Running a business is rather a daunting task that requires owners to carefully plan, organize and execute business strategies and at the same time take care of their finances in the most judicial way to excel and earn high profits. Most firms, in today’s fast-paced and dynamic times make use of highly integrated software for efficient and smooth functioning, especially when it comes to managing accounts and preparing budgets. The accounting and budgeting tools help the company’s top management to identify, analyze, measure and report financial data in the most meaningful manner that can further be used in making quick business decisions. Some of the basic budgeting planning software functions include preparing financial statements, budgets, forecasting sales, and more.
While there are so many business budgeting software available in the market that offer seemingly effective and efficient results, most companies dread changes and look for excuses to continue using tools which they have used for years.
Some examples of excuses made by firms are as follows:-
Excuse No. 1 – Not enough funds are allocated to the concerned department and / or the management is not ready to switch to new budgeting software for business solutions.
Excuse No. 2 – The implementation can take too long hampering the on-going functionality of the organization
Excuse No. 3 – Though there might be a more efficient way of carrying out the tasks, but the current solutions are doing a great job.
None of the excuses work when it comes maintaining your place in the industry. The longer a company waits to change with the changing business environment, the more entrenched its business becomes pushing it farther – to the last position in the industrial race. Additionally, since it relates to financial planning, forecasting and budgeting, outdated solutions can cause costly errors and ineffective processes, leaving the company’s financial team scrambling to fix the bugs and wasting time assembling data rather than analyzing and examining it, and providing meaningful insights to the top management.
Understanding the importance of using latest and / or upgraded software, one question that still remains unanswered is – how would a company know when is the time to upscale itself to modern financial and business budgeting software. Here are three signs to look for:
- There is limited cross-departmental collaboration within the business organization – Companies today are expanding at a fast pace and so are their internal departments. With the growing size, it becomes or has rather become difficult for all the departments to communicate with each other and take efficient decisions. In such a scenario, companies must switch to cloud based FP&A technology which promote cross-departmental collaboration. This means that the projects which were considered a responsibility of just one department can now be a team sport wherein all the departmental heads can participate. What’s the benefit? This will enable the organization to gain better financial insights from all departments.
- The organization’s finance team is not accurately and efficiently able to plan, make budgets, and forecast across a multitude of dimensions – No matter if your business runs on a multi-national level in multi-locations, utilizing multi-currencies and in multi-languages, the cloud-based business budgeting software can prove to be very beneficial as more complex business structures require highly advanced technological support.
- The organization does not have visual analytics to help its top management to understand the most essential and impactful business drivers – A major part of the organizations today comprise of non-financial employees. This makes visual analytics essential to all businesses looking forward to taking the FP&A process beyond finance and into other organizational departments, further encouraging the departmental managers to take part in the process.
If you still haven’t identified flaws in your business budgeting methods and wondering why your organization is not performing up-to-the-mark, it’s time to upgrade yourself as well as your financial and budgeting software.