The finance industry is going through a shift, with the adoptions of technological solutions revamping how processes are accomplished. It’s time to repair outdated operations and make the shift to a forward-looking future.
The Conundrum
Finance departments today waste time producing internal and statutory reports - 80% of their time on average. These reports need to be continuously generated and consist of information from all across the company. Consolidating the information from multiple systems and ensuring it is error-free leaves less than 20% of the time, for professionals to derive actionable insights and review them with management.
With finance being the center of organizational information and the only place to truly understand a company’s health, it is about time for the pie to be cut into different pieces and try something new.
Less Time, Better Results
Finance professionals are invaluable to a business for their ability to advise management, so why are they wasting time generating reports? With new technologies, reports can be generated in seconds. Processes such as inputs and version comparisons can be done simultaneously, and professionals can finally have time to do what they were hired to do, truly analyze data.
This simple change in time management provides decision-makers those real-time insights into the health of a company to identify issues, discuss options, and take corrective action. Stop just summarizing the past. It is time to adopt technology, and finally, use your finance department to influence your business for the better.
“Time is the scarcest resource unless it is managed nothing else can be managed” - Peter Drucker
The New Pie
Revamp the 80% of time spent on manual labor and mundane tasks, this entire portion of consolidation and reconciliation should take no more than 20% of your finance professionals' time.
Why is There so Much Hesitation?
In the past, finance departments were reluctant to hop on this trend, why?
It was assumed it required a revamping of every process to new software.
The new alternatives required a long learning curve.
Many alternatives required the recreating of sheets used for decades.
Ultimately, the majority of those who tried to hop on the trend resorted back to their comfort zone, Excel spreadsheets. These spreadsheets are the reason for 80% of the time being spent on these mechanical tasks such as time comparisons, version consolidation and manually inputting changes - to name a few. Upgrading processes allows your department to shift its time elsewhere - a place where it can really make an impact.
The new-age finance department should be spending 60% of their time on how to move forward, interpreting data, understanding the analytics, and deriving actionable insights into the organization's health now and in the future.
Resistance is Futile
Specialists understood this conundrum and have started to come out with new alternatives for finance departments to truly change their workforce from record keepers to strategic advisors. Software companies saw this need and developed solutions that work with the existing infrastructure present in organizations. They integrate with ERP's, CRM's, and some even with Excel spreadsheets to provide real-time data and insights into a company's health - instantly.
These technologies allow for the new pie to form, a pie that is broken up like this:
One Small Step in Operations, A Giant Leap for your Department
Finance Departments are the nexus of information within a company and transforming how the finance department functions can revamp a business for the better. With consistent, integrated data sources and self-service reporting options - finance will not be called upon to generate reports but interpret them. They will be able to analyze the root cause of performance anomalies and work with management to fix problems.
Companies that adopt this trend will be above the competition being able to react faster to market changes with information-driven insights. Executives will be able to avert surprises at the end of the day, quarter, and year avoiding embarrassing audits or costly penalties. Imagine being able to understand the profitability of every customer, product, and process to make major decisions based on facts.
Here are some tried and true software types to help you turn your raw, unorganized, unused data into actionable, analyzed information - and create your new pie.
A data solution company that offers data integration solutions to build cross-organizational workflows allowing for easy, automated, and instant data consolidation. Implementing software like Factset offers more transparency, promises to increase data integrity as well as better governance of data through its company-wide data integration capabilities.
A solution made for your finance department and FP&A team that integrates with existing systems as well as Excel. This Financial Analytics Platform - takes your existing data infrastructure turning your raw data into actionable analytics. Ridding your department of manual processes, it’s software flags changes in spreadsheets and automatically imports numbers from any system or department so manual inputs are a thing of the past. With it’s easy to use platform and endless capabilities, it will have your finance department creating professional reports instantly - with the click of a button.
A modern analytics platform offering solutions for every department and individual role in a business. Their main solution is their Analytics Process Automation which assists in sharing data across an organization reducing the time it takes to collect and check data. They promise to enable the democratization of data, automation of business processes, and the upskilling of people for quick, transformative outcomes.
Let That Sink in
Manual processes and mistakes from human error - are issues of the past. Your finance department and business, need to understand the importance of adopting this new reality. New software will allow you to take advantage of your employees' talents, the untapped resource sitting right in front of you.
Stop summarizing the past - adopt this forward-looking competitive advantage now!