Key business partner or number cruncher – you decide?
Finance leaders have a key place at the management table, which makes you well placed to drive change.
Leveraging data and providing analysis is a vital part of what the finance leader brings to the business. From products and inventories to customers and employees, finance leaders have the power to spot opportunities for growth as well as where savings can be made.
With one caveat. You need the right technology.
The good news is that there is now more cloud-based technology to choose from than ever before. Finance solutions offer advanced analytical tools so finance professionals can deliver real-time business information where it’s needed. You may be tired of buzz phrases like “real time” and “insights to action” but using the most up to date data to make informed business decisions never gets old.
Being cloud based rather than on-premise means that solution costs have come down and the current market is very competitive.
“Finance needs to play a critical role in ensuring organisations continue to thrive. This requires investment in new practices, technologies, and skills that increase the business’s capacity to adapt at pace.” PWC Stepping up: How finance functions are transforming to drive business results.
Here are some of the big win benefits from finance technology to help you make up your mind.
Big picture: Small picture
Financial technology will give you both the big picture in terms of the organisation’s financial health and the detailed insights you need into business-critical areas. Add value to the entire organisation and reap the rewards! It may surprise you to learn that currently less than a quarter of finance time is spent delivering business insight. Plus – according to PWC, top quartile companies pay their ‘insight’ finance professionals 25% more.
Collaboration
Offer more to the rest of the organisation when you break out of departmental silos and work with other departments. Light, out of the box ERP technology links all your departments while holding data centrally as a single source of truth with finance at its core. And if you choose SAP technology you can pull in live data on your Teams meeting thanks to a unique hook-up with Microsoft.
Accurate data
Taking advantage of opportunities as they arise depends on both an agile mindset and accurate information. The finance function can play to their strength by providing the data needed, in real time. No need to wait for yesterday’s figures. Finance leaders can add value by analysing the data rather than simply gathering it all together.
Data on the move
Accessing data from anywhere is more important than ever with so many of us working from home. It has already been proved that companies with cloud based financial systems fared better when the pandemic hit. Mobile apps increase the ease with which you can keep across the numbers wherever you are.
The benefits of automation
When you automate you speed up key processes thus freeing up time for more important tasks. According to PWC finance process automation can reduce costs by 35%-46%. It means you can carry out core business tasks like, quarterly finance reports, balance sheets and profit and loss statements, significantly quicker.
Size matters
While many small business tech solutions offer an attractive entry point for a growing business – if you are successful you will probably need to replace it eventually. The number of transactions you want to record will take you beyond an entry level software’s capacity to cope. Then it is back to square one.
If you are still small but growing it is worth considering a scalable solution that grows with you. Check out the maximum capacity of your chosen solution and the number of users you can scale to.
End points
We make no secret of the fact that our favourite solution is SAP Business ByDesign – it was created in the cloud and had rapidly growing businesses in mind from day one. It is a great choice if you want to add in further business entities either at home or abroad.
If your aim is to get up and running as fast as possible without lengthy scoping delays then InCloud Solutions offers an Express version which can be yours in a month for a fixed cost.
We hope we have discovered what you needed on this page but if you have any questions at all please contact us here [email protected] and our knowledgeable experts will be happy to help.
Leave A Comment