Operational planning is still done on spreadsheets, even though the finance team uses planning software. Despite numerous technological developments, spreadsheet usage has remained unchanged.
Fremont, CA: Due to outmoded planning technology and methods, financial planning and analysis processes are frequently fragmented and lack input from operational areas. More crucially, spreadsheets remain the most widely utilized tool, particularly non-financial planning.
Top Financial Planning and Analysis Challenges Facing CFOs
Disconnected Systems and Processes
According to Ventana Research, 77 percent of planning processes rely on accurate and timely data from other parts of the company. As a result, combining the multiple planning stages has several advantages. Integrating plans from different sections of the organization, on the other hand, might be difficult, especially if you're working with several disparate spreadsheets. Cloud-based tools make it easier to transition away from spreadsheets and combine financial planning and analysis with other corporate functions.
Inadequate Business Intelligence
Spreadsheets can't handle an endless amount of calculations and macros, which means your growing organization won't be able to make accurate budgets and predictions without dependable models and projections. As a result, senior management cannot go into corporate data and extract useful information for decision-making.
Manual Tasks Take an Excessive Amount of Time
Account reconciliation and financial close are two manual processes that finance professionals spend too much time on. Many finance departments are still working to reduce their cycle time to half of what it used to be. Strategic responsibilities such as FP&A are essential for generating timely, actionable insights. On the other hand, finance teams spend the majority of their time sorting and organizing data rather than evaluating it.
Inaccurate Budgeting and Forecasting
Cloud-based financial forecasting tools may be useful for gathering and evaluating data, running scenarios, analyzing techniques, and predicting probable outcomes. However, having the correct solution isn't enough for precise financial forecasting. Financial procedures are frequently unreliable and need repair, resulting in erroneous forecasts.
A Lack of Teamwork
In FP&A, collaboration offers improved visibility and more accurate projections across your organization's functions. For example, through a supported system of shared information, information shared by the operations team supports financial planning and cost optimization. Companies can move away from diverse and segregated forecasting operations into a unified, real-time corporate forecasting process with collaborative forecasting.
