The Ledger

The Cost of Inaccurate Financial Data

Executives are tasked with making the best decisions for the business every day, and they rely on financial data to inform many of those decisions. The key to making the best decisions for the business is trusting the data, because inaccuracies in financial data can have a very negative impact. This impact includes significant reputational damage, potential inability to secure additional investment, and increasing debt levels. Additionally, many organizations spending endless hours fixing financial errors in their accounts. An integrated automation platform helps maintain the integrity of numbers and processes in several ways.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Costing for Complexity is…. Complex.

“In today’s fast-moving consumer goods environment, consumers demand an increasing degree of differentiation. Serving this need comes at a cost.”

Accommodating the multiple SKUs that come from differentiation adds significantly to production costs for companies that produce fast-moving consumer goods. Cost accountants have an opportunity to provide significant value by assisting their companies in fulfilling customers’ desire for this customization while minimizing the costs. However, allocating the costs of carrying this many SKUs can be a challenge.

Read More at The Journal of Accountancy >

Automated Technologies Could Be the Key to Agility

Today more than ever, finance teams are examining how agile methodologies can improve productivity, reduce market entry time for products, and increase profitability.  One of the ways that finance departments can improve their agility is through the adoption of new technologies that offer many opportunities to automate repetitive and manual departmental or enterprise-wide processes. When applied to these types of problems and scaled across multiple sites or groups, large cost savings and additional process improvement benefits can be achieved. These savings can help the finance team become more agile and focused on higher-value-added work, resulting in improved performance and job satisfaction.

Read More at Strategic Finance Magazine >

New Research Proves the Need for a Collaborative Platform for Financial Planning

According to a new study by Ventana Research, one of the C-suite’s top struggles is gaining clear, up-to-date information to support strategic business decisions – typically the result of disparate technologies and siloed departments. ERP systems can only provide a certain level of detail and collaboration, so businesses need a platform that can link data and provide management with a single source of the truth. Plans can reflect both operational and financial data to create hybrid key performance indicators, far more valuable for decision support than isolated KPIs. All businesses know that data is power, but the must understand that it’s access to actionable data insights that determines the competitive edge. Linking information greatly improves planning results and leveraging dynamic technologies to do so improves overall business agility.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >