. The core of a SmartCPM solution is the ability to provide multiple solutions for budgets, forecasts and plans, all within a single application. OneStream XF reduces the risk associated with integrations, validations and reconciliation between a number of products, applications and modules.

London based business Melrose Industries PLC focuses in buying and improving underperforming companies. The finance team focuses on a combination of Oracle tools to perform their planning, analysis and forecasting. As the organisation continued to acquire other businesses, it became more challenging to collect and assimilate data. Melrose require a singluar CPM solution that not only is capable of reducing the effort of managing multiple services, but also provide total transparency in terms of data and process changes.

When exploring CPM solutions, the vital requirement for Melrose was having an efficient and agile solution that provided flexibility and was capable of retaining historical data. Implementing OneStream enabled Melrose to manage a single platform that incorporates their reporting requirements, improves analysis and provides complete visibility. 

Melrose explains that OneStream has provided the business with one product that includes everything needed for their reporting requirements. The biggest benefit of using OneStream is that anyone in the extended group, in any location, can use the system. In previous years Melrose has relied on a range of systems, but now all of this has been removed. Melrose now relies solely on OneStream, delivering one singular system of truth that is always available and works.