There is no shortage of articles online that concludes using spreadsheets for financial budgeting, forecasting, planning, reporting, and consolidating processes is such a bad idea. However, even with the flood of these articles online, we know for a fact that a striking 89% of organizations still use spreadsheets according to 2013 Financial planning, budgeting, and forecasting benchmark survey by Aberdeen.
Understandably so, a lot of people are so used to spreadsheets both in their personal dealings and at work that even with the pandemic problems associated with spreadsheets, it remains to be an integral part of financial processes.
We are not going to give you a rundown of all the negative consequences of using spreadsheets as we are sure you are aware of it by now. What we can tell you though is that instead of fixing malfunctioning links and annoying macros, here are the things some of the forward thinking organizations are experiencing today ever since they chose to invest in an enabling technology.
Seamless Data Integration
A reporting and budgeting software is designed to tap into the heart of your financial management capabilities. It can intelligently automate the flow of information from your ERP system (whatever type it may be) and the budgeting and reporting software including charts of accounts, budgets in your General Ledger, etc. This enables the finance team to be more efficient time-wise as there is no need to duplicate information in various sources. It becomes easy to get rid of the popular problem of spreadsheets which is errors due to manual transfer of data.
Visualized View
Companies who have invested in new technology to aid them in their budgeting and reporting can now easily provide a formula-free and interactive financial dashboard reporting. Having this capability allows organizations to look at their business from various angles. By being allowed to do multidimensional reporting, it is now easy to do a versatile analysis and at the same time be able to achieve this with a high degree of reliability and within a profitable speed.
Streamlined and better financial control
Companies that have chosen to invest in a robust budgeting and reporting solution is now able to streamline their budgeting process. With its intelligent automation, budget cycle times are now significantly shorter not to mention more accurate. By investing in a reliable budgeting and reporting solution, several organizations have been reaping the benefits of a unified financial process.
Impact agility and relevance
A budget plan to stay useful must be timely and relevant. If the budget cannot reflect the changes in daily operations, sales, marketing, etc. it is pretty much useless. Companies that have invested in a budgeting and reporting software are enabled to do quick adjustments depending on the current circumstances. Changes are reflected instantaneously, consolidation is automatic, there is a single repository of data, comparisons can be facilitated with ease, and updates are not dreaded because there are no formulas and hard coding involved just to effect these updates.
Deeper and better Analysis
One of the major advantages of investing in a budgeting and reporting software is that by shortening the budget cycle times and freeing the time in the hands of the finance personnel, deeper analysis can be done. Oftentimes, when too much time is spent on collating and fixing errors, there is very little time spared for analyzing. This perhaps is the biggest advantage as the insight brought about by investing in a finance-oriented solution can lead directly to improving strategy and timely decision-making of the company.
These are just some of the many other benefits you can get when you let go of spreadsheets and start to realize that you need to invest in an integrated budgeting, reporting, forecasting, and consolidating solution.
If you want to streamline and improve how you do your financial process today try out Performance Canvas by DSPanel. It is a powerful and integrated Reporting and analysis, forecasting, budgeting, and consolidating tool.
Performance Canvas was built from the ground up by the same experts behind SAP BPC, IBM Cognos and Consolidator, Hyperion Enterprise, and Clarity Solution in an effort to come up with the most modern and agile financial tool in the market at a reasonable cost.
It is currently being used by the Gunvor Group, DAHL, Feruni Ceramiche, NLI Norway, Detection Technology, and even hospitals like Friendly Society private Hospital to name a few. To learn more about Performance Canvas, or to talk to some of the CFOs using the tool, visit us at www.performancecanvas.com or email us at info@dspanel.com
DSPanel offers cutting edge technology platform for business analytics, planning, and visualization. DSPanel designs, builds, and operates with the end users in mind. Performance Canvas was created by DSPanel to answer the unarticulated needs of the market not addressed by previous available solutions. With Performance Canvas, information is transformed into valuable business insights for the business executives to utilize in their decision-making process. DSPanel currently has over 2500 organizations deploying their solutions.
