For the past few quarters, financial planning and analysis have had to adapt to the impact of the pandemic in workforces and workplaces. Finance teams have had to quickly adapt to shifts in how people work on top of dealing with supply chain problems, liquidity, and market uncertainty.
Many organizations had to deal with cash flow and forecast problems, and update their business models. But with the financial impact of the pandemic upending businesses and organizations like never before, CFOs and their finance teams had to adapt quickly to develop a new financial strategy that can help keep their businesses afloat and ensure their clients and customers are happy.
Finance departments have had to outsource to third parties or explore new FP&A tools that can help ease their teams’ burden as the demand for data-driven insights and accurate analysis continues to increase.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the notable FP&A challenges from remote working and what your teams can do to get past them.
Streamlining Processes for Remote Teams
The pandemic has seen many organizations struggling to ensure the timeliness of their financial reporting. While finance teams are always pressed for time when closing the books, it poses a different set of challenges with a remote workforce. It is hard to track compliance or ensure every stakeholder has access to the financial data they need.
More than ever, finance teams are under increasing pressure from C-suites to provide the needed data to assess the situation accurately and make informed business decisions that are so critical in these uncertain times. But with a lot on their plate and being pressed for time, the potential for inaccuracies and errors also increases, which can question the integrity of financial documents.
Solution: Leveraging cloud financial planning and analysis tools that can enhance efficiencies is a good start. FP&A tools like Performance Canvas look at the bottlenecks and suggests ways to work better. On top of that, it automates redundant tasks can help finance teams meet deadlines. Getting rid of manual processes can also help your teams save time to focus on gathering powerful insights to help their company thrive amidst the current market.
Constrained Time & Resources
With most companies turning to remote working to ensure business continuity, finance teams will need to find new solutions to address these changes. This may include adding new cloud software subscriptions to support a segmented team, dealing with changes to employee contracts, and shifting to automated data systems. However, not all finance teams may have the time or resources to implement them.
More advanced financial planning and analysis tools can be expensive and may require IT support to ensure it is set up correctly. Implementation times tend to drag on for months or years disrupting operations. Employee onboarding may also be necessary, which can take time. But with companies already struggling with keeping their operations business, as usual, holding off on these implementations until the right resources are available is not an option.
Solution: Companies with limited resources have much to gain when they opt for a cloud-based financial planning and analysis solution that solves their need for efficiency and remote collaboration while being easier to implement. Performance Canvas Financials, for example, prides itself on being quick to implement. It takes anywhere from 5 days to 90 days to implement.
Cloud solutions also come equipped with free IT support, so setting this up is quick and easy, with the least amount of downtime. Employees will not have to sacrifice productivity for onboarding sessions because they are relatively user-friendly and easy to use. Finance will gain complete control and visibility into company spend, making it easy to identify where to cut costs, reallocate capital, and empower remote employees to buy the things they need.
Ensuring Business Continuity
A study by Deloitte notes that 40.5% of CFOs believe managing and planning business contingencies through disruption is one of their main challenges this year.
Keeping your business operations thriving amidst a disrupted market is crucial to maintaining the steady flow of revenue. But the pandemic has made it challenging for teams to plan ahead and be guided by financial forecasts.
Solution: Investing in an FP&A tool that supports accurate forecasting can improve business planning immensely. Having access to these insights alone can help in risk management and establish performance benchmarks that can increase productivity and ensure operational stability. Proper planning and forecasting can help clear the path for companies to achieve what needs to be done to achieve their goals for 2021.
Driving Resilience in Finance with Cloud PCF
While remote work has posed significant challenges to finance, it has also shown that a virtual model is no longer impossible. In fact, with the right cloud FP&A tool, CFOs and their finance teams can become better equipped with powerful data-driven insights that can influence the future of their organizations.
Performance Canvas is a best of breed FP&A tool. It is a solution that focuses on finance and business users from setting up to adoption. It uses the best practice approach in FP&A to truly streamline and promote efficiencies. It removes the clunkiness of implementing reporting and budgeting solutions out of the equation. It strives for 100% adoption success through user-friendly features while not compromising security and functionality.
Explore how Cloud PCF can help transform your FP&A needs with the insights you need to craft a business strategy that is timely and meets the demands of the current times.
