May 9, 2023
Financial reporting expectations for CFOs are rising. Financial statements are now required on more regular intervals to provide good financial insight for decision making and meet external reporting requirement.
However, financial reporting remains an intense weight on finance teams across the globe. From consolidating data to writing reports and publishing material, timely delivery is bogged down by fragmented workflows. The full stack of manual finance reporting processes end up keeping the team working around the clock, only to succumb to sunk costs, inaccurate reports, security risks, and compliance mishaps.
Unfortunately, most ERP software do a poor job of producing consolidated financial reports. If certain organizations have multiple legal entities running different systems, the challenges of consolidated reporting multiply. Add the nuances of GAAP vs. IFRS reporting, and the process can quickly become overwhelming. Managing all that complexity using manual processes is unnecessarily slow and tedious, often introducing errors.
The process of information collection is a vital yet error-prone task that requires a lot of time and human input. Time-sensitive and accurate reporting becomes more challenging for employees to complete under tight deadlines as it requires fast action and accurate results. According to a research from SmartSheet 55% specifically citing data collection as a productivity killer. Due to the increased probability for errors in manual-reporting, teams end up spending much of their time validating the data and making sure that it is correct.
When financial reports are created manually it places an increased demand on resources. This is because there exists a need to source, input, and validate data. As a result, there is an increased demand for additional staff or systems to be in place. 41% of businesses surveyed by Aberdeen Group cite enhancing business reporting and analytics as the top pressure they face. Complementing this tedious process of manual reporting, lies the serious threat to the health and productivity of the business which can arise in the case of inaccuracies in the company’s financial statements.
Sancode technologies can help corporations streamline and automate their data consolidation and validation work flow to enhance reporting quality and accuracy.
Financial consolidation tools powered by AI and RPA can allow corporations to compile data sources from across their businesses, their multiple departments, and even multiple entities for easy reporting to their parent company, shareholders, and management. From management reporting to financial statement analysis, RPA can pull and transform data to create the kind of reports required at that time.
It provides the ability to create real-time accurate analytics and insights into the health of a company’s financials instantly. It removes the continuous human error found on excel spreadsheets that takes other employees even more time to troubleshoot and lets financial professionals devote the majority of their time interpreting the data for strategic decision making.