For UK finance leaders, selecting the right Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) solution and EPM Consultants to partner with, is a critical decision that can make or break strategic planning. The market is brimming with options, yet finding a platform that aligns with your organisation’s unique needs – without being swayed by flashy vendor demos, remains a challenge. This is where Bolt Consulting, a leading team of independent advisors, operating as Anaplan consultants, Pigment consultants, IBM consultants and importantly, independent EPM consultants, steps in. Our technology-agnostic expertise ensures your finance team finds an EPM solution that delivers measurable results, tailored to your business. The Challenge: Navigating EPM Vendor Overload
Finance teams face a common pain point: the overwhelming array of EPM vendors promising transformative budgeting, forecasting, and reporting capabilities.
Some of them are absolutely capable of fulfilling their promises, but the equation to success doesn’t always lie in features and dashboards. The mechanics behind the scenes often times play a crucial role in determining good fit with your business.
Sometimes, generic pitches often overlook critical factors like integration with existing systems, user adoption, or scalability. A poor choice can lead to costly implementations, disrupted workflows, or systems that fail to deliver actionable insights. For finance buying committees, the stakes are high – every investment must deliver clear ROI and support long-term goals.
Why choose Bolt Consulting’s EPM Expertise?
At Bolt Consulting, our EPM consultants take a business-first approach, prioritising your unique needs over vendor agendas. Whether you’re exploring Anaplan for dynamic planning or Pigment for their latest agentic AI capabilities, IBM for their proven planning analytics solutions, or any host of others, we guide you through the entire vendor selection process with clarity and precision. Our technology-agnostic stance means we evaluate platforms like Anaplan, Pigment, IBM, Workday, Planful and others based on your specific requirements – be it seamless data integration, user-friendly interfaces, or scalability for future growth. We do so with the entire search conducted around your unique business requirements, which encompasses existing systems, data architecture, reporting needs, people, processes and goals.
Our process begins with a deep dive into your organisation’s challenges. Are you a retail business struggling with fragmented data across regions? Or a manufacturing firm needing real-time forecasting to navigate supply chain volatility? An insurance company looking to increase profitability and manage risk? Our consultants assess your workflows, data ecosystem, and strategic goals to recommend an EPM solution that fits today and scales tomorrow. We focus on practical outcomes: streamlined budgeting cycles, enhanced forecasting accuracy, and simplified compliance reporting. Many of our clients boast significantly shorter month-end closes, an ability to reduce operational costs, increase sales revenue through better resource allocation, and better employee wellbeing through workforce planning. With integrated data flows, reporting is updated in near real-time, so the latest data is always at your finger tips. Real Results: A Case Study in EPM Success
Consider a recent client of Bolt Consulting’s – Turnitin, an AI SaaS company in the education space, who needed guidance over the entire end-to-end framework of EPM.
Bolt Consulting conducted the thorough review of their existing landscape, before undertaking an appraisal of the market, and offering impartial advice around selection. Throughout the engagement, the project team outlined the pro’s and con’s that Turnitin might face throughout the entire lifecycle of ownership of their technology of choice. This meant considering not only platform limitations, commercials, but putting in place plans around enablement and ensuring end-user teams were comfortable using and scaling in the environment. Once the technology choice was secured, with Bolt Consulting acting as vendor liaison, we were trusted to implement the solution following best practices in model building for scalable architecture.
Turnitin have uncovered many benefits of the Pigment solution, and since go-live have signed up to our Admin-as-a-Service offering for continued support.
This was all made possible through the independent nature of our methodology – client success is always at the forefront of our ambitions in any client environment.
How Bolt Consulting Stands Out
The reality of direct vendor engagement often presents a biased and polished perspective. This isn’t to suggest vendors hide issues beneath their demos, but rather to highlight that the full reality of ownership – including all the pros and cons – should be clear to every client at the start of the lifecycle. Clients should understand the alternatives available in the marketplace and identify what will work best for their business.
That’s what Bolt Consulting does differently. Our impartial advisory service helps you select a solution that aligns with your infrastructure, empowers your team, and delivers tangible value. By choosing a platform this way, you’re not ‘locked in’ with a vendor – rather, you’re confident in staying and scaling with them.
An Opportunity to Assess
For business teams that are ready to find the right EPM solution for the business, partnering with Bolt Consulting could mean the difference between success and failure of your project. Our expert EPM consultants partner with you every step of the way, making sure you get value from your investment in EPM.
Contact us today to see how we can help you.
