Losing the financial relay race? It's time to close the gap

So why does it take so long?!

Chances are you’ve become a bigger business than you think you are. When you’ve grown as fast as you have you simply added on what you needed when you needed it; whether this be people, premises or processes.

And as your finance needs have become more complex, the gaps have been filled with other software packages, Excel spreadsheets, or homegrown applications. And this complexity sprawled out to every other department and team, who had their own processes too!

It’s not about how competent your team is.

At year-end finance staff must pay attention to as many as half a dozen different applications and the risk exists for errors, especially when relying on custom-built or manual workarounds and software. And they are running between each team and translating their facts into figures.

It’s not about how competent your team is. It’s about the growing distance between systems and processes that they have to run between! And in fixing these the reward is not simply the final report delivered on time, but what doing that means – you’re winning!

If you can’t close on time you have gaps:

Gaps in your knowledge – data import, journal entries, multiple systems, reconciliation.

Gaps in your strategic planning – if you can’t look back, you can’t look forward.

Gaps in your performance –time, value, compliance, regulation, competitive advantage.

In a recent study by SL Associates, services companies reported a reduction in finance close time between 40% and 70% after switching to NetSuite’s cloud-based solution.