Accounting Can Make Your Entire Enterprise More Agile

Since starting my 20 year career as an auditor, CPA and software professional for financial applications rarely have my business conversations or projects revolved around how accounting can make all lines of business more agile.  In fact, it was just the opposite and accounting was referred to as a necessary evil that you have to do in order to satisfy some type of tax, audit, regulatory or reporting requirement .  Once line of business managers provided the accounting department the documents needed to compile a tax return, satisfy an audit or report external financial statements life goes on and everyone else goes back to focusing on real strategic execution and operations that drive performance and returns.  This is changing fast and today is an extremely exciting time to be working with companies on what the next generation of financial software solutions can provide.  In fact, CFO’s, Finance VP’s and Controllers are all asking the same question when evaluating new solutions or upgrading their financial systems “How can a new solution help me be seen as a critical strategic partner to all lines of business within our company rather than just the scorekeeper?” 

The answer lies within relevant information available anytime, anywhere.  Financial departments have always had data and information that touches every aspect of the business.  Ultimately the financial statements the accounting department is responsible for compiling and disclosing tell the story of the overall health of a company.  The problem is these financial statements aren’t delivered in consumable format where a line of business managers or executives can use the information to make everyday decisions that will help drive performance of their department.  They are backward looking scorecards that aggregate data from every facet of the business. 

What if all line of business managers and executives had at their fingertips at any time relevant information that told a story about how various transactions just entered into the financial system are impacting their personal or department’s strategic objectives?   Imagine for example the finance depart just ran a customer invoicing cycle and in real-time transforms that business process into an easy to understand analytic showing the profit margin by customer which displayed on the home screen of the mobile devices of sales managers and VP’s.   Sales managers could see what customers are most profitable for the company and create new campaigns, terms, offers, etc with those customers to show appreciation, ensure loyalty and ultimately increase sales and revenue.  Now that is a truly a next generation concept where a finance department cultivates a strategic relationship with the rest of the company by providing agile insight that is relevant to all line of businesses for decision making and action taking.

Well this type of innovative and next generation financials solution is available NOW!  Click here to see how SAP is transforming financial data into agile insight for all lines business on a mobile device with the new cloud based SAP Financials On Demand solution.

I encourage you to join us at  SAPPHIRE NOW Madrid where this solution will be launched, discussed and shown in action .