How important is better visibility to financial results in a downturn? Potential answer - We work this process -- our business has never been stronger. Probably a better question -- How does better visibility prevent the economic morass we are in today?
Too many firms have allowed the reporting of their financial results to decay into manual process. Their best financial minds waste countless hours and days jockeying numbers around spreadsheets. Worse yet, analytics from these results are overanalyzed with no return on investment of time. It is not that the data is useless, there can be no intelligence in data delivered with such poor platforms.
Unfortunately even those that invest sometimes get it wrong. We talk regularly with folks that have invested, yet have done nothing more than try to automate complex process resulting in even more trouble.
They key in our mind is to strike the right balance between process automation and allowing intelligence to enter the process. Your best minds need to own the data, not be owned by the data. Invest in your company's future. Get your smart Finance folks back in the business.