OVG

It was fascinating over the past year watching our team at OVG learn. In less than a year, I saw folks get functionally proficient in SQL, R, Python, DAX and Power FX, along with no fewer than five new planning and low-code software solutions, and the entire Microsoft stack. ‘AI will not take your job, but a generalist who knows how to use AI will’ – I’ve seen various forms of this statement and after seeing the pace at which our team moved this year, it is clear that specialized functional or technical knowledge on their own are no longer the moats that they once were. Technology has continued to become much more intuitive and accessible. Nearly 15 years ago, I studied a physical Oracle Hyperion textbook and took a proctored exam before even getting on my first project. Nowadays you can watch YouTube videos and leverage AI chatbots as technical consultants to get to a similar place in a fraction of the time. This will raise the bar for everyone. Business folks will need to be more hands-on with technology than ever. Technical folks will need to understand the business better and adopt systems-thinking across multiple technology solutions. As a leader, this significantly raises the bar on me to both lead effectively and roll up my sleeves and continue to learn. If I don’t understand how the technology paradigm is shifting, provide informed direction to the team, and keep my technical skills up to date, I’ll be the one being left behind! Many teams are already aware of all the above, but what we see too often is that there simply are not enough hours in the day to learn, even with new tools available. A big priority of ours with Platform Planning will be to help teams not only free up that learning time, but also provide meaningful opportunities to learn, and the best resources to do so most efficiently.

Excited to share our latest OVG update on a platform-based approach to planning leveraging Microsoft Fabric, Power Platform, and M365. We are days from launching our first accelerator focused on core FP&A use cases and will be sharing more next week!

Excited to share our first update on our efforts at OVG to offer an end-to-end, fully customizable, subscription-free, low-code planning solution leveraging Microsoft. Our MVP is only a few weeks from completion, we are looking forward to sharing much more soon!

Cost for our OVG team of Copilot Studio user licenses: $0 (included with Copilot 365 at $30/month) Cost of Copilot capacity : $200 monthly per 25k messages (more than our team sent in total Teams chats last month) Time to build a custom policies & procedures Copilot: 30 minutes The barrier to entry for small and medium-sized businesses to experiment and create value with enterprise AI solutions is as low as it will ever be. All business operators should be collaborating with their technology teams to start learning and adopting these tools while prices are still artificially low. They will absolutely change the way people work, especially for teams like FP&A, Rev Ops, and HR that partner across the business.

We are happy to announce that Claire Hendershot is joining our OVG team as a part-time associate after successfully completing her summer internship. Claire has been an incredibly quick study with building low-code applications and applying them to solve FP&A and Business Operations challenges. We are excited that she is continuing her journey with us!

Sharing some thoughts from our first Microsoft Power Platform Community Conference experience that several of our OVG team had the opportunity to attend. Microsoft's platform strategy is hitting its stride and there is plenty to consider, especially for FP&A and business operations teams that sit at the intersection of strategy and analytics. #planning #lowcode #analytics #AI

A great wave of software consolidation is upon us, thanks to a confluence of AI and low-code innovations: “Klarna's (KLAR) CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said that the company is shutting down its software as a service provider (SaaS) Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) and within a few weeks will shut down Workday (NASDAQ:WDAY).” https://lnkd.in/g2g2r8ns (Thanks Matthew Wahl for sharing this!) With both low-code platforms and AI-driven full-code tools in play, the moats for incumbent enterprise software are rapidly evaporating. It’s not that off-the-shelf software has gotten worse, in fact they continue to get better. It’s that replacement costs have gone dramatically down when the core functionality of a CRM, HRIS, or EPM solution can be built in-house with minimal investment and minimal recurring software costs. PLG approaches are also streamlining the buying process. You no longer have to go to the dealer and haggle to buy most enterprise software. What’s remarkable is that this is possible for everything from SMB up to companies at Microsoft scale. This will fundamentally change how businesses or all sizes leverage technology and Saas providers will be forced to adapt. Theoretically there is nothing stopping the creation of unlimited custom software right now (as we discussed yesterday Daniel Eyre). The days of outsized software margins m and valuations are likely limited. More value will accrue to capital-intensive hardware providers, data owners, and operators/service providers who can quickly translate technology directly to business value. While this certainly doesn’t mean that all enterprise software is doomed, it does mean that the equation for making decisions on whether to buy off-the-shelf or DIY are shifting dramatically. Some software providers will adapt and figure out how to provide differentiated value, but others will not and will rely on buyers not knowing the alternatives. It will be easier increasingly important for buyers to buy understand what is truly value-add and what is not, and determine how agile they need to be given their specific business needs. If you are considering tech consolidation options, we’d love to hear from you!