The Planning System That Had Nothing to Plan With
North America's largest home appliance manufacturer spent 30 months and USD 5.1 million building an EPM system that couldn't answer a single strategic question. The problem wasn't the technology — it was the sequence. SAP BPC came first. SAP PaPM came second. The cost model never came at all. Pedro San Martín of Asher & Company shows why building planning before costing is the most expensive mistake in enterprise performance management — and how Oracle EPM fixed it by starting where every model must start: with the cost.
The Bank That Was Growing Itself to Death
A regional bank posts its best revenue year on record — loans up 34%, NII at a five-year high. The CFO has a single number that tells a completely different story: RAROC at 6.2% against a 12% hurdle. Pedro San Martín of Asher & Company shows how Oracle EPCM PCM traced USD 37 million in annual economic value destruction hiding inside the bank's most celebrated relationships — and why growing faster was making the institution weaker.
When the Tax Shelter Becomes the Burning Building
A pharma multinational running operations across Florida, Mexico, Colombia, Spain, and the Dominican Republic had a BEPS-compliant transfer pricing structure — and a profitability problem no one could explain. Pedro San Martín of Asher & Company shows how Oracle EPCM Profitability and Cost Management exposed a USD 57.8M cost gap hiding in plain sight, and why the real battle wasn't with the tax authority. It was with the operating model.
The Pricing Lever Most CFOs Ignore: Why 1% Price Improvement Beats 5% Cost Reduction
A 1% price improvement generates 12.3% ROI improvement — nearly 5x the impact of cutting fixed costs. Yet fewer than 3% of companies manage pricing with the same rigor they apply to cost reduction. This article reveals why pricing is the largest blind spot on most P&Ls, and how connecting cost-to-serve data to your pricing waterfall changes everything.
Getting the Right Level of Detail in a Profitability & Cost Model
Most profitability models fail not because of bad data, but because of bad design. This IMA PCM SIG whitepaper presents nine principles for calibrating the right level of detail — including a case where reducing activities by 88% produced better decisions. By Pedro San Martin, Chair of the IMA Profitability & Cost Management SIG.
The Mismatch Problem: Why Most Firms Sell EPM Software but Can't Answer Your Profitability Question
Most firms sell EPM software and call it profitability consulting. After spending $1.8M on a "profitability transformation," one CFO still couldn't answer a simple question: Is Branch 14 making us money? Here are the 3 questions every CFO should ask before hiring a profitability advisor.
The CFO's Blind Spot: Why Multi-Country Organizations Can't Answer Their Simplest Profitability Question
Most groups that operate in several countries can’t say which country, product or client makes money. The data exists. The structure doesn’t. Here is how a management chart of accounts closes that gap.
Profitability Without an Owner: Why Banks Fail Where It Matters Most
In a quarterly board session, a CFO asked which strategic projects had improved return on assets. The CFO looked at the COO. The COO looked at the CEO. Silence. "We haven't mapped those links yet — but we're sure they're there." That exchange, from a regional bank operating across five Caribbean islands, captures a problem more common than it should be: organizations running 31 active strategic initiatives with only 5 tied to measurable financial outcomes. Profitability isn't a KPI. It's an architecture — and most companies have never assigned it an owner.
The Mine That Knew Too Much and Decided Too Little
In 2003, I was part of the PwC team deployed to Industrias Peñoles at Mina Proaño — one of the deepest silver mines in the world, operating since 1554. Silver was under pressure. Costs were rising. And nobody could tell management which parts of the mountain were worth digging. This is the story of how PeopleSoft ABM and Metify Predictive Planning built the first zone-level profitability map in the mine's 450-year history — and forced the hardest operational decision I've seen in twenty years of EPM work.
Are We Controlling Costs — or Designing Value?
When a CFO gets handed a 15% opex cut with no reinvestment plan, cost discipline has replaced strategic discipline. This article explores how CFOs can lead strategic transformations using frameworks like Fit for Growth, Cost-to-Serve, and Design-to-Margin. True profitability doesn't come from tightening the belt — it comes from knowing, with surgical precision, where every dollar creates value.AUTHOR: Peter San Martin (ya está bien)
Asher & Company and PwC Interamericas: A Strategic Finance Center of Excellence for Latin America
Asher & Company and PwC Interamericas launch a Strategic Finance Center of Excellence — a joint venture combining ABC/M profitability models, Oracle EPM architectures, and the Decision-to-Value framework to close the gap between data and financial decisions across Latin America.