The Oryx suite from Accountagility, a solution that just has that feel of absolute quality

Some years ago I wrote several articles about how much I admired the Accountagility solution for creating BI solutions to meet the needs of the Finance departments, primarily in the Financial Services market. I was impressed by its functionality, its obvious fitness for purpose, its value for money, and its agility and speed of delivery. I have recently been reintroduced to it, and they have built on what was a proven foundation and in my opinion have produced a world class solution which stands out from the competition.

The first thing that I was originally struck by with the Oryx suite was the continuity from the single Accountagility product heritage, this is quite obviously a solution built not by marketers and technicians, but by people who understand the business they are supporting intimately, and who can match that with technical flair and know how. Too many products in The BI and CPM (Corporate Performance Management) space have far too much gold plating, things that technically you can do, and which get marketers excited, but address less than 1 percent of the use cases a real world solution has to address. The Oryx suite is conspicuously lacking in such spurious technical capabilities, but is feature rich in the things that a Finance department actually needs to do their job properly. It offers a way out of the spreadsheet hell that bedevils far too many finance departments, even in seemingly well run enterprises

The Oryx suite consists of 6 modules, all built on a common core, all capable of running as a standalone solution, all capable of uniting to present an integrated world class solution. The modules are Oryx Plan, Oryx Consolidation, Oryx Expenses, Oryx Close, Oryx HR and Oryx Cash. With those solutions the stated goal, and one that now (as in the past) can support proven real world installations, puts the Finance user back in control of their function. The solution is built for Finance people by Finance people, to ensure that there is no semantic or cultural barrier to adopting the solution. The solutions enable adopters to plot a middle path, avoiding two unpalatable but common dilemmas. One is the spreadsheet nightmare, which offers a myriad of point solutions but cannot provide a unified strategic approach. The other is an overly expensive, inflexible, difficult to adapt and use Enterprise solution from one of the big technology vendors. Being so focused on its purpose means that the Oryx suite has a clear underlying process model of how it can unite the various elements of the Finance function, which is an essential stepping stone to enabling streamlined business processes to be enacted free of the compromises that legacy solutions impose. The suite enables a step by step approach to delivering a complete solution, you can take what you want when you want, so it’s one move at a time not an all or nothing approach. Accountagility can support the project at all stages relieving a lot of the stress that any reengineering such as this inevitably introduces. Rather than a project such as this being an ordeal, it should be a gateway to a better future.

The solution can be run in-house or can be hosted in the Cloud, which is today an essential feature for any leading solution. Accountagility can back up the base product with the necessary professional services skills. They have proven that they can take on and outperform the solutions on offer from the big technology vendors, not just on price, but on functionality, speed to deliver, ongoing costs of ownership, and customer satisfaction.

I believe that the Oryx suite is capable of competing against any other products in the CPM market and is very totally credible. I believe it is a world class solution, and if I were looking for a solution to help me run my Finance function effectively in these fast changing and uncertain times, it would be at the top of my shortlist.