What was once a marathon is now a sprint.

For more than a decade, enterprise finance teams have been hard at work transforming the function from traditional number-cruncher to strategic business partner. But what was once a gradual migration to a new way of working is now a sprint with rapidly moving hurdles. Market dynamics have accelerated the pace of change exponentially. Compliance expectations and regulatory requirements keep expanding. And the amount of internal and external data that finance teams must process grows larger by the day.

To add fuel to the fire, many finance teams still face the same daily operational challenges that have plagued them for years. Financial consolidation and reporting take too much time and effort to complete, stealing time that could be better spent elsewhere. Bottlenecks and barriers inhibit decision-making effectiveness, leaving the business on the back-foot in an ever-shifting market.

Outsmart disruption by bringing FP&A and consolidation together.

Today’s finance teams need a more intelligent way to make decisions. With the environment changing daily, organizations should expect (and need) constant performance updates. This can only be realized by reducing the time spent on non-value-added activities and refocusing finance on strategic support and value creation.

Complex internal systems must be replaced with an approach that unifies core performance management processes including planning, financial consolidation and close, reporting, and analytics in a single, scalable solution. Doing so leads to a wealth of advantages that can take you from spreadsheet to superhero, providing the vital insights needed to navigate your business through whatever disruption the market throws at it. Let’s explore a few…

Increased efficiency and accuracy

Having a single point of data collection for planning, consolidation, and reporting eliminates the risk of errors and inconsistencies and avoids the duplication of tasks across different team members and processes. Synchronizing and sharing data from the same place also ensures that reports are always up-to-date and consistent. This increase in efficiency and accuracy ensures that everyone remains on the same page, and there are no discrepancies around the current state of affairs.

Speedier working

Bringing FP&A and financial consolidation together in one solution enables you to close faster. Time-consuming manual data collection is replaced by a more controlled, and automated, process, leading to near real-time access to financial data and insights. A fully integrated process also brings control and governance from end-to-end, eliminating bottlenecks and increasing accountability for tasks and responsibilities.

Enhanced insights

Unifying FP&A and consolidation also helps your team analyze consolidated financial data alongside budgets and forecasts. It becomes easier to identify gaps, risks, and opportunities, and respond swiftly to market changes, armed with the right information at the right time. The importance of these rapid insights is not to be underestimated, particularly in a disruptive market where every second counts.

Better collaboration and business partnering

Rather than working in silos and spending unnecessary time trying to compare and correlate figures, a single solution approach to FP&A and consolidation empowers your team to collaborate effortlessly. Financial plans can quickly be aligned with consolidated financial results, enabling timely discussions on the best way forward. It also becomes much easier to provide guiding insights to leadership teams, taking finance well into the realms of strategic business partner best practice.

Futureproofed scalability

Providing you choose a flexible planning platform as the base for your integrated finance solution, you’ll be able to easily adapt to new entities, business units, and reporting structures as your needs evolve. A scalable foundation for future growth and financial management is essential in modern finance solutions, given that market changes show no sign of slowing.

Prepare to enter new era of financial consolidation.

With a constant battle to stay one step ahead of disruption and wide-reaching benefits to be gained from integration, bringing FP&A and financial consolidation together is a sound investment in the future performance of your business.

If this blog has inspired you to dive into finance transformation, you won’t want to miss the newest addition to Board’s growing financial solutions. Check out Board Group Consolidation and Reporting!