Financial Performance & Analysis continues to play a vital role particularly as office-based tasks, of necessity, are now being undertaken by staff working from home. Monthly management reporting, annual statutory accounts, and daily cash management continue to be critical tasks despite challenges presented by national Governments or local ‘lockdowns’ and ‘social distancing’.
Key Elements of Consolidation solutions are:
- Automated import from ERP systems.
- Pre-defined consolidation with automatic aggregations and eliminations.
- Currency conversion using either closing, average, and/or historical exchange rates.
- Consolidation processes that incorporate regulation under both IFRS and local GAAPs.
- Visual and user-friendly consolidation workflow with predefined and customisable controls and consolidation rules.
The era of communal offices and water fountain discussions that assisted business insight and helped to resolve many of the day-to-day complications of operating a business have largely been moth-balled by changing global trading conditions following the advent of Coronavirus and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Spreadsheets are commonly used to link information silos, spread across disparate data applications. Whereas, what is required for Financial Performance Management is a common platform that enables:
- Financial Close and Consolidation
- Planning, Budgets and Forecasting
- Data Analytics and Visualisations (graphs and dashboards)
- Data Compliance (IFRS16 templates and GAAP statements)
Financial Performance Management (FPM/EPM) has the focus of bringing financial data together with non-financial information for the purpose of monitoring business performance against targets and plan
Todays’ management tools need to do more than answer the simple; Why? How? and What? questions
LSA Solutions are engaged with leading vendors of agnostic performance management tools that can ‘bridge the gap’ between the underlying transactions-based ERP systems and latest forecasting tools can that utilise AI and/or which are built upon machine-learning capabilities. Speed, Accuracy, Robustness, and Agility are all key elements alongside User-friendly interfaces. As accredited Partners for select vendors, LSA do recognise that it is not a ‘one-size fits all’ marketplace and therefore do promote ‘point solutions’ alongside ‘single platform’ .. Performance Management Solutions.
Nothing like Covid-19 had ever been seen before and so no-one knew how to ‘Plan’ for this problem.
Making the right choice between various FPM Software solutions is not necessarily merely a matter of available budget (cost) or timeframe (project implementations) but also needs to reflect existing circumstances (routines, systems, and skillsets) alongside any future aspirations to become leaders within your particular industry. Whilst, some vendors, namely VENA Solutions are Microsoft Excel (and MS SQL) centric, whereas others like BOARD or Unicom Finance utilise proprietary databases and unique features/functionality to deliver targeted performance management software solutions.
Whilst software Vendors are often viewed as being somewhat similar in terms of their solutions, the methodologies and techniques that are employed can be massively different. Requiring the adoption of an entirely new set of skills, as opposed to building upon and leveraging existing Microsoft skillsets.
LSA Solutions accept that many organisations may be entirely pre-occupied with ‘business survival’ over the coming weeks. However, eventually a coherent and affordable ‘Plan for Growth’ will be required. A monthly subscription model available from cloud-based Solutions may be overwhelming.
Whether it’s on-premises 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.
The Unit4 FP&A software solution gives your people, better, faster ways to put the numbers to work, through smarter performance management; planning, budgeting, forecasting, financial consolidation, reporting visualisations and analytics. Today Unit4 software-as-a-service platform delivers intelligent enterprise applications on a foundation for your organisation to innovate and deliver great experiences. Your people get the flexibility and freedom to have what they need, how, and where they need it.
Unit4 FP&A provides a single corporate performance management (CPM) platform. Its integrated solutions deliver best practice out of the box and can be easily tailored further to your specific organization. With Unit4, your teams can make better, faster business decisions with total confidence in your numbers – transforming complex data into the clear insights to turn plans and ideas into action.
For more information, please contact Alan Sutton.
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