The historic city of Lucca, with its renowned medieval city walls and as a host to the Giro d’Italia, provided an eclectic backdrop for Tagetik’s inTouch 2025. The event brought together customers, partners, and Wolters Kluwer executives to discuss the future of corporate performance management (CPM). Key themes revolved around the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in finance through agents, the strategic evolution of the Tagetik platform, and the ongoing drive to meet the complex demands of modern finance.
Key Takeaways from Main Sessions: AI Focus and Platform Futures
A significant portion of the event centered on Tagetik’s advancements and vision for AI within its CPM platform. Karen Abramson, CEO of the CPM Division, emphasized the potential of generative and “agentic” AI, outlining clear principles behind Tagetik’s AI strategy. Sessions like “AI Unleashed” showcased functionalities such as natural language query (NLQ) through Tagetik’s “Ask AI” for dashboard creation and data analysis. The Tagetik platform’s AI and machine learning (ML) engine also supports functionalities like anomaly detection and AI-assisted data validation, mapping, and transformation. Fabrizio Tocchini, Product VP for CCH Tagetik, highlighted “Intelligent Analytics” and the new interactive capabilities in dashboards. The roadmap includes enabling AI to support processes like automapping and time series forecasting. The emphasis is on making AI useful within user workflows. For instance, one goal is to automate all the steps required to initialize new forecasts.
Beyond AI, platform evolution is a critical topic for Tagetik. They acknowledged the need to handle constantly growing data volumes and enhance capabilities for complex simulations. Tagetik also discussed rethinking its marketplace for partner-provided vertical solutions and making significant further investments in core platform functions. Furthermore, Tagetik will feature a new more interactive and user-friendly Excel add-in, moving away from the previous wizard-based interaction, a development likely to be well-received for its practical application.
Platform Analysis: Balancing Innovation with Core Needs
Tagetik’s current architecture, based on a relational database and application server, is being supplemented with approaches like a tabular model for faster interactive reporting. The platform offers multiple ML models, allowing users to select algorithms and inspect forecast error information, aiming for transparency.
Integration remains a key focus. The popularity of the Power BI connector track underscored a strong customer interest in foundational data access and visualization. Efforts to improve SAP integration are also being made. The platform’s openness to partners for building and potentially selling their own models, particularly for vertical and Extended Planning and Analysis (xP&A) solutions, was another key discussion point. A growing team is developing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting capabilities, even though Tagetik is aware that many customer ESG projects are currently on hold. The Enablon solution, also within Wolters Kluwer, addresses ESG data gathering, particularly in the US, with connectors to Tagetik for reporting.
Industry Context and Implications: The Journey Towards AI-Driven CPM
The strong emphasis on AI at Tagetik inTouch 2025 mirrors a broader industry trend, yet the event also highlighted the existing gap between the extensive discussions around AI and its current depth of adoption beyond basic applications. Customer panels and conversations with customers revealed a desire to leverage AI for practical applications, such as using anomaly detection on aggregated P&L data to guide deeper investigation. However, these discussions also highlighted a relatively low level of maturity of most customers – a finding that aligns with BARC research. Questions persist around what is required to truly broaden AI feature utilization among finance professionals. Many still prioritize robust core functionalities over advanced features – a reality clearly reflected in the strong interest in the Excel and Power BI integration sessions.
Tagetik’s strategy appears to be a significant long-term investment in a platform refresh to truly embed and enable advanced AI capabilities, rather than merely adding superficial AI features. This addresses the challenge that “data is always the challenge,” with technology often moving faster than client readiness or skill sets. The vendor’s focus on US market growth and the development of a new, AI-centric platform suggest a strategic direction aimed at future-proofing its offerings. For customers, the journey will involve navigating new licensing for premium AI features and, for those on-premises, potentially missing out on cloud-based innovations until they migrate.
Conclusion: What This Means for Tagetik Prospects and Customers
For prospects and customers of Tagetik, the inTouch 2025 event signaled a clear commitment to embedding AI deeply into the CPM platform and modernizing its underlying architecture. The vision for “Agentic AI” and a more intelligent, interactive platform is ambitious. Key developments like the enhanced Excel add-in and ongoing improvements to core functionalities demonstrate an understanding of immediate user needs.
However, the true value will unfold as the platform matures and as AI functionalities move from showcased potential to broadly adopted, workflow-integrated tools. Customers will need to assess how new, often cloud-only, AI features align with their specific needs and readiness, including data preparedness and skill availability.
