Incomplete finance data often leads to poor visibility and bad decision making. Real time,
fast and accurate information is the need of the hour for a company of any
scale and size.
Cloud FP&A provides solutions for better budgeting,forecasting and reporting and gives finance teams to perform deeper analysis for strategic business decisions. It is designed to fulfill the current and adaptability to meet future requirements with use of the latest technologies through add-ons such as machine learning, predictive analysis and financial modeling.
5 reasons cloud computing can help FP&A
1. Source system integration
A typical 5+7 forecast would need 5 months of actuals and 7 months of forecast coming
from different sources. Traditional models use manual inputs and v-lookups to prepare the baseline making the entire process cumbersome. Cloud FP&A provides seamless and accurate integration of different sources.
2. Accessibility
During workforce forecasting, Salary is of the most important aspect of the planning.
It is generally done at the employee level and data is considered to be very sensitive. Cloud FP&A helps to take care of situations where certain data requires distinct levels of access. Permission sets can easily be defined where employees are able to see information relating only to their department.
3. Automation
One of the of the most difficult part of planning is organizing of manual spread
sheets and other sources of data. It is mundane and prone to errors. Cloud
FP&A focuses primarily on Automation which speeds up tedious and repetitive
task and allows the finance teams to focus on more meaningful and less wasteful
work experience. It helps the company to adapt quickly to any changes and
re-organization.
4. Real time insights
Often a lot time gets wasted in waiting for inputs from other team or waiting the
input files to save. Tracking of inputs across the company is frustrating exercise in itself. Through cloud FP&A calculations are done real time through models across different sources real time and helps increase the productivity immensely.
5. Visibility and Control
Even a slightest change in any of inputs and throw of the forecast completely. Tracing
through the files to find the root cause takes a considerable amount of time during the planning cycle. Cloud FP&A helps track the history of changes it provides information who, what and when the changes were made. It provides solutions like locked versions and audit trails to eliminate any last moment changes.
Final thoughts
In conclusion,the cloud provides many benefits to FP&A including real-time collaboration, increased agility, and lower IT costs. The cloud is the future of FP&A and offers huge advantages over traditional on-premise solutions.