Technology can be used to achieve both quick and big wins, and understanding the options is a critical part of fast close project planning. It’s vital to align the use of technology with the organization’s resources and needs, focusing on what can be achieved in a defined time frame. For example, the combination of implementing a standard chart of accounts (SCOA) in a new single instance enterprise resource planning (ERP)/general ledger (GL) may be far too time-consuming and expensive for even the largest and most technology-rich companies. However, the benefits of making improvements to an existing consolidation engine or implementing a new functional and high-performance consolidation engine, to collect and consolidate results, are still achievable within the time frame of a fast close project.
Consolidation engines like BusinessObjects™ Finance, part of the BusinessObjects EPM XI suite, can offer significant advantages and make numerous quick wins possible.
BusinessObjects Finance is the world’s fastest statutory consolidation and management reporting solution, providing the office of the CFO with the processing power, agility and breadth of analysis needed to complete financial consolidation and reporting cycles faster. It delivers full process control and data transparency, allowing users to simulate unlimited scenarios to address all performance management reporting requirements.
They have identified five key focal points to help speed the closing cycles. These can be achieved through improvements to current applications as quick wins, or by defining what you may need from future investment in a performance management suite.
Peer-to-Peer Intercompany Reconciliation
Applications like BusinessObjects Intercompany are now available as standalone solutions or as part of integrated suites to facilitate online peer-to-peer intercompany reconciliation. They can often be implemented alongside existing consolidation applications and, due to the centralized nature of their deployment, can be implemented very quickly and at relatively low cost, resulting in dramatic reductions in the close time and generating significant ROI.
Integration With Source Systems
Systems like BusinessObjects Finance—which can intelligently cope with multiple reporting channels, differing charts of accounts, account flows, and analysis dimensions over time—offer significant advantages. By retaining past reporting frameworks within the system, finance professionals
can safely adapt to changing needs without having to rebuild or destroy previous
reporting scenarios.
Data Entry and Validation
By leveraging functionality in consolidation applications like BusinessObjects Finance, it’s possible to ensure data quality at every level of a corporate reporting cycle and guarantee that the incoming information not only respects the timing and expected format, but also that it makes sense,
is consistent, complete, commented appropriately, and goes through the right
auditable approval process. This leads to greater quality and a “right first time”
approach to the closing cycle—which reduces the need for late adjustments and
additional data submissions and speeds the review and variance analysis process
by ensuring narrative is provided where required. Consolidation systems such as
BusinessObjects Finance, which offer this data entry and validation capability, also
enable you to monitor and record the performance of the various contributors to
the close process. It’s long been said that what gets measured, gets managed—
and that is just as true for the close process as for any other activity.
High Performance Consolidation Application
As the adoption of web-based consolidation applications has increased over the past five years, so has the importance of their performance in the closing cycle. BusinessObjects Finance that allow and perform simultaneous consolidation processing on the database rather than the application server, and which don’t compromise the audit trail, users can experience consolidation times that are up to five-times faster than competing products and run fewer iterations.
Process Automation
BusinessObjects Finance, however, take automation to the next level, introducing built-in financial intelligence to further speed the close cycle. BusinessObjects Finance has built-in rules logic that automates consolidation entries. Currency translation adjustments, minority interest and equity calculations, intercompany reconciliations, and automatic cash flows are easily set up through a standard user interface and intuitive wizards that don’t require Visual Basic programming skills. Because the applications also understand the life and challenges of finance departments, they can handle multiple reporting channels with different charts of accounts, and different account flows or analysis dimensions over time. It’s also possible to manage the retention of past reporting frameworks so finance professionals can safely adapt to ever-changing financial needs without having to copy and paste, rebuild, or destroy their previous reporting scenarios.
Source: Business Objects
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