CorPlan launches CoreEPM: Rapid return AI-powered Business Intelligence

Ask not what your AI can do for you, ask instead what you prefer not to do. And then ask the AI to do that for you.

That's a complete reversal of how most people use AI, because we tend to get it to do what we are already good at. That's a mistake, pointed out IBM ANZ CFO Jason Codespoti, because the things we are good at tend to be where value is created and added. The 'necessary but awful' admin and bureaucracy surrounding it, well, that is the stuff you want AI'd away.

Codespoti was talking at the launch of IBM Platinum Partner CorPlan's launch of CoreEPM, an 'out-of-the-box' business intelligence solution that helps organisations overcome what CorPlan - and its Australian sister company CorTell - have identified as major obstacles in BI adoption.

Love/hate for spreadsheets

People are busy. And while they know their spreadsheets are poison, there isn't time available to do something about it, particularly if the advantages of any proposed solution are anything less than dead certain.

Matthew Hill, CorPlan director, explained: "[Finance professionals] want to get out of the constant cycle of spending every waking minute crunching budgets and forecasts with spreadsheets and manual tools. It's a common, standard problem, spending enormous amounts of time trying to access data that already exists in our source systems."

He speaks with some authority, because this is exactly what CorPlan has found in the 1600+ customer engagements where it has delivered IBM Planning Analytics solutions, across Australia and New Zealand. It doesn't matter what the organisation does - mining, healthcare, local government, retail, financial services, you-name-it - the problem is the same, or at least similar.

That was clear not only in Hill's assertion but also because a room packed with financial and operations executives palpably nodded in agreement. While most of those assembled are already using Planning Analytics, the grim memories of spreadsheet hell are clearly deeply ingrained.

Fast enterprise performance management 

"How do we solve it?" continued Hill. "With an enterprise-wide performance management solution."

Be that as it may, accessibility has always presented its own challenges. Sure, said Hill, cloud SaaS has addressed that to an extent. But not entirely. "Even after spending 30 years fixing the challenge of Excel, we see a common problem. No-one's got time to fix or improve these processes. We don't want to wait for a nine month consulting project. And no one's got a budget to do that as well. No one's going to put their hand and go, "Hey, I've got a quarter of a million dollars for you to help out with that."

Although, quipped Hill, CorPlan is very much available to help where that is the case.

The company's response was putting its product team to work delivering CoreEPM, built on IBM Planning Analytics. "With CoreEPM, we walk in, and in days or weeks, configure a performance management application."

Configure, he stressed, and not customise (because one is rapid, the other expensive and complex). "It has budgeting, forecasting, and planning, both strategic, long term, short term. It's got actuals, consolidations, financials, all the reporting you could ever want. Management legals, KPI, operational dashboards. And it's got AI embedded throughout the entire application."

Any AI these days needs a catchy name, and with AI mc AI face taken, this one's assigned moniker is simply Bob. And Bob performs multiple advanced analytics functions within CoreEPM, within the strict confines of IBM governance - governance that Hill emphasised with the help of a Gartner Magic Quadrant which puts Big Blue at the very head of guardrail matters.

What can AI remove

Back, then, to Codespoti."We often find ourselves in discussions around what you can do [with AI]. Instead, talk with your partners and list what you want to stop doing."

Finance and planning people hate, as they well should, spreadsheet doldrums and the associated challenges of finding, entering and massaging data. That's not what they signed up for (and as Hill said, 'if you want to hire great people, you don't want to hobble them with inadequate tools') and it isn't what they want to do.

IBM, of course, is a big fish, and Codespoti said the outcome of focusing on what its employees want cut out of their day is clear. "Some of the areas that we focused on were planning, forecasting, and our commercial performance, and over 200,000 hours of manual finance hours have been eliminated. Now, what this has done is allowed our finance organisation to use their time for highly valued content in IBM."

Finally, along with introducing the rapid-deployment CoreEPM, Hill had a further note to add on the accessibility of business intelligence solutions. Whale or minnow, no worries. "The brilliant thing is IBM is no longer only for the top end of town, the big customers. We can scale anything from three, five users right through to 10,000 with pricing models suitable for the company size."

With AI like Bob and CoreEPM capable of rapidly demonstrating just what those 1600 CorPlan customers got from their engagement, opportunity is knocking. Sure, spreadsheets have their place. The question for every finance and operational exec now, is are those spreadsheets help or hindrance? Because in 2026, as CorePlan demonstrated, there are far better ways to get it done.