Digital, a springboard for the performance of the Financial function

Running a business nowadays seems unrelated to the way people did it over the last century. In the past, long-term strategies were built and deployed without any change in approach. This vision no longer works: companies must constantly reinvent themselves and anticipate the next moves to be made. The reason? The increasingly fluctuating and uncertain geopolitical, competitive, and even regulatory environment. Not to mention that the economic tempo is becoming faster and faster. Digital and the financial function must be linked. 

There is no other alternative but to get up to speed or to disappear. To remain competitive and continue to gain market share, companies are obliged to develop their analytical and anticipatory skills and sharpen their agility.

There is no other alternative but to get up to speed or to disappear. To remain competitive and continue to gain market share, companies are obliged to develop their analytical and anticipatory skills and sharpen their agility.

The finance business partner must be digitalized

The Financial function has a key role to play in contributing actively and proactively to the development of the company, giving power to the management or operational teams and delivering both a global and detailed vision of the business in the short and medium-term.

Only companies that rely on reliable and regular information can take the right decisions and act quickly.

The stakes are crucial. Fortunately, digital tools are proving to be valuable allies for finance departments, which are strengthening and consolidating the business dimension of their function.

Covid-19 has also brought to the forefront the urgent need for dematerialization and digitalization for companies. It accelerates the need for transformation and optimization of organizations and their business processes. The reduction of operating costs has become central to company strategies. A goal calling for task automation to save time.

And the digital in fhe financial function is no exception. And yet, Excel® is very often the number one choice for finance teams, regardless of the size of the company. Simple, easy to use, and widely adopted and mastered by financial professionals for decades, it has many advantages. Nevertheless, its greatest strength is that of habit. It is by force of habit and by the ease that many financial professionals remain attached to Excel®, even though it proves to be less and less adapted to the constraints and challenges of financial departments. Indeed, manual data processing is an activity that demands plenty of time and adds insignificant value. Combined with the multiplication of spreadsheets, it represents a significant source of errors, sometimes difficult to detect but with damaging consequences. Not very well suited to large volumes, the famous software does not lend itself to a collaborative budgeting process either. Lack of traceability and reliability are additional stones in the garden of Excel®.

CPM to the rescue of companies

On the other hand, corporate performance management (CPM) solutions offer functionalities specifically designed to respond to the issues and changes in the Financial function. The unified and collaborative platform published by Talentia enables you to move from a centralized function to a decentralized function, where responsibility is delegated, where each contributor contributes his or her share to work towards a common goal. The implementation of a truly adapted tool encourages a collective dynamic and gives meaning to the actions of each employee. Getting contributors on board is essential because, without membership, a tool is useless.

Finally, any software is just a means of automating, streamlining and optimising processes, freeing employees from their problems and thus leaving them time for high value-added tasks such as analysis and forecasting. Today, it has become more than a necessity to bring the financial function fully into the digital era.

Béatrice Piquer

Chief Marketing Officer at Talentia