Businesses decide to implement new ERP systems for a variety of reasons, including increased efficiencies, better inventory control, stronger cash flow and capital management, increased revenue, and reduced costs. In this downloadable guide, we explore the various benefits that can be achieved by deploying a modern ERP software package. We delve into detail on the advantages of robust ERP systems and provide real-world examples of how those benefits can be achieved.

We also address the top complaint that we hear from business leaders who have recently implemented a new system, namely, shortcomings in the financial reporting and analysis tools that come with those systems out of the box.

“We address the top complaint that we hear from business leaders.”

This guide provides an overview of the practical business benefits of ERP software, and it explores ways to enhance the value of ERP by ensuring that systems deliver real-time visibility to business performance, confidence in the accuracy of information, and a strong foundation for making insightful, well-timed business decisions.

Contents:

• • Introduction
  • Improve Working Capital
  • Increase Revenue
  • Reduce Costs
  • Improve Compliance
  • Improve F&A and Tighten Internal Controls
  • Retire Legacy Systems
  • Software Features and Benefits that Matter to Finance

Download the white paper: [link expired – contact us]

As companies grow, they often need to develop new systems and processes to scale up more effectively as the size and complexity of the business increases. Systems that might have worked well in the past can become increasingly unwieldy as new people join the company, as responsibilities in the organization shift, and as business processes and practices mature.

How can growing businesses move from manual, time-consuming financial planning processes to modern planning processes that meet the needs of all stakeholders? It all starts with making the business case to business leadership.

It all starts with making the business case to business leadership.

In this free downloadable guide, you’ll learn:

• Some common pain points that growing businesses experience with planning, forecasting, and budgeting
• Key strategies for building a sustainable process that sets your team on a path to working smarter rather than harder
• Advice for FP&A professionals as they prepare to persuade business leaders of the need for robust planning tools
• Key attributes to look for in the best financial planning software

Download the whitepaper: From Manual to Modern Planning Processes: Making the Business Case

Upgrading an ERP system presents a number of challenges to many organisations. However, many of these challenges can be alleviated by integrating a business intelligence (BI) solution during the upgrade process. This is especially true if the BI solution is based on a data warehouse and implemented using a data warehouse automation platform.

Data conversion is one of the key activities involved in upgrading an ERP system. Therefore, it is also an appropriate time to assess the quality of the data that will be converted. Businesses that decide to implement a data warehouse during the ERP will discover that doing so provides an opportunity to address all their data quality issues.

“The tasks involved in the ERP upgrade process become more straightforward and less time-consuming when a data warehouse and BI solution is part of the upgrade.”

Traditionally, report conversion is another key activity of the ERP upgrade process. However, when businesses are implementing a data warehouse at the same time, they have an opportune moment to reevaluate their reporting needs to avoid spending time converting obsolete reports.

This whitepaper will examine the challenges of data migration and report conversion in an ERP upgrade and how integrating a data warehouse-based BI solution into the project can help.

Download the whitepaper: How implementing a Data Warehouse Solution can accelerate and facilitate an ERP upgrade

Quint is a global consultancy, training, and technology company. It supports organisations in designing and implementing digital transformation solutions. Quint’s key focus areas are digital strategy, data activation, lean agile enterprise, sourcing advisory, IT governance, enterprise cloud, enterprise DevOps, and enterprise automation.

The Challenge
Quint’s Malaysia branch had been using Microsoft Dynamics NAV for many years, integrated with its proprietary ERP system, Quint Information System (QIS). As the organisation grew, Quint decided to migrate all its systems into a new ERP, Odoo. However, with increasing amounts of data to report on, and with legacy data still residing in NAV and QIS, they needed a solution for effective data normalization and consolidation to simplify reporting and to establish a single source of truth.

After comparing different solutions on the market, they opted for insightsoftware’s Jet Analytics as a data preparation, automation, and modelling solution. Thanks to Jet Analytics, they could successfully integrate data from the three various source systems: legacy accounting data from NAV, legacy sales data from QIS, and combined accounting and sales data from Odoo. They also chose Jet Reports as a front-end financial reporting tool within Excel.

Jet Analytics is flexible and easy to use. If you have some basic database knowledge, you will discover even more possibilities with Jet.

Yin-Ting Chua, Software Development Engineer

Building to success with Jet
Using Jet Analytics and Jet Reports combined, Quint has been able to automate data preparation and make it report-ready in an instant. They can easily publish the data to their users with the built-in Jet Reports scheduler, which generates reports to the organisation’s cloud storage. In order to fully utilize the aggregated data, they are published to Google Data Source for report visualization via Google Data Studio.

Jet Analytics has allowed Quint to enable fast and low-maintenance data transformation. The data preparation and automation are done in a matter of minutes.

The finance team uses Jet Reports to generate and analyze monthly consolidated financial reports, always using reliable, single-source data prepared in Jet Analytics. “Jet Reports provides the finance team with a clear view of consolidated data within Excel,” said Yin-Ting Chua, Software Development Engineer at Quint. “Also, the team can easily generate complete financial reports by themselves.”.

By implementing Jet Analytics and Jet Reports, Quint has been able to enjoy several benefits:

• The finance team can easily access a common, reliable single source of truth collecting data from multiple source systems.
• Users can query data from Jet Reports in Excel without the need for P/SQL programming knowledge.
• Time-savings with data preparation, automation, and modelling done in a matter of minutes

Navigating Success
With simplified data management and reduced dependency on the IT department to create reports, finance users can now access the data they need and generate reports by themselves.

During periods of rapid change, it is especially important for leaders to have real-time access to information based on a reliable single source of truth.  Unfortunately, keeping up with evolving requirements for operational and financial reporting usually creates an ongoing cost burden.

Most off-the-shelf ERP reporting tools fall short of the mark because they lack the flexibility to adapt quickly. They typically require specialised technical expertise and are not able to combine data from multiple software systems. Over the long term, the costs of reporting can really add up.

When reporting becomes a money pit, it’s time to look for a new solution.

With the right technology tools, business leaders can increase the speed and agility of the business, gain insights based on real-time data, and reduce total cost of ownership.  By planning ahead, businesses can be more adaptable as the organisation’s needs change, as technology evolves, and as new needs emerge.

Learn how to prepare for the future and help your business gain accurate real-time insights, lower your costs, and increase agility.

Contents:

Introduction

PROBLEM 1:
The Business Changes

PROBLEM 2:
The Software Changes

PROBLEM 3:
Information Requirements Change

THE SOLUTION:
Information at the Speed of Business

Download the whitepaper: How to futureproof your financial report builds

If you’ve ever been in the midst of the festive celebrations and are suddenly hit with dread of an upcoming, cumbersome, financial year-end close, you’re not alone. Not only do you have to complete the usual processes involved with a month-end close, but you have the additional tasks of working back through each month to make any needed adjustments, preparing tax reporting, and planning for the next year. Getting the job done requires a real, concerted team effort. Sometimes you might need to involve IT or external consultants to help pull reports. This can take more time and result in errors due to misunderstanding or miscommunication.

This adds up to greater productivity, less stress and more accurate data to drive strategic insights and identify efficiencies.

The year-end close is likely to be the time when you feel the most frustration toward your ERP – surely there must be an easier way than relying on a platform that isn’t customised to your year-end needs.

In this guide we discuss each of your likely pain points throughout the different stages of a year-end close, and the best ways to resolve them.

Contents:

• Tackling year-end close challenges
  • Reporting
  • Consolidation
  • Tax provision and reporting
  • Operational transfer pricing
  • Planning
•  Summary of potential struggles
• The right year-end close tools to make the process a breeze

Download the white paper: Streamline Your Financial Year-End Close Process to Free Up Time for Analysis

…

Frustrated with constantly trying to fill the gaps between what business intelligence (BI) tools provide, and the actual reporting needs of your finance team? Does your team often resort to dumping ERP data into Excel and then manually manipulating it? If so, it’s probably time to consider financial reporting software.

When it comes to financial reporting, companies are quickly learning that business intelligence and financial intelligence just aren’t the same thing.

But how do you know what to look for? In this whitepaper, you will learn the five key factors to consider when evaluating financial reporting solutions.

Here are five key factors to consider when evaluating financial reporting solutions:

• Finance-owned vs IT-owned
• Direct, timely data access
• Drill into detail
• Multi-source connectivity
• Time to value

Download whitepaper: Five key factors to consider when evaluating financial reporting software

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Carlsberg was one of the first international brewers to export beer to China, starting over 150 years ago. Today, The Carlsberg Brewery Guangdong in Huizhou supplies products to mainland China, Hong Kong, and the Macau markets. Carlsberg offers 20 different brews from 25 breweries in China, catering to consumers on various drinking occasions.

The challenge
To produce their financial and management reports, the finance team at Carlsberg China needed to combine data from more than eight Microsoft Dynamics NAV databases. Because of the data volumes and number of databases involved, end users found it hard to navigate their NAV systems to find the data they needed.

This meant the finance team was forced to export data from each NAV system and manually stitch them together in Excel to generate the reports they needed. This process consumed a lot of time and manual effort and had to be repeated from scratch, each month.

“Users can easily build reports by themselves to support their analysis.”

The team at Carlsberg recognised that they needed a solution that could consolidate data from multiple companies and databases into a single data warehouse, without requiring a lengthy implementation process, or relying on technical specialists. The chosen solution would also need to cope with their data volumes and still provide fast query response times for their more than 300 end users.

Facing these challenges, they chose to deploy Jet Analytics and Jet Reports.

Building to success with Jet
Using Jet Analytics, Carlsberg China was able to work with pre-built content to quickly create a data warehouse. Jet Analytics also provided multiple cubes to support the team’s different analysis needs while delivering sub-second query response times.

Using Jet Reports, finance team members were able to leverage their existing Excel skills to quickly and easily create the reports they needed, saving time and eliminating the need to dump data from NAV into static spreadsheets.

By implementing Jet Analytics and Jet Reports across the organisation, Carlsberg China has seen many positive results:

• The team has already shaved one day off their month-end reporting process
• Previously, users were not able to generate reports, but now they are self-sufficient, because they can easily build the reports they need, without requiring technical expertise, by using Jet Reports against the data warehouse
• They can now easily and instantly run comparative reports across different date ranges using a simple pivot-style drag-and-drop table from OLAP Cubes. Previously, getting this level of visibility took weeks for them to produce manually.

Navigating success
With simplified navigation of data and reduced dependency on the IT department to create reports, the finance team can now create the reports they need, at any time.

“We now have a reliable and timely data source providing a single version of the truth for our financial reporting. Users can easily build reports by themselves to support their analysis. We can also now view our data at an aggregate level instead of just viewing a detailed listing, which makes it faster and easier for users to navigate their financial data to make informed decisions,” says Chen Johnson, BI Engineer

Source: This article was originally sourced from insightsoftware

A finance department Key Performance Indicator (KPI) or metric is a clearly defined quantifiable measure used to evaluate a company’s financial performance. From an external perspective, investors compare the financial KPIs of different companies to determine which is a better investment. Internally, companies use financial metrics to evaluate prospective investments and track internal performance from a financial perspective.

Utilising KPIs within your Finance Department
Financial KPIs are a very broad topic. However, there are two common uses for financial KPIs. The first one is financial reporting, where your company is conveying information to shareholders. The other use is for internal auditing and process improvement.

Due to the number of financial performance indicators, a good approach to take is tiering the metrics. High level indicators should be directly reported to the CFO of a company, while higher resolution indicators should be analysed by the finance department. In this post, we will go over some finance manager KPIs, KRAs and KPIs for a finance department, and how financial reporting software is able to enhance this process.

KPIs for Finance Managers and the CFO
As we mentioned above, finance managers and CFOs need high level KPIs readily available to them so they can make decisions that impact the direction a company will take in the future. At insightsoftware, we came up with what we believe are the most important finance manager KPI examples:

1. Quick Ratio – As a CFO or financial manager, you want to quickly check the financial health of your company. This ratio does just that. The quick ratio determines a company’s ability to immediately cover its short-term financial obligations.Quick ratio = (Cash + Marketable Securities + Accounts Receivable) / Current Liabilities
2. Current Ratio – Another financial metric commonly used to assess the health of a company is the current ratio. It is like the quick ratio, but rather than checking if a company can immediately cover obligations, it checks to see if a company can meet its obligations within one year.Current Ratio = Current Assets / Current Liabilities
3. Working Capital – This key financial metric is used to measure the amount of money a company has available at their disposal, ready to be put to work. This can help a financial manager decide how aggressive a company should be in pursuing growth opportunities.Working Capital = Current Assets – Current Liabilities
4. Accounts Payable Turnover – It is good practice to keep the accounts payable turnover metric readily available. This financial KPI measures the amount of time it takes a company to pay its suppliers and is a strong leading indicator of a company’s financial position. If the ratio starts to decrease, it is a sign of potential cash flow problems.Accounts Payable (AP) Turnover = Total Supply Purchases / ((Beginning AP – Ending AP) / 2)
5. Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC) – This is a financial performance indicator that measures how many days it takes a company to convert its goods back to cash. To do this, the metric analyses the number of days to sell inventory, collect receivables, and pay its bills. Ideally, a CFO would like to see this value stay the same, or decrease over time.CCC = Days of Inventory Outstanding + Days Sales Outstanding – Days Payables Outstanding
6. Return on Equity (ROE) – For a finance manager or CFO, shareholders are very important. One of the financial metrics that shareholders care most about is ROE, as it can be used to assess how efficiently shareholder’s equity is being utilised. This metric is often used when comparing two companies in the same industry to see which is a better investment.Return on Equity = Net Income / Average Shareholders’ Equity
7. Total Debt-to-Equity Ratio – This financial key performance indicator is used to measure a company’s liabilities against its shareholder’s equity. Finance managers should pay attention to this metric as it identifies how much debt is being used to grow a company. A high ratio can be worrying as an economic downturn could spell disaster.Total-Debt-to-Equity = (Short-Term Debt + Long-Term Debt) / Shareholder’s Equity
8. Gross Profit Margin – Gross profit margin is every CFO’s go-to metric. It calculates how much money is left from the revenue after removing the cost of goods sold and expresses it as a percentage of revenue. This shows how profitable your products are.Gross Profit Margin = (Net Sales – Cost of Goods Sold) / Net Sales
9. Net Profit Margin – This key financial metric is often referred to as the bottom line. At the end of the day, this is what is most important to any CFO, financial manager, or shareholder: how much money the company is making relative to revenue. Ideally, this number is always positive, and the higher, the better.Net Profit Margin = Net Income / Net Sales
10. Earnings Per Share (EPS) – This is one of the most important financial KPIs when it comes to reporting. Almost every analyst or news outlet will be touting a company’s EPS when it comes to announcing quarterly results. As such, it is a crucial financial metric that every CFO must pay attention to.EPS = (Net Income – Preferred Dividends) / (End-of-Period Common Shares Outstanding)
11. Compound Average Growth Rate (CAGR) – Your shareholders always want to know how much the company is growing, whether it be revenue, profit, or market share. This financial KPI calculates how much a certain aspect of the business has grown on a compound basis. For a CFO, this is a very important figure to be able to report to shareholders.
12. Operating cash flow – The operating cash flow financial metric is one of the most basic metrics used by CFOs. It measures how much income is generated from regular business operations. In a healthy company, this number should be positive, and can be used to help determine how much CAPEX a company can afford.Operating Cash Flow = EBIT + Depreciation – Taxes – Change in Working Capital
13. Operating expense – Commonly known as OPEX, this financial performance indicator is used to track how much it costs a business to carry on day-to day-operations. These expenses include rent, inventory costs, insurance, payroll, research and development, etc. This is important to financial managers, as the easiest way to increase profits is by cutting costs.
14. EBITDA & EBITDA growth – This might be a bit of a mouthful, but it stands for Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortisation. This financial metric is used as an alternative for to net income, as it gives a more precise measure of corporate earnings by leaving out strategic accounting. EBITDA and EBITDA growth are best tracked using financial reporting software as they are very data intensive.
15. Employee count – Every good manager knows how many employees they have at any given time. This financial key performance indicator can also be utilised in conjunction with other KPIs to give insightful data on a per employee basis.

Now that you have had a good look through those sample KPIs for finance managers, we should look at the KPIs for the finance department. But just before we do that, we will review what makes an ideal KPI for the finance team.

What Makes a Good Key Performance Indicator for the Finance Department?
Financial managers and CFOs should be concerning themselves with KPIs and metrics that give a holistic view of how the company is performing. This helps them make decisions on a company-wide basis, and it is up to the finance department to implement these changes on a micro scale. With this in mind, we will discuss what kind of characteristics you should look for when assigning KRAs and KPIs to the finance department.

• High resolution. These metrics need to look at the nitty gritty details of the company. They should scrutinise each process and business segment to see where bottlenecks occur, or to see where performance can be increased.
• Project specific. Any time a company is looking at starting a new project or making an investment, the finance department should be analysing all the possible outcomes from a financial perspective and summarising it in a nice report.
• Efficiency oriented. This might seem like a bit of a catch-all characteristic but hear us out. Efficiency oriented KPIs should be used to track different business segments and help develop processes that make the segments more efficient.

You might have noticed something in common with all those characteristics. All of them are low level, almost what you would call ‘hands on’ KPIs. That is because the finance department is meant to be monitoring, analysing, and looking for ways to implement change.

KPIs for the Finance Department
The finance department of any company often works tirelessly in the background to ensure financial operations run smoothly so other departments can focus on their own objectives. To do this, there are specific key performance indicators for the finance department to keep track of. Here are some examples of those financial key performance indicators:

16. Net Present Value (NPV) – This financial metric is used on a project by project basis to determine if an endeavor will be profitable. To do this, reconcile future cashflows over a period of time as a present value. This is a perfect example of a KPI for the finance department.Net Present Value = Today’s Value of Expected Cash Flows – Today’s Value of Invested Cash
17. Future Value (FV) – The future value financial KPI is also commonly used by finance departments when evaluating the value of prospective projects or endeavors. To do so, this financial performance indicator uses an assumed rate of return to estimate the value of an investment at a future date.Future Value = Present Value * (1 + Interest Rate)^Time
18. Reports produced per finance employee – This key performance indicator for the finance department is best used for internal audits. While quantity isn’t necessarily better than quality, this financial metric helps measure the performance of the finance team, and potentially identify areas of improvement. The use of a financial reporting solution can often improve this performance metric.
19. Finance report error rate – Every finance team would love this metric to read zero. However, that is not always the case. Like the KPI previously mentioned, this is another area where financial reporting solutions can provide finance departments with the proper tools to get the job done.
20. Payback period – This is a good KPI for the finance team. The payback period metric is best used on a project-by-project basis to determine the amount of time it takes an investment to pay for itself. This helps the finance department assess which projects seem the most promising.Payback Period = Initial Capital Cost for Project / Annual Savings or Earnings from Project
21. Internal Rate of Return (IRR) – The IRR financial KPI calculates the rate of return required for a net present value of zero. If this IRR is above the company’s required rate of return, the investment should be considered by the finance team. This metric is best used when comparing multiple investment opportunities and deciding which is the best, with a higher IRR being more attractive.
22. Return on investment (ROI) – It would take way too much time for a CFO or finance manager to review the ROI of every single investment a company made. As such, this falls onto the finance department to keep track of. This task can easily be automated using a financial KPI dashboard. Keeping this data safe and easily accessible on a dashboard helps with comparing past investments to estimate the performance of future investments.Return on Investment = (Current Value of Investment – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment
23. Total debt-to-asset ratio – As the name implies, this financial KPI measures the total amount of debt a company has and compares it to the company’s assets. This is a ratio that is better kept on the lower side. If the ratio is too high, a company may have difficulties acquiring future loans, as it shows that they have a higher chance of defaulting on their obligations. At the same time, all companies should make use of at least a little bit of debt to help fund expansion.Total-Debt-to-Asset = (Short-Term Debt + Long-Term Debt) / Total Assets
24. Interest coverage ratio – When you borrow money from anyone, the minimum amount you must pay is the interest. Is your company in a good position to do that? This KPI indicator for the finance department measures a company’s ability to cover its interest expense with its earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT).Interest Coverage = EBIT / Interest Expense
25. Time to conduct budget and planning process – This is one of the top financial KPIs for a finance department. Everyone dreads the budget and planning process. That is why there is a finance metric to measure the amount of time it takes. However, just because there is a metric that tracks time, it doesn’t mean you can slack on quality.
26. Time to close – When it comes to the end of the quarter, there never seems to be enough time to close. Everyone is always in a panic, sending out emails to make sure all the expenses get submitted. Being able to close quickly and efficiently is the sign of a company that functions well—or one that uses good financial reporting software.

The finance department has a wide range of objectives that they must meet, with a variety of KPIs that they use to help them reach these objective. However, some of these tasks can easily be streamlined and even automated using high-quality financial reporting software solutions.

Streamline your KPI reporting with Financial Reporting Software
At insightsoftware, we eat, sleep, and breathe financial reporting. It is what we are passionate about. As such, we want to make the reporting process as easy as possible for our clients through the use of KPI dashboards. Here are some of the benefits to using a financial reporting solution:

• Automated data collection. A KPI dashboard is a very powerful data collection tool. Our software is designed to be compatible with your existing ERP, so data extraction is as easy as one-two-three.
• Data consolidation. Since your data is automatically extracted and collected for you, it is now conveniently all in one place. Gone are the days of emailing spreadsheets or passing a thumb drive to your neighbor.
• Prebuilt KPI templates. Our software is out of the box ready. All the KPIs you could possibly think of are ready to go.
• Generate reports instantly. When you couple prebuilt templates with automatic data collection, what do you get? Instant reports. Your finance department doesn’t have to stress about compiling reports for the CFO anymore. This will greatly reduce your time to close.

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Excel has such a long history in business accounting and corporate finance that it has inevitably become the butt of some easy jokes. Despite the complexity of the program and its decades-long contributions to the world of finance, there’s no question that many professionals have their own personal frustrations with Microsoft’s iconic spreadsheet solution.

As finance technology and financial management solutions evolve and incorporate artificial intelligence, cloud-based software, and other tools and features that enhance financial practices, it’s easy to assume that Excel’s relevance to businesses has either declined in recent years or is operating on borrowed time. But the reality is that Excel, for all of its limitations and warts, still offers value to many businesses and continues to be relied upon in a wide range of use cases.

Excel isn’t perfect, but some of the challenges of using the software have more to do with the user’s lack of expertise.

Excel isn’t perfect, but some of the challenges of using the software have more to do with the user’s lack of expertise. In many cases, you can improve the value Excel offers your budgeting and forecasting activities just by taking time to learn some of its nuances.

To that end, we’ve compiled five useful tips to help you improve your use of Excel when budgeting and forecasting for your business.

1. Use file-sharing tools to make sure all collaborators are working from the most up-to-date spreadsheet
At large organisations, the budgeting and forecasting process isn’t a one-person job. Collaboration tools are essential to managing large projects and coordinating tasks and workflows among members of the finance team. But even when workflows are being effectively managed, the efficiency of this collaboration is largely dependent on the reliability of your data.

All collaborators need access to the same data sets, which themselves must represent the most up-to-date financial information possible. By integrating Excel with financial consolidation tools, you can ensure these data sets are regularly updated to support your finance team and reduce the risk of data discrepancies.

Excel makes it easy to manage large sets of data across multiple spreadsheets, all of which can be used in enterprise budgeting and forecasting. But your finance team also needs the tools in place to ensure that all collaborators are using the most recent files, which means you need an external platform connected to Excel that organises these versions and ensures collaborators are working off the same information. In the long run, this reduces your error rates and streamlines collaboration on key financial tasks.

2. Master advanced formulas and functions offered in Excel
If you’re using Excel for budgeting and forecasting, you’re probably familiar with the basic formulas and functions offered by the software. But you can increase the value of Excel in your financial tasks by taking time to master some of the more advanced functions that may offer particular benefits to finance professionals.

A few of these advanced functions include:

• VLOOKUP: This function makes it easy to search through a database and pull information related to an item when all of the items in a list have a unique identifier. This has all sorts of applications, from finance to human resources, but finance teams might use it for invoicing, adding up costs, tracking spending or unpaid balances, and many other tasks. One challenge of this function is that it works only from left to right, meaning the unique identifier you use to find related values has to be placed to the left of your desired value in whatever list or database you’re using.
• XLOOKUP: The left-to-right limitation of VLOOKUP is one reason Excel released an updated function, XLOOKUP, which offers one important benefit over its predecessor: Searches can be conducted from any starting point in a database, moving in any direction to find the desired value. XLOOKUP also defaults to searching for an exact match, rather than the approximate match sought by VLOOKUP, which may not always be preferable, depending on the type of values being sought. Still, XLOOKUP generally offers more benefits to users – but because it’s a relatively new function, many professionals might not be familiar with it.
• Pivot tables: Pivot tables are one of the more complex functions available through Excel, but they are a valuable tool when dealing with large data sets – which is likely the case at an enterprise organisation. Pivot tables allow you to summarise data and even generate visual graphics based on the trends featured in the data. (A great tutorial on setting up pivot tables can be found here.)

If you haven’t brushed up on Excel’s functions lately, it might be time to revisit them and find out what you’re missing out on. Because the list of available functions has grown over time, there might be valuable new functions available to improve your use of the software.

3. Take advantage of Excel’s automation capabilities
Excel offers the functionality to enact simple automation for various tasks within the software. This is accomplished by creating custom logic within macros, which are essentially structured tasks that you can configure for processes you plan to repeat over time.

Macros aren’t equipped with artificial intelligence or other tools to enable robust automation for time-intensive processes, but they do make it possible to automate simple, predictable processes without having to write any code. That’s a huge benefit for finance professionals, who can use Excel to improve their own individual capabilities, reduce errors, and quickly build new solutions for basic financial tasks over time.

If you need stronger automation capabilities – or you just want to fully realise the benefits of using automation to support your finance team – then you might want to implement a comprehensive financial software suite. But even with that suite in place, Excel can help individual workers create basic automation solutions that make their jobs easier.

4. Use cloud-based data management to support Excel forecasting at scale
Excel is a complex program that’s capable of managing massive data sets and supporting budgeting and forecasting even at a large business. But there can still be issues when it comes to scaling Excel for enterprise businesses and maintaining a single source of truth for your financial data – among other challenges that are unique to large organisations.

One way to overcome Excel’s limitations of scale and workload volume is to connect this software program with a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, or a  suite that can consolidate and centralise financial data for the entire organisation. Instead of functioning as the repository for all this data—and managing the data in all of its complexity – Excel instead uses the cloud-based solution as a resource for acquiring business data and using it for budgeting and forecasting functions.

As a result, Excel’s powerful spreadsheet management and formulaic functions can still be utilised by enterprise organisations. But an ERP or financial suite can do some of the heavy lifting around this financial data, such as maintaining audit trails, organising and saving different versions of files, improving information security, and ensuring that Excel’s functions have the benefit of a single source of truth when running their calculations.

5. Understand when your budgeting and forecasting have outgrown Excel
Many businesses, including enterprise organisations, can continue to find value in Excel even as their companies grow in both size and the complexity of their financial data. If you started out as a small organisation with simple financial data and limited resources, you were probably able to get by using Excel as a stand-alone solution.

Over time, though, you’re likely to experience growing pains related to Excel’s limitations. Even if you have plans to continue using Excel in the future, you might face a crossroads where additional financial solutions are critical to conducting budgeting, forecasting, and other financial activities at the level you require.

Disparate financial data, a lack of a single source of truth, and incomplete financial statements are just some of the scenarios in which Excel’s limitations can become more glaring. Similarly, you may want your financial data to drive better strategic decision-making through the use of dynamic modeling, custom reports, advanced analytics, or other insight-driven initiatives that Excel isn’t capable of supporting.

Excel can still offer value to large enterprise organisations in some capacity, but its role in overall budgeting and forecasting may diminish as your company’s size and strategic needs surpass what the software offers.

When you reach that crossroads, seek out a financial software solution like Tidemark, which uses cloud-based computing, advanced automation, and other enterprise-focused financial tools to integrate Excel into a state-of-the-art system for efficient financial management.

Curious about how Tidemark upgrades your Excel approach and improves financial operations? Request a demo today.

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