Are You Ready to Be a Data-Driven CFO?

Could you have a more positive impact on the success of the business if you were able to spend more time on strategic initiatives?

If you answered “yes” you are not alone. Responding to a 2018 Sage Intacct and Argyle Executive Forum survey, 76 percent of CFOs believe they could have positive impact on enterprise profitability if they devoted more time to strategic initiatives.

The survey shed light on another dismal reality for CFOs. When asked “What percentage of your time is currently occupied with strategic initiatives or activities?” only 6 percent of respondents reported spending 50 percent or more of their time on high value, strategic initiatives.

The two biggest challenges

The survey highlights six challenges CFOs cited as impediments to their finance functions having better visibility into the state of the business. Click here to download the survey results.

Let’s first define data-driven and then look at the most common obstacles CFOs face.

DDDM, or data-driven decision making, is the ability to make decisions that are support by hard data rather than opinion, intuition or anecdotal evidence.

CFOs want to provide management teams with hard data they need to make decisions but recognize that existing financial accounting systems are up to the task. The top two challenges identified in the survey were: “Our data isn’t structured in a way that makes it easy to analyze” and “Our data isn’t current/real-time.”

“Our data isn’t current/real-time”

This is an indictment of your accounting system. Are you using spreadsheets to overcome inadequate functionality? Are you trying to manage a 21st century business on a legacy system that was designed 30 years ago? Are you trying to manage a growing, sophisticated business on entry level software?

The real-time data issue is easily solved with Sage Intacct. We understand that new software requires an investment. Express can help you calculate when you could expect return on investment after implementing Sage Intacct. In fact, Sage Intacct has an impressive track record when it comes to ROI with customers experiencing, on average, an ROI of over 250% when switching to Sage Intacct and an average payback period of under six months.

“Our data isn’t structured in a way that makes it easy to analyze”

It’s breath-taking just how easy dimensional reporting and custom dashboards from Sage Intacct make analysis. And, you’re not limited to just financial data because with integration, statistical data from other system can be displayed through Sage Intacct dashboards.

Department heads, members of the executive team, product and service line managers can all have dashboards customized to display the data and metrics they need to make the best decisions and achieve their monthly, quarterly and fiscal year goals.

Are you ready to be a data-driven CFO?

Express Information Systems can help you make the move to the best in financial accounting solutions. We can show you the impact a modern, cloud-based system can have. You can choose with confidence knowing that Sage Intacct has been endorsed by the AICPA. If you’re ready to be a data-driven CFO, we can equip you with the solution that will empower both you and your team.

Are You Ready to Be a Data-Driven CFO? Give us a call today and be sure to download the results from the 2018 Argyle Executive Forum and Sage Intacct survey.

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