KB20230109/01: Sage Intacct – 7 Reasons to move to a cloud financial system.

The frenetic pace of modern business shows no signs of slowing down. If anything, it’s accelerating. Enterprises have to operate in an always-on, digital world in which we all expect results on demand. But incumbent systems are letting them down.

The Time to Act is Now!

7 Reasons to move to a cloud financial system

1) You can’t afford to delay change

Businesses today need the flexibility to rapidly seize emerging opportunities or quickly deal with new
challenges. But many are held back by disjointed processes and cumbersome systems that don’t easily
adapt to new requirements. Conventional software packages can’t accommodate change without involving IT specialists. Multi-step manual processes can’t be altered without significant disruption and
risk. Reports can’t be updated to track important new business metrics.

A cloud financial system supports business agility because it offers the freedom to adapt rapidly, at
the precise moment when it will be most impactful. Finance staff can easily reconfigure workflow
or data points without needing to call for IT help. Automation makes it easier to manage and modify
multi-step processes. Point-and-click menus allow employees to adapt reports and dashboards to
track and analyze new cost centers, revenue streams or other metrics. The business doesn’t have to
hold back any more on new initiatives for lack of proper systems to support them.

2) Business demands to know now

If the business doesn’t have a financial view of day-to-day operations, it can’t control spending or margins
effectively. Keeping finance isolated in its own functional silo denies access to crucial transactional
data that business managers need to inform their decision making. Every day that action is delayed has
adverse effects on the bottom line, and impacts competitiveness in fast-moving markets.

When financials run in the cloud, the data is available in real-time to stakeholders wherever they are. Even
more valuable is the ability to combine it with operational data and business metrics. Putting finance into
a business context allows far more accurate monitoring of how the business is performing. Metrics can
be as diverse as customer acquisition cost, dollar churn or even tracking specific assets or projects.

3) Information Logjams cost you money

Many organizations ‘make do’ with paper-based processes, time-consuming workarounds and
spreadsheet consolidations – despite the waste of resources and increased risk of errors. The cost and
disruption of upgrades and integration deter them from converting to a more automated system. But
data that’s waiting to be entered or consolidated can’t be made available where it’s needed. These
information logjams have a hidden cost that’s growing all the time as the pace of business accelerates.

A cloud financial system that’s designed to work in sync with other business functions can eliminate
the need for workarounds and spreadsheets. Cloud systems connect easily and securely to other
applications, especially customer-facing systems such as CRM and ecommerce. These automated
connections bring data directly into the financial system for end-to-end processing, manipulation and
analysis. A cloud system also has the flexibility to run certain capabilities as built-in modules instead of
requiring separate specialist systems. Examples include global consolidations, billing, travel and expense
management and project scheduling and management.

Bringing all the data together in this way results in a cost-effective, integrated view of core financial and
business metrics that cuts costs, saves time, delivers real-time insight and improves decision making.

4) Automation makes you lean

Up-and-coming businesses gain a significant competitive edge when they harness digital connectivity
to streamline productivity and enhance outcomes. More established incumbents find it hard to respond
because their processes are rooted in a history of passing paper forms and documents from one
department or organization to another to get things done. These manual processes constantly burn up
money – wasting productive employee time on repetitive data input, and then on copying, faxing, and
physically storing documents that create complex, time-consuming audit trails. Going paperless
instantly saves costs, improves efficiency and streamlines processes.

A single, connected system that integrates easily with other cloud-based systems helps an enterprise
eliminate time-consuming manual processes and take full advantage of the connectivity and digital
features of today’s smart devices and applications. Introducing automated, digital processes for
functions such as timesheets, expense claims and billing can quickly improve efficiency, enhance
accuracy, cut costs and prevent revenue leakage.

5) Self-service helps you do more

Improving access to information helps manage change and tune performance of business operations.
But many finance systems require specialist expertise to develop or customise reports, turning the
finance department into a bottleneck that slows down the availability of critical analysis. Unable or
unwilling to wait for answers, business decision makers either abandon the attempt or turn to inefficient,
unreliable workarounds to extract the information they need. This adds to costs every day and inhibits
the effectiveness of the business.

Self-service access to reports and user-friendly editing tools are a familiar characteristic of cloud
financials. A cloud-native system includes a robust access management infrastructure to control who
has access to create reports and the data they are authorized to view. Finance teams can easily create
reports and make them available to others in the organization for rapid access to up-to-date financial
and business metrics. These may be created and maintained by finance or delegated to other
departments.

6) You have to find answers fast

Everyone is trying to get more done in the working day and we are all less willing to wait for answers.
Connecting processes and data within your organization puts the foundation in place but automation
only goes so far. The picture is not complete until your people can communicate efficiently to
co-ordinate and react promptly when exceptions arise.

Online collaboration is a natural fit for a cloud-based financial system. When conversations happen in the
context of the transactions and documents they refer to, people have the information in front of them
to be able to resolve questions quickly and accurately. There is a direct cash benefit to the business as
collections improve and orders turn into invoices more quickly.

7) You want to be thinking ahead

In today’s fast-moving, digitally connected world, enterprises have to be on top of their game to survive
and thrive. Not just lean and efficient at what they do, but ready to adjust their business strategy in
response to new opportunities or challenges that can spring up at any time. The finance team has a
pivotal role to play in this strategic thinking. But that’s a big ask when resources are tied up in day-to-day
firefighting and meaningful metrics are sparse and slow to arrive.

Cloud financials provide flexible automation that frees up resources while right-time reporting delivers
appropriate business metrics. Decision makers and finance teams are spared time-consuming
administrative tasks, becoming free to focus on timely, well-informed strategic analysis and planning.