Ever feel like you’re not seeing the full picture?
In many organisations, the finance team is not the all-seeing guardian of data that some people might imagine.
All too often, financial information is hidden from the very people who are working hardest to collect it.
It’s a serious problem, although iplicit has been having some fun with it. And on Wednesday, November 20, we’ll be holding a live webinar to help you flush some of that data from its hiding place.
Every finance team’s goal is to have a complete and accurate picture of what’s going on with the accounts, in the quickest time possible.
But there are a host of places where important data can go missing. And as an organisation grows in size and complexity, the number of those hiding places multiplies.
Sometimes, accurate data can be as hard to find as the character Wally in the ever-popular Where’s Wally? series of children’s books. In fact, iplicit illustrated the problem in the style of a puzzle book with our free downloadable guide Where’s My Data?
That guide has inspired our webinar, in which we’ll illustrate the scale of the problem and how to solve it.
People in business often refer to the “silos” which prevent information from being visible to other parts of the organisation.
Another way of looking at it is by likening an organisation to a series of islands.
There’s the Island of Sales, the Island of Finance, the islands of Customer Relations, Delivery, Stock Management and possibly a few more that you might not even have visited. Each seems to have its own language – and certainly has its own way of doing things.
But you’re living on the Island of Finance, which can seem like it’s a world away. You’re awaiting delivery of finance information that should come at least once a month – but if it doesn’t arrive, the people of Finance have to go on a voyage around the islands to find it.
Where might information be hiding in your organisation? You can probably think of a few examples already, but you might not have covered all of them.
Different systems: Your organisation may use a variety of software applications that don’t integrate with the finance system. There might be separate and incompatible systems for CRM, purchase orders, e-commerce, POS, timesheets, stock or delivery. Getting information out of those programs and into the accounting software can be a laborious process with a lot of scope for error.
Competing records: The clunkier your systems are, the more people will be inclined to keep their own records. Any resemblance to what’s in the finance system might be purely coincidental.
Other entities: If your organisation has multiple legal entities, that means there are multiple places for data to hide. Different entities might have different finance software, or their own separate instances of the same software, but putting them together means manual data entry and protracted wrangling with spreadsheets.
Paper trails: The paperless society always seems to be just around the corner. In reality, a lot of organisations still rely on printed documents. Whether it’s an expenses claim or a purchase invoice, a piece of paper can go missing or just sit for extended periods in someone’s in-tray.
Thin air: With a patchwork of competing systems, some data can just disappear. Someone might have selected the wrong cells in a spreadsheet or mistyped a figure when keying in data. The information can vanish with barely a trace.
Spreadsheets: Perhaps the biggest silo of them all can be the spreadsheet. Excel is an incredible tool, but if data doesn’t flow into it automatically, it can be a repository for information that’s missing from the finance system or contradicts it entirely.
iplicit's webinar will show you how things can be different.
It is possible for finance leaders to have a complete and accurate view of the finances, with no risk that information lurking somewhere else might change the picture.
It is possible to have a single source of truth, so key stakeholders can help themselves to accurate information.
And it is possible to supply key decision makers with comprehensive and timely information, without a lengthy wait for month-end or year-end processes.
With the right systems in place, organisations can reduce waste and confusion, but also provide the leadership with the complete and accurate data that enables better decisions.
iplicit’s free webinar, The Data Discovery: Unlock Your Financial Data With iplicit, takes place on Wednesday, November 20, at 11am. You can register here.