More businesses are turning to all-in-one data planning platforms to help teams cut through information clutter and get to the key facts, fast.
Another upside is that finance managers no longer need to play detective when pulling together a picture of how their organization is performing.
The Phocas business planning and analytics platform offers data analytics, financial reporting, budgeting, forecasting and rebates in one tool. It presents SAP Business One ERP and other data sources in a user-friendly way that enables managers and decision-makers to get the key facts – freeing up finance teams to focus less on crunching numbers and more on being trusted advisors.
Traditional financial reporting involves creating standardized statements and reports that are shared with various managers and decision-makers. When these individuals have questions about the numbers, they return to the finance team who need to investigate further and generate more static reports.
In contrast, the Phocas platform enables finance teams to create administrative control with filtered and restricted access, build dashboards of financial performance and drill down to transactions for quick data queries without touching the ledger.
“Finance spends less time creating reports,” explains Daniel Cuthew, Phocas’ Global Partnership Executive.
“They can sit back, look at the numbers, look for trends and provide considered views, insights and analysis.”
Using the Phocas platform with SAP Business One, business leader buy-in to the budget also improves, says Cuthew, “and becomes less complicated when the forecasting process is completed collaboratively with a comprehensive platform in place.”
“The dynamic platform makes building KPIs and annual budgets as well as forecasting and re-forecasting enjoyable, so people come back to it and use it as a guide instead of dreading the next cycle.”
With permissions and controls in place, the Phocas platform is accessible on the cloud like SAP. Anybody from the company with access can review mission-critical data from anywhere – something that has become more important as hybrid working environments become more commonplace.
Cuthew says this means key data is no longer stuck in spreadsheets and the finance team can share up-to-date numbers and coach others in the business about financial performance.
The outcomes of a cloud-based planning, reporting and analytics platform is that monthly reporting speeds up, reports can be easily customised, budgeting and forecasting takes on a refreshed approach that is accessible to all, and day-to-day analytics to track business performance is made possible for finance and its partners.
Getting everyone in a business in the position where they can remove information clutter to report elegantly is a part of the job Daniel enjoys the most.
“I just love talking to SAP Business One customers who integrate Phocas, especially hearing the real-life difference it makes to their reporting,” Cuthew says.
“Customers move from original static spreadsheets to custom, automated reporting that clearly shows the situation or KPIs with interactive graphs that everyone can access, drill into and share,” adds Cuthew.