Three signs it's time to change the way you report
The pandemic has, in many ways, acted as a digital catalyst – from giving businesses the confidence to work remotely, to investing in cutting edge automated software to streamline workflows. The last 12-months have proved just how agile businesses must be, and technology has enabled us to adapt quickly to the changing landscape.
In that time, business leaders have tested and evaluated technologies that may, in the long-run, give the company a greater competitive advantage. They’ve also taken the opportunity to review important internal processes that may increase productivity levels and reduce costs.
One of those fundamental processes may be your financial reporting - a task paramount to business success, yet so often made more challenging by the reliance on outdated applications or manual procedures that may have hampered your finance team’s productivity.
The industry as a whole is rapidly moving towards a more automated approach, helping streamline both output and services. So, it could be a good time to get ahead and start sharpening the way you report.
We’ve put together our top three signs that it may be time to review the way you report:
Rigid reporting
Robust financial reporting is the bedrock of any business, but when companies are scrambling to recover because of the current pandemic, each decision counts. And without the right data available to help forecast any upcoming challenges, mistakes can easily be made, making accurate reporting more important than ever.
Added to that, having access to the full breadth of data – from across the entire business – is crucial as this will give your finance team the edge to see just where the business may be overspending or may indicate an unexplored, potentially profitable, avenue.
A rigid reporting system that does not allow users to customise and filter the data available, is at risk of limiting the insights a finance team can provide to business leaders. And in this current climate, where businesses are making every attempt to recover lost profits, each piece of data is of paramount importance in order for them to drive the company in a positive direction.
Whether drilling down into the detail of cost centres, geographical location or overheads, your finance teams should have access to the precise data needed to help make an impact across the business.
Can’t track KPIs
In any business, KPIs are pivotal to ensuring a company accomplishes its objectives.
Effective KPIs though, are more than just numbers that you report on weekly. For finance professionals, they allow them to get under the skin of the business so that they can be of help to the leadership team to make critical adjustments in order to achieve those strategic objectives.
Without the right software to monitor KPIs unique to a business and industry though, finance teams’ ability to influence the business’ performance is bound to be restricted. Finance pros will be missing out on key information, predominantly about market performance or areas of untapped potential.
Fragmented databases
Having a holistic view of the business, all on one platform, will give finance teams’ productivity a big boost.
Time-consuming processes, particularly when using outdated software, are commonplace in this industry. And because of that, much of a finance professional’s day may be juggling activity on a handful of platforms – whether sifting through long email chains, logging onto a server and opening numerous standalone applications – it leaves them without the time to provide valuable, impactful insights.
After taking time to extract the data, piece by piece, by this point the report that your teams have compiled may no longer be up-to-date and potentially fragmented because it has been scattered across multiple systems.
With live dashboards and real-time financial reporting software, the all-important data you need is visible and retrievable on one single platform, helping to free up your finance teams so they can spend more time on other value-added tasks.
Minimising the use of mixed applications is becoming more and more mainstream in the industry of late, most recently with the change to MTD (Making Tax Digital) preparations and ‘digital links’. As of 1 April, your finance teams will no longer be able to copy and pasta data from one application to another when it comes to completing your VAT.
Instead, you’ll be required to ensure that your digital records – including those stored on more than one piece of software – have a digital link between them. It seems the industry is encouraging a drive towards automation, motivating finance teams to streamline processes in order to reduce errors and capitalise on real-time data.
To find out more about The Access Group’s financial management software, visit www.theaccessgroup.com/finance/.
