The top four reasons finance professionals are adopting cloud accounting
We recently conducted a survey of 1,000 finance professionals in UK businesses, including CFOs, finance directors and managers, to understand their pain points for 2021 and what technology they are considering investing in to resolve their main challenges.
64 per cent of our respondents said they expect their business to adopt new technologies this year, with 24 per cent suggesting cloud accounting software was likely to be the technology they invest in.
Below are four of the top reasons why cloud accounting software is at the forefront of their minds for almost one in four finance teams:
1. Real-time, accurate data
Things can change quickly in the world of finance, and as we know from the pandemic, they can happen almost overnight. So, it’s vital that any insights the finance team holds are as up-to-date as possible in order to really make a meaningful impact to the company. Particularly at a time when business leaders need to call upon finance professionals to pull together, often last-minute, reports on business performance.
Cloud-based solutions hold all your data in one place and offer a real-time perspective so that up-to-date reports can be compiled within minutes. This is instead of having to take time gathering data that is spread across multiple platforms and divisions, which is not only time-consuming but more likely to lead to errors in the data.
And accuracy is vital to finance teams. Taking the wrong insights from data can mean the business takes the wrong strategy and the right decisions are missed.
2. Quality control
With heavy workloads and inefficient processes often major factors slowing down finance teams, it’s understandable that mistakes can be made. Problems which can be compounded by remote working.
Working on shared documents through the cloud, data can be reviewed and amended immediately as everyone has sight of the updates. In an effort to prevent errors, strengthen the approvals process and audit trail, a cloud-based platform standardises formats for submitting data. Not to mention minimising concerns from finance professionals on the accuracy of their work - something which they can do without when managing a heavy workload.
3. Easing workloads
Speaking of heavy workloads, 24 per cent of our respondents said that an ever-increasing workload would be a challenge this year, unsurprisingly because the role of the finance team has changed dramatically in the last 12-months and the impact of furloughed staff, team redundancies and increased sick leave.
For finance teams, the work is piling high and inefficient or outdated processes only makes matters worse.
Automation is the key to streamlining workloads. Whether helping to alleviate the time it takes to collate invoices or prepare financial statements, cloud-based technologies can take away the pain of time-consuming tasks.
4. Collaboration
It’s fair to say that communication across teams has become more challenging now that we are spread apart, making collaborative work – including dealing with other divisions and accessing information – both difficult and time-consuming.
A centralised cloud-based platform, where everything is instantly accessible, allows teams in separate divisions to collaborate seamlessly, even from home. Specifically, for finance teams, they will have access to a company-wide overview, enabling them to see where the business may be overspending or lacking in productivity, all on one centralised platform.
It’s important that finance teams have the technology available to be agile, to deliver insights at critical times when decisions need to be made and to balance both those business-critical tasks with day-to-day jobs that keep the finance department – and business - ticking.
For more information on our survey results, read our report in full ‘Financial Healthcheck: Alleviating Your Pain Points in 2021’.
