The Ledger

How Compliance and Cost Reduction Efforts Are Shaping Digital Transformation

“Leveraging funding and sponsorship of regulatory and cost reduction initiatives is enabling legacy firms to transform their data capabilities to achieve revenue generation and growth objectives.”

Today’s businesses aspire to be competitive by leveraging their data to drive revenue generation and business growth. To accomplish this, companies that still rely on traditional business models must embark on data-driven digital transformation initiatives. But how do technology and data leaders ensure that non-revenue generating data-driven transformation efforts receive the commitment and funding that are required to sustain these efforts?

Read More at Forbes Magazine >

Software Solutions For The Modern Finance Leader

CFOs today increasingly shape strategy across their organizations, driving long-term growth and performance. But with high volumes of data everywhere they turn, finance leaders are facing major pressure to gain meaningful insights quickly. In today’s digital economy, technology is no longer a luxury or “nice to have”; it’s a “must-have” that sets enterprises apart from the competition by providing a new level of trust and confidence that the data used to support decision making is up-to-date and accurate. Strong finance leaders are not held back by outdated or legacy systems because they are more than likely to have invested in technologies that help them achieve their business goals. With a dependable set of accurate and complete financial statements now a given, the business can get on with effective decision-making, compliance, forecasting, and strategic planning. Business software also provides strong real-time analytics, which can be used to make robust business-wide decisions, further strengthening the role of finance leaders as strategic adviser.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

How Much is Your Business Complexity Costing You?

Without the right tools in place, business complexity is not only costly, it’s also a major hindrance to developing functional agility. The ability to respond quickly to changing market and internal conditions is critical for success in today’s ever-changing business climate. Recent research from The Hackett Group reported that organizational and process complexity are the second and third biggest inhibitors of becoming an agile finance function. Complexity is combination of different factors, all of them related and often specific to an industry or company. However, finance in any industry can reap substantial benefits from reducing the complexity of its operating environment.

Read More at The Hackett Group >

Why Intelligent Businesses Are Focused on Comprehensive Reporting

An intelligent enterprise is one that leverages data strategically to improve business performance and better serve customers. Leading businesses are focusing on improving data visualization to catapult their efforts modernizing and optimizing their data landscape to support their overall strategy. While traditional reporting is still the main source of information for decision support, enterprise reporting tells the story of business performance over time and can be a key factor to being competitive. By revamping data visualization and enterprise reporting with advanced technologies, companies can extract more value from their data and move closer to becoming an intelligent enterprise.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >