Traditionally the Office of Finance was perceived as the home of the ‘financial gatekeepers’ and/or ‘number crunchers’ who were often incorrectly referred to as 'bean-counters'. Digital transformation within the various finance teams (now known as 'business partners') was often slow to be adopted, due to the over-reliance upon individual/personal performance management tools, namely MS Excel.
Removal of a dependence upon spreadsheets (like a paperless office!) has been virtually impossible to achieve, as it continues to provide unparalleled flexibility and an ability to demonstrate user skills with add-on functionalities such as 'pivot' and 'lookup' tables, as well as links to MS Power BI tools.
Despite the well-known deficiencies of deploying spreadsheet models, the cosy confines of an office environment/location has often seemed able to overcome the lack of audit trail or multi-user access and difficulties of modification, whilst still maintaining an illusion of 'robustness' and 'accuracy' (?).
Today, with so many office-workers having had to engage from their dining-room, study, or perched on the kitchen table, the urgency to embrace cloud-based financial consolidation & reporting tools alongside modern planning and forecasting applications has increased. The ability to engage in tasks across ‘communal’ and ‘share’ platforms, such as MS Teams, Skype for Business, and/or Zoom has become ever increasingly necessary. Data analytics and interpretations today share equal importance with regulatory reporting compliance, with the role of the finance professional being focused on both timely and accurate Business Insights. Management reporting and statutory consolidations are vital.
Today’s business leaders and finance professionals need guidance in what actions to take now, rather than relying solely on late reports of what happened yesterday. Early close and Business Insights that are available anywhere, via cloud-based financial consolidation and reporting solutions is essential.
LSA Solutions accept that organisations may have been entirely pre-occupied with business survival over the past weeks. However, eventually, coherent and affordable 'business improvement plans' will be needed. Monthly subscriptions available with 'Cloud-based Solutions' may be overwhelming.
Whether it’s on-premise or cloud-based Solutions you prefer, there needs to be a proper assessment of the existing financial and operational forecasting processes. We can assist you. LSA Solutions are extremely knowledgeable and select only the very best of the leading Vendors for our endorsement.
For more information, please contact Alan Sutton.
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