The Ledger

Reducing Finance Costs with Digital Technology

Leading finance organizations costs have plateaued in recent years because they have already squeezed as much inefficiency out of their finance operations as possible with their pre-existing tools. Reducing finance cost is not just an exercise in cutting expense. It’s about building a leaner organization that frees up funds for redeployment into growth opportunities; and creates a more agile base for finance to be responsive to the demands of its stakeholders. How can it break through the cost barrier? One answer is by more broadly adopting digital technologies.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >

Do You Know the Real Cost of Invoicing Your Customers?

The process of invoicing a customer includes maintaining customer and product master files, generating customer billing data, transmitting billing data to customers, posting receivable entries, and resolving billing inquiries. Process cost includes the fully loaded cost of personnel, outsourcing, systems, and overhead, as well as other allocations to the process. The best-performing organizations spend $2 or less to invoice a customer. However, invoicing isn’t just the accounting team’s job. An effective process requires coordination between sales and accounting, so making sure that these teams’ systems talk to each other is crucial.

Read More at CFO Magazine >

Even Farms Need a Data Strategy

“Having a plan ensures you control all aspects of your data.”

Farms are always collecting data like yield maps, online records, input costs, and financials, but they don’t have a data strategy in place. Having a digital strategy is an outline of key ways to make the data more useful, starting with how to use it to evaluate revenue potential throughout the growing season.  The data can then be used to assess the maximum profit opportunities including maximum yield potential and the variables that impact yield through the growing season.

Read More at Farm Futures >

Analytics is a Top Priority for Finance

The number-one enterprise-based objective for finance in 2018 is to support enterprise information and analytics needs. With the advent of digital transformation, competition is fiercer. Markets and business models change overnight. Disruptive technologies are quick to change the dynamics of the business environment. Management and business leaders hunger for fresh insights so they can make decisions fast about how to survive and thrive in this fast-changing landscape. To accomplish this, finance teams need to adopt analytics tools and related technologies.

Read More at The Digitalist by SAP >