The financial management and reporting capabilities of software today go beyond the QuickBooks methods of the past.
Now, financial management systems drive data-based decisions through the consolidation of business information, aligned processes and more effective collection tools. When you have fully integrated financial statements within a centralized system, you’re able to ensure best practices and enhance collaboration across your entire organization.
In today’s financial services industry, the more you know, the more power you have to make brilliant decisions and improve your competitive position.
The Ideal Financial Reporting And Analysis Scenario
Super-charged financial teams operate within a steady cycle of planning, execution, reporting and analysis. The secret to this kind of unity is the ability to collaborate when creating budgets, monitoring performance, reporting on results and then analyzing and tweaking the forecast on desired intervals. Tightly integrated technology makes collaboration and decision-making faster than ever.
Organizations relying too heavily on spreadsheets never reach the speed of financial firms that embrace the financial reporting and analysis tools within an ERP solution from NetSuite or Microsoft Dynamics. The streamlining of data streams leads to reduced costs and increased revenue.
Data-Stream Integration For Greater Business Intelligence
The kind of financial reporting and analysis tools you want are the ones that improve the agility of your business. You should be able to change direction without missing a beat. Financial analysis today is less about interpreting big batches of data and more about accessing visual representations of that data.
Spreadsheet-based planning makes calculating what-if scenarios both time-consuming and ineffective. Through the right ERP software solution, your firm is able to pull data from multiple business systems into financial planning tools.
Let’s say, for example, that you’re looking at entering new markets, building out a new department or considering launching a competitive price discount. Any one of these situations is going to have large implications on your entire business. Multiple scenarios, along with short- and long-term effects, must be accounted for – and quickly.
With today’s best ERP software, it’s possible to dig through underlying organizational transactions using financial management modules in order to increase insight and manage your business by the numbers.
Tighter Integration, Better Financial Management
A fundamental in the financial management of any company is close consideration of actual data versus plan data. Regardless of what software you choose to improve your financial reporting and analysis tools, you should be able to:
Create budgets based on actuals from the prior year
Track performance at any time through dashboards displaying real-time actual data versus plan data
Consider year-to-date actual numbers when forecasting future expectations
Compare results against budgets and forecasts
Regardless of the scenario, if your business has a need, your software needs to meet it.
Financial Reporting: Beyond The Software
Too often, when talk turns to technology, we lose sight of the human element. By taking a needs-based approach to technology, you ensure that the implemented software actually benefits the people using it.
Whether you’re managing multiple locations or dealing with complex accounting processes, your technology should improve these tasks by making them easier and enabling your employees to perform higher functions – the kind that push your business to your next phase of growth.
Isn’t it time to focus more on your business and less on data collection?
If you’re working on implementing better financial reporting and analysis tools, get our tips for making that implementation a complete success.
by Admiral Consulting Group