Corporate/Business Performance Management (CPM) products are not identical. They have many similarities and are designed to solve similar problems: Centralized reporting, one truth, automated consolidation, centralized budget collection. But they vary in price, features, and ease of implementation.
I recently worked on an implementation that was sold by the software company as a "streamlined implementation". A streamlined implementation uses standardized formats and processes. It counts on a large number of hours of internal support and commitment from the client company. This got the CPM software in the door. This was good because it is a really good software solution for them. And fortunately for the client they drew me as their consultant for the actual implementation.
The sales force had not understood that the company actually had seven general ledger databases, instead of one, they had not understood that the general ledger accounts were not identical. No one but the actual person doing the transformation to the old reporting system knew the amount of manual work that went into the reporting each month. The general ledger system was not at an appropriate version for the "canned" extract, transform and load process. The out-of-the-box "streamlined implementation" was only partly usable because of these factors.
But the client was committed to improving their processes. And they had consultants with many years of experience in implementing CPM software and with the new tools being rolled out. Consequently, Phase 1 was a success and the client is well on their way to replacing old reporting software that is no longer supported.
So this is not to say beware of Out-of-the-Box solutions, after all most all businesses use Microsoft Office. This is to say that even Out-of-the-Box solutions work best if tailored to the individual need. Afterall, the first thing I do with a new version of Excel or Word is make sure I have all the special formatting menus that I like to use right at my finger tips.