Prepare for Growth with the Best FP&A Tools

Image20230302014026As your organization grows, it will necessarily require new tools and solutions to ensure that it can manage the increased complexity when budgeting and reporting - new hires, new teams, new expenditures, new revenue streams, etc. For many businesses, they rely on Excel to manage their FP&A . . . at first. But that quickly becomes untenable once your organization hits a certain size. That’s where the best FP&A tools and software solutions come in. 

With the top FP&A software, your business is more able to provide precise forecasts and uncover data and FP&A insights which then informs business-critical decisions and actions. A Gartner study found that 73% of finance functions are augmented by a centralized and tightly governed source for data - an FP&A software solution, in other words.  But here’s the problem - only 3% of companies have fully aligned and integrated strategic, operational, and financial planning processes

Financial planning and analysis tools are designed to address this gap and allow you to make quick and accurate decisions using the relevant financial data. They accomplish this via: 

  • Automated gathering and consolidation of data
  • Facilitated communication across teams 
  • Updated real-time data to draw from
  • Accurate and flexible forecasting models
  • Templated reporting
  • Integration with ERPs, Excel, and more

Let’s dive deeper into how the top FP&A software actually addresses these reporting and budgeting challenges.

Best FP&A Software Solves Excel Bloat

Excel is a wonderful tool. High functionality, intuitive, universally used - but the issue with Excel is that it simply does not scale. 

As your organization grows and transitions from a smaller company to a mid-sized business or enterprise with hundreds of employees, dozens of Excel spreadsheets can quickly proliferate into dozens of hundreds of Excel sheets. 

This can be a time-consuming, wasteful process that yields little value relative to the time commitment. 

But the right FP&A solution can rid your business of the Excel bloat by providing an entirely new platform from which you can manage all your organization’s finances. This will be an automated process that makes financial reporting take far, far less time (think 50% reduction). 

FP&A Solution for Inter-Team Communication

Gathering the data from across your organization can similarly be a huge drain on time and resources. This is especially true for growing companies that may be adding new teams and hires on a regular basis. 

This creates a need to formalize a system of communication whereby financial information from across all segments of the organization are able to be shared with the appropriate people (and not be seen by unauthorized employees). 

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FP&A solutions can help consolidate all the information in highly visible areas with intuitive permission systems ensuring that only the right people are able to access the financial data - but the barriers to access are totally removed. 

Planning and Forecasting Made Easy with the Right FP&A Solution

As your departments increase in number, it makes planning and forecasting more complicated. 

You may be juggling different budgets for different departments, or forced to forecast for the financial year ahead across a variety of teams for a variety of scenarios - a difficult task. 

The best FP&A software is able to consolidate all the relevant financial data, centralia calculations and business rules, and easily plan for multiple scenarios, all while using real-time data. 

This level of insight and in-depth analysis is only possible with the best FP&A tools. With them, you can achieve much more accurate forecasting results. 

The Top FP&A Software Solutions Provide Templated Reporting 

Trying to craft an individual reporting system for each department in your organization is unnecessarily wasteful, tedious, and a poor allocation of your time. Finance organizations are already spending about 10% more time on FP&A activities than they were a decade ago; no need to drain further time. 

Templates are a necessity for growing companies as it allows them to quickly iterate on successful processes as they add additional departments and segments. 

Learn more about FP&A software: 

Templated reporting is possible via FP&A platforms that have these services built in. That way, your FP&A solution can ensure that with each new additional department or team, it’s simple and easy to seamlessly integrate their new data into your current system and process. 

FP&A ERP Integrations, FP&A Human Resources Integration, FP&A Excel Integration

Integrations are a critical part of any FP&A solution. That’s because it makes transitioning to the new FP&A software that much easier to do for your organization. 

Rather than cause headaches by having a variety of different programs running in opposition to one another, you have a seamless, synergistic cooperation between powerful software. This in turn amplifies the already beneficial impact of your existing ERP or human resources systems, making the top FP&A software a force multiplier of sorts. 

Limelight Software - the FP&A Solution That Does It All

If you work for a fast growing company in the finance department, you’ve no doubt encountered many of the above issues already. Let’s put a stop to them. 

Limelight Software excels at ensuring all your budgeting, forecasting, planning, and analysis needs are addressed and completed faster - and more accurately - than ever. With our powerful platform backing your business, you can save thousands of hours and uncover hundreds of thousands in hidden costs, reduce budget reviews, and otherwise give you your time back. 

Save money, get a more comprehensive picture of your business’s financial health, plan and forecast easier - do it all with Limelight. Book a demo to see the platform in action and learn how it can help your business thrive.