How data integration can improve financial management

How data integration can improve financial management

Article credit: Sage 

Organizations have long been in search of the Holy Grail of financial management: a single source of truth they can use for accurate reporting and budget planning. But the reality is that financial information is too often scattered among spreadsheets and other applications that don’t communicate with one another, making data management unwieldy and time-consuming.

Part of the challenge is the lack of a holistic approach to data management. Fewer than half of business and technology leaders have a clearly defined strategy, the Foundry Data and Analytics study found. A haphazard approach can lead to data silos that impede sharing and collaboration and create inconsistencies since information is formatted differently among applications and updates occur at different times. “Siloed data operate on different schedules, making processes like revenue recognition difficult,” says Scott Freedman, director of marketing for Sage Intacct.

In addition, financial leaders and teams who manually transfer information into spreadsheets and reports may make errors along the way. In the Foundry survey, leaders identified data quality problems as the No. 1 roadblock for organizations adopting data-driven initiatives.

Integrating financial data into a single cloud-based platform improves quality and accuracy and makes sharing information easier. Instead of individuals “owning” their own set of data, an integrated solution provides everyone with a common, updated, and accurate set of numbers to work with across the business.

Improving data accuracy can have a tangible impact on business performance. A recent Gartner study found that breaking down silos and sharing data boosts business outcomes. Gartner predicts that by 2023, organizations that promote data sharing will outperform their peers on most business metrics.

By shifting to Sage Intacct, a unified cloud solution for financial data, courier service Quicksilver Express reduced the time for doing its monthly close by 50%. Credit card and bank reconciliations are now done daily, reducing errors and eliminating a week’s worth of manual work. And overall accounting efficiency is up by 75%.

Family-owned investment firm Halstatt experienced similar benefits after switching to Sage Intacct. In the past, because valuation reporting took over 100 hours, the company only had time to do it annually. Now the process takes just a few hours and is done quarterly, giving executives a detailed view of asset value and costs throughout the year.

Data is projected to play a greater role in business strategy in the future, as leaders gain new insights from advanced analytics. Seventy-eight per cent of leaders expects information and analytics to fundamentally change the way they do business over the next three years, according to the Foundry study. The cloud, along with advanced capabilities enabled by AI and machine learning, will help companies get more proactive in mapping the best path forward.

“When you have an accurate view of what’s going on today, you can use AI and analytics to project that informationout and determine future needs and capacity,” Freedman explains. “That helps companies deal with unanticipated surges in demand, or make adjustments to marketing campaigns based on their performance. Connecting systems through consolidated reporting makes the whole business run more smoothly.”

About Us
Kiteview Technologies (Pty) Ltd was founded in May 2010 to provide the Sage Evolution Business Management solution to the SME market. The management team of Kiteview have combined +30 years of experience in the delivery of small to mid-market Financial & Business Management solutions. This experience, combined with a sound project implementation methodology has helped in Kiteview’s growth, becoming a Platinum status partner for SAGE Pastel within just 1 year.

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Unlock Value with the Keys to a Faster Close

Unlock Value with the Keys to a Faster Close

Article credit: Sage 

Are you under pressure to close your books faster? You’re not alone. An overwhelming 93% of respondents in our annual “Close the Books” survey revealed finance professionals are under pressure to close the books faster.

With today’s ever-changing business environment, companies need to be able to pivot and make proactive decisions based on the most up-to-date information. For the finance team, this often entails having to reforecast, re-think, analyze, and act on new data – on top of the traditional, and at times, the stressful task of closing the books. Juggling these new demands has created the need more than ever for a faster, more efficient way to close.

With this in mind, we created the 2022 Close the Books Survey to learn about the state of the close today and to translate the findings into practical strategies and best practices that can really help you achieve a faster and more accurate close. The survey results revealed there are 3 key strategies to achieving this:

Strategy #1: Automate your key accounting processes to save time and reduce month-end stress

No more late nights and working weekends. When you automate accounting processes, like reconciliations, it reduces the time needed for manual time-consuming tasks and tracking down errors at month end, plus it frees up time for the finance team to focus on analysis and higher-value activities.


Almost 70% of respondents “absolutely or strongly agree” that
automation saves time at month end.


Strategy #2: Leverage AI to increase the speed and accuracy of your close

No more waiting until the month end to make adjustments to get an accurate picture of your financial numbers. AI works 24×7. It continuously scans data to check for accuracy and alerts accounting teams to fix errors as they happen. And, because AI is purpose-built and embedded in accounting software, it has the ability to reconcile transactions in real-time, learn from data to generate valuable insights and monitor performance throughout the period.


“Sage Intacct’s GL outlier detection reviews our journal lines at a much deeper
level than we could review manually. It finds errors on the front end so we can fix
them before they get to internal and external users of our financials.

It helps us maintain accuracy and credibility.”

– Erin Horak, VP of Finance, VRC Investigations


Strategy #3: Invest to make your close processes more efficient

No more inefficient, outdated, and redundant close processes. To achieve a faster, more efficient close, you need to look at ways to streamline your close processes. To do this requires investing in any or all of these—technology, additional headcount or resource time to evaluate and improve close processes.


Organizations continue to invest in the close over the past year:
40% adopted new technology, 33% added more headcount and
29% automated key accounting processes.


Companies are recognizing the value of cloud-based accounting

Companies are continuing to move to cloud-based accounting solutions at an accelerated rate. This high adoption rate came as no surprise because cloud accounting software offers many benefits over spreadsheets and legacy on-premises systems, such as the ability to access data anytime, anywhere. This enables finance leaders and their teams to make actionable data-driven decisions based on real-time information. And, with built-in automation, embedded AI and seamless integration to other systems, companies of all sizes are achieving faster, and more accurate closes when moving to cloud accounting software.


In our survey, 87% of respondents have moved to cloud-based or
hybrid accounting solutions—a 50% increase from last year.


Sage Intacct helps organizations knock down barriers to execution with connected cloud accounting solutions. To learn more about practical strategies that can help you achieve a faster and more accurate close, and how your finance team can gain more time to analyze information and provide valuable insight, contact us.

About Us
Kiteview Technologies (Pty) Ltd was founded in May 2010 to provide the Sage Evolution Business Management solution to the SME market. The management team of Kiteview have combined +30 years of experience in the delivery of small to mid-market Financial & Business Management solutions. This experience, combined with a sound project implementation methodology has helped in Kiteview’s growth, becoming a Platinum status partner for SAGE Pastel within just 1 year.

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Financial Reporting and Forecasting in a Multidimensional World

Financial Reporting and Forecasting in a Multidimensional World

Even for seasoned SaaS CFOs that have been in the subscription revenue sector for years, reporting and forecasting can be daunting processes. Not to mention the tight deadlines finance teams frequently operate under.

However, reporting and forecasting doesn’t have to be frustrating or even difficult activities. Modern automated accounting tools make both of these strategic tasks seamless and straightforward.

But before we dive further into the magic of automation, let’s get better acquainted with reporting and forecasting. Why do they matter so much? And how do the most successful SaaS companies use them to rise above their competitors in a multidimensional industry?

Reporting Lays the Groundwork for Accurate Forecasts

Some people fall into the mistaken belief that financial reporting is purely about rehashing numbers. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Effective, fast, and accurate financial reporting gives your entire company an incredibly valuable real-time snapshot of how you stack up in the competitive SaaS ecosystem.

More specifically, excellent reporting serves as a company-wide strategic asset because it:

  • Provides clarity to your board and critical decision-makers about your CAC, CLTV, churn rates, and other essential SaaS metrics.
  • Gives your sales and marketing teams a sense of direction by allowing them to see granular data about where they’re succeeding and failing. This knowledge will allow them to formulate more effective plans to drive recurring revenue in the coming months and quarters.
  • Offers an entirely objective benchmark to measure future results against your present position. This objectivity is critical at all stages of your company’s lifecycle: your board and potential investors will all demand objective proof of how your company is performing.

Financial reporting is more than just mindlessly putting numbers up on a screen: those numbers serve as the scaffolding on which you construct your forecasts.

And if the inputs for your forecasts (your SaaS reporting data) are inaccurate or incomplete, your entire company will pay the price. If you’re not targeting the right customers, your churn rates will start to increase and your ARR and MRR will start to decline.

That’s a pretty gloomy picture. So how do you prevent it from turning into a reality?

Accurate Forecasts Give Your Company a Strategic Edge

As with financial reporting, forecasts involve much more than just playing with numbers. That might be what they are on the surface, sure. But once you peel back a few layers, you’ll see that there’s more going on.

CFOs who put in the time and effort to finesse their forecasts contribute massively to the rise and results of their companies. Predictable forecasting might seem counterintuitive. After all, forecasting implies a certain degree of unpredictability.

But reliable forecasting can be repeatedly achieved if you follow a few practical guidelines:

  • Put your pipeline under a microscope. Aim to understand your sales pipeline at the deepest possible. How did your MRR (monthly recurring revenue) for the preceding quarters look compared to what you expected? Were new features added to your product that resulted in a wave of new signups? Conversely, were there portions of your pipeline where customers churned or hesitated in signing up?
  • Look for sales cycle patterns. Once you have a better grasp of your pipeline, it’s time to analyze your sales cycle. Sales cycles for subscription billing companies tend to be highly variable since people sign up and churn throughout a given month. Still, it’s well worth your time to comb through the data to discern patterns you can capitalize on.
  • Match your model with your mission. Ensure that the forecasting model you employ matches your end goals for your forecast. There are a variety of forecasting models you can choose from, including lead-gen forecasts for different marketing methods and historical forecasts that use past revenue data to predict the future. Always base your selection on what you hope to achieve with your forecast.

 

 

There’s one last element of reporting and forecasting for SaaS companies that we haven’t touched on yet.

Embrace Financial Automation

The most effective SaaS CFOs realize that automation is the only way to guarantee accurate, actionable, and reliable forecasts. Automation removes every ounce of guesswork and manual processes from your reporting and forecasting.

SaaS accounting automation software also:

  • Centralizes all your data. Automation enables you to say goodbye to manual, spreadsheet-based approaches forever. It lets you access all the data you need, on a single screen, with a single click.
  • Acts as a force multiplier for your forecasting. Robust automated forecasting allows you to plug in your data to generate accurate forecasts more quickly, easily, and for larger time horizons than manual spreadsheets.
  • Gives you role-based dashboards. An automated accounting solution like Sage Intacct provides specific dashboard views for particular members of your team based on the data they need access to for their daily responsibilities.

The future of SaaS reporting and forecasting is all about efficiency. By minimizing unproductive processes and leveraging relevant technology, you can save yourself and your team time and money.

Feel free to contact the Kiteview team to find out more.

Source: Sage 

About Us
Kiteview Technologies (Pty) Ltd was founded in May 2010 to provide the Sage Evolution Business Management solution to the SME market. The management team of Kiteview have combined +30 years of experience in the delivery of small to mid-market Financial & Business Management solutions. This experience, combined with a sound project implementation methodology has helped in Kiteview’s growth, becoming a Platinum status partner for SAGE Pastel within just 1 year.

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Financial Dashboards and Metrics for Software Companies

Financial Dashboards and Metrics for Software Companies

Article credit: Sage 

If you’re the CFO of a subscription billing company, you want to bring clarity to decisions, understand where to invest, and track cash-flow and SaaS metrics, in the chaos of dynamic, competitive markets. The best CFOs balance out this equation by giving their departments clarity and direction with SaaS metrics and role-based financial dashboards. 

It’s a common saying that if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. But in the SaaS world, if you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t go anywhere because you’ll never generate any traction.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) and financial dashboards will help pave the way to your success. KPIs give you a real-time snapshot of your business’s performance at different points: monthly, quarterly, annually, etc. 

They also allow you to analyze your revenue and cash flow patterns, identify where you’re wasting money, and more.

Financial dashboards are just as important. They give every person on your team a customized one-page view of all the financial information they need. With modern software tools, you can say goodbye to the headache of hunting down five different manual folders to gather data for an upcoming board presentation. 

But before we get deeper into dashboards, let’s break down the major KPIs and look at why they matter so much.

Unlock continuous improvement through KPIs

Tracking KPIs is one of the most critical essential responsibilities of any CFO and the broader finance team behind them. Identifying and charting your most valuable SaaS metrics enables your entire company to understand its position in the broader marketplace. 

KPIs offer insight into where you’re succeeding, so you can double down on those strategies. And just as significantly, they raise red flags about what’s failing, so you can alter or abandon bad ideas.

Some of the most important metrics for you to watch and report on include your: 

  • Customer Acquisition Cost: Your CAC measures how much money you spent to acquire a customer or customer set. It helps you track which customers may not be worth the investment you’re making to obtain their business and which customers give more value than they take to acquire.
  • Customer Lifetime Value: Your CLTV indicates how much revenue a given customer generates for your company before they unsubscribe from your product or service. Customers with a high CLTV should be prioritized for upsell cross-sell attempts, and you should target prospects with similar characteristics.
  • Churn Rate: SaaS churn is a crucial metric. It measures how many of your users unsubscribe over a given period. A high churn rate could point to problems with your product or market fit, an issue with your payment processor leading to involuntary churn, or something else. Churn should be looked into and corrected quickly.

Keep your SaaS metrics at the top of your hierarchy of business values. Treat them like your guiding lights in the rough seas of a competitive market because that’s precisely what they are.

Stay organized with financial dashboards 

Financial dashboards are an incredible organizational tool for finance teams. They help every member of your team stay organized by condensing all the information that a particular person needs into one convenient screen.

These single-glance screens are known as role-based dashboards in the SaaS community. They allow your team to accomplish more in less time by eliminating manual accounting processes and reliance on outdated spreadsheet-based tech. 

With financial dashboards from SaaS accounting automation solutions, all it takes is a single glance for different members of your team: 

  • The CFO Dashboard: This view allows CFOs instant access to all the cash flow data and metrics that your board (and investors) will want to know about.
  • The Controller Dashboard: The Controller view puts every piece of information your Controller needs in one centralized location. A single click will give them access to cash flow metrics, wage and salary info, budgeting data, and more. 

SaaS Metrics Dashboard 01

If you’re sensing a common theme between SaaS metrics and financial dashboards, you’re right on the money. It’s all about staying organized and the quantum leap in results you can access by analyzing where you are, and where you’d like to go.

Invest in your success 

Investing in the power of automation is one of the greatest gifts any CFO can give their finance team and their broader company. 

The organization, clarity, and heightened effectiveness that accompany an investment in high-quality accounting software speak for themselves. But if you’re still not convinced, contact us and find out how Sage Intacct can boost your business.

About Us
Kiteview Technologies (Pty) Ltd was founded in May 2010 to provide the Sage Evolution Business Management solution to the SME market. The management team of Kiteview have combined +30 years of experience in the delivery of small to mid-market Financial & Business Management solutions. This experience, combined with a sound project implementation methodology has helped in Kiteview’s growth, becoming a Platinum status partner for SAGE Pastel within just 1 year.

Contact Us

For An Obligation Free Quote

5 Reporting and SaaS Metrics Must-Haves for SaaS Finance

5 Reporting and SaaS Metrics Must-Haves for SaaS Finance

Article credit: Sage 

When it comes to being an effective and efficient SaaS CFO, a fintech automation tool can be one of your best friends. Your company probably uses a communication tool like Slack or Microsoft Teams, right? It enables people to stay organized and accomplish more in smaller increments of time. 

Think of your accounting automation tool in the same light. It’s a technology-driven extension of you and your team that helps you keep your reporting organized and perform at your peak capacity.

Let’s take a deeper dive into five primary reporting essentials for SaaS CFOs and how an automation platform can help put them in your grasp.

1. Seamless KPI Tracking

We don’t have to tell you that accurate reporting is one of your top responsibilities. You already know that. 

But you might not know how essential staying organized is to create a profitable year for your company. Savvy finance leaders utilize automation to massively cut down on manual processes and the mental and physical clutter they create. 

They opt for software solutions that can give them access to all their essential SaaS metrics at a glance: 

  • CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
  • CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value) 
  • ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue)
  • Customer Churn Rate
  • …And many more

Having all of these SaaS metrics immediately available in one location is critical (this is known as data centralization).

SaaS Metrics Dashboard 01

2. Reliable Forecasting Abilities 

It’s not enough to report accurately and efficiently, however. As a C-level finance professional for a subscription revenue company, you need to make accurate, actionable forecasts that enhance your company’s bottom line.

An accounting automation platform can help you make reliable forecasts by: 

  • Providing instant access to your monthly recurring revenue (MRR), subscription upgrades and contractions, churn, and other essential figures for reliable forecasts.
  • Using the analytical power of automation to forecast different scenarios and make various revenue projections based on each.
  • Examine your pipeline at a microscopic level to capitalize on trends and identify your most profitable product and buyer segments.

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of staying organized in your reporting and forecasting, let’s take a quick look at enhancing personal accountability for SaaS finance teams.

3. Accountability in Front of Your Board

When you’re giving a presentation in front of your company’s board, few things are more important than being able to trace accountability back to your team members for their exact contributions.

It may look good when you lay out your grand strategic vision for the coming quarter. But no matter how inspiring that vision is, you’re going to need to come back and prove a few things to your board: 

  • Which members of your team contributed to specific corporate milestones such as AR gains
  • How did your strategies and ideas reduce the company’s DSO (the number of days that sales remain unclosed) to optimize cash flow
  • What immediate and traceable impact did you and your team have on quarterly and annual profits? 

Sage Intacct’s streamlined role-based dashboard will enable you to answer these critical questions with clarity and confidence. And if things don’t go as planned for a given quarter, you’ll be able to formulate an effective plan to get back on course.

SaaS Metrics Dashboard 02

4. Instant Access to Your Bill-To-Order Ratio

Also called the book-to-bill ratio, your bill-to-order ratio measures how many orders you’re receiving versus how many orders are being billed and fulfilled.

So if you’re fulfilling every order in real-time or close to it, you’d have a ratio of 1. That’s par for the course. The bill-to-order ratio becomes more important when your ratio falls above or below 1. 

A number above 1 shows you’re receiving more orders than you’re completing and billing across a particular period. It shows that you might need to look for payment processing issues and other problems stemming from excessive user demand.

A number below 1, on the other hand, implies that user demand might be starting to wane a bit. Even though this may not seem like great news, it gives you a chance to analyze which customer and product segments might be losing steam.

Remember, knowledge is power, and if you can figure out how to fix bad news, you’re still well-positioned. An automation tool like Sage Intacct can help you and your team keep track of your bill-to-order ratio accurately and effectively, so you can develop strategies and solutions in real-time.

5. Strategic Bandwidth 

When it comes to reporting and forecasting, aim to maintain a firm grip on two things at once: the daily developments occurring in your business and a forward-looking sense of the coming months and years. 

As you can imagine, this can be a tall order for even the most experienced CFOs. Automation is one of the best and fastest ways to reduce data siloed, and increase your team’s strategic bandwidth.

Eliminating manual processes will enable you to orient your entire department around long-term strategic thinking and high-value activities. 

Empower Your Finance Team Today 

Automation is the only way to report and forecast with maximum reliability and effectiveness. Contact us today to learn more about how Sage Intacct can help your business.

About Us
Kiteview Technologies (Pty) Ltd was founded in May 2010 to provide the Sage Evolution Business Management solution to the SME market. The management team of Kiteview have combined +30 years of experience in the delivery of small to mid-market Financial & Business Management solutions. This experience, combined with a sound project implementation methodology has helped in Kiteview’s growth, becoming a Platinum status partner for SAGE Pastel within just 1 year.

Contact Us

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Digital Transformation Enabled by Cloud Financials

Digital Transformation Enabled by Cloud Financials

Article credit: Sage 

Digital transformation impacts all areas of a business from interactions with customers and partners to how employees function. Digital transformation vastly reduces friction across all parts of an organization. By digitizing its processes, a company can be in a better position to manage cash flow, inventory, budgets, accounts payable, accounts receivables, days sales outstanding and order metrics while lowering operating expenses. It makes processes and tasks cheaper and faster, giving the business more time to focus on innovation and growth. When a business simplifies how it operates and reduces friction, the organization also creates more value for its employees and customers.

Cloud-native financial management systems help enable digital transformation. These play a critical role in driving business growth and help a company take steps toward implementing more digital solutions. Digitizing core financials can drive digital transformation throughout the organization, reducing business friction and improving customer experiences, business relationships and financial results.  

Before implementing digital solutions, companies need to consider the impact of technology on their supply chain, partners, customers and employees.

A recent study, conducted by Deloitte, found that organizations with mature digital transformation initiatives have better financial performance than others. Deloitte reported “higher-maturity organizations surveyed were far more likely than lower-maturity ones to significantly outperform their industry average on key financial metrics… Digital maturity’s impact on financial performance comes from enabling improvements in efficiency, revenue growth, product/service quality, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement—as well as by prompting a greater focus on growth and innovation.” Forty-five per cent of organizations with higher digital maturity reported net revenue growth as compared with 15% of those with lower digital transformation maturation, and 43% reported higher net profit margins, again as compared with 15% of those with lower digital transformation maturation.

How to Build your Digital Transformation Plan

Companies need to focus on technology, data, process, and organizational structure, including:

  1. Technology: The key is understanding how to effectively solve challenges that may prevent a business from driving change. Cloud-native financial management systems improve information quality and efficiency at measurable rates.
  2. Data: This is the basic standard to evaluate large numbers and use them to communicate what improvements are needed. Integrating cloud-native financial management systems increases data visibility.
  3. Process: A well-planned strategy is crucial to creating a system that focuses on improving operational processes and engaging customer experiences.
  4. Organizational Structure: There needs to be a balance between welcoming technology advances and how leaders and employees are managing the pace of change.

To facilitate successful digital transformation, a business needs to support change and evaluate what solutions solve the company’s biggest needs and challenges. Deploying a cloud-native financial management system allows the finance team to adapt to digital change and set up the business for future success.

According to McKinsey and Company, CFOs are taking on a bigger role in executing digital transformations, beyond just traditional financial tasks, since they control most of the key business levers that determine a transformation’s success.   As McKinsey reports: “A transformation initiated by the CFO is just as likely to succeed as one started by the CEO, even though it is much more common for the CEO to initiate such an effort. What’s more, finance leaders view their own role and contribution to a transformation more expansively than do their fellow executives. CFOs say that their time on transformations would be best spent on role-modelling new mindsets and behaviours, setting high-level goals, and communicating the transformation’s results—when, in practice, they are most often charged with traditional finance-oriented responsibilities.”

As a business grows, it’s critical to invest in innovative technology that offers a seamless flow of business information with customers and trading partners. A cloud-native financial management system thrusts the business forward so it can stay ahead. It helps unlock the ability to adopt digital transformation across the organization. Modern data exchange also helps increase revenue and optimizes the business’s capabilities. Deploying a cloud-native financial management system prepares a business for the future by giving finance leaders more control and visibility into the operations and the ability to meet new demands.

If you are interested in finding out how Sage Intacct can boost your business, get in touch with us today.

About Us
Kiteview Technologies (Pty) Ltd was founded in May 2010 to provide the Sage Evolution Business Management solution to the SME market. The management team of Kiteview have combined +30 years of experience in the delivery of small to mid-market Financial & Business Management solutions. This experience, combined with a sound project implementation methodology has helped in Kiteview’s growth, becoming a Platinum status partner for SAGE Pastel within just 1 year.

Contact Us

For An Obligation Free Quote

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