Digital finance

Digital technologies help finance leaders to create a digital enterprise and focus on value. Technology frees up finance professionals to carry out more value-add and impactful work. Days spent collecting data, monitoring spreadsheets and preparing reports can be replaced by more analytical, automated, collaborative and strategic activities.

Finance leaders must embrace digital technologies such as ERP, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to create more efficiencies, insights and value over the long term and to empower real-time, data-driven decisions.

Many organisations are undertaking digitisation of the finance function, transforming systems, processes, business models and more. But amid all that activity and upheaval, finance leaders shouldn’t neglect the human element. A combination of tools, systems and people makes the transition to digitising the finance function much easier.

The essential thing finance leaders must do is to give their finance team the right tools and resources to enable them to make data-enabled decisions that maximise business performance. The following three areas can empower the finance function to create strategic value.

1) A single source of truth

Having an ERP system, like Dynamics 365 Finance, provides a comprehensive and consistent picture – a single source of truth – to decision-makers. Finance teams that understand their financial position sooner are in a better place to adjust quickly to risks and opportunities.

A single source of the truth is achievable with the support of ERP, analytics and reporting tools which organise and integrate data. This allows finance teams to disseminate up-to-the-minute information and produce better, faster insights.

2) Real-time analysis

With optimised and reliable data in place, your finance team can spend less time crunching the numbers and more time reporting on the implications of those numbers to the wider business. Cloud-based analytics applications, such as Power BI, are the key to being able to act on information, analyse data, spot opportunities and evaluate customer insights.

3) Predictive data

Cloud ERP technologies with in-built AI, like Dynamics 365 Finance, allow finance teams to reduce the number of manual transactions posted, close their books faster and reduce the cost of regulatory compliance. With these tasks taken care of, they are free to work on more strategic projects for their organisation. Being strategic means making use of data; data that machine learning capabilities can collect and analyse much faster and more accurately than humans.

Digitisation tools enable the finance function to automate processes and free-up finance roles to focus on more value-added, impactful tasks. Digitisation is no longer a goal of the future. It is a realistic objective for the finance function due to a range of technological advances and tools.