FP&A platforms are business applications with the inbuilt functionality to help organisations streamline their budgeting, planning, forecasting, management reporting and performance management tasks, within a unified dashboard.
FP&A platforms give a team of users and stakeholders real-time access to the same data, simplifying collaboration on shared projects. A good platform, such as Corporate Planner, will include budgeting and planning tools, reporting and analytics tools, and configurable links to source data, with multiple user-roles and rights-based database technology.
This gives businesses significant performance advantages over using Excel spreadsheets.
With FP&A software, you can:
With a business-ready, easily configured user architecture, FP&A platforms can automate a wide range of planning, reporting, and budgeting tasks. The platform provides an integrated business model in which each user can access the data they need to conduct their planning and reporting tasks, based on their configurable access rights. This avoids the need to manually send out and later consolidate different workbooks. With an FP&A platform, the process is automatic, greatly minimising the work involved and the possibilities for error.
Inbuilt planning tools enable top-down, trend, and predicted planning across multiple dimensions and selected time spans, outclassing what Excel can achieve, and greatly speeding the process while delivering greater insights at the same time.
FP&A software directly connects to your source data systems, with the option to drill down to individual transactions. This enables your data to be automatically refreshed, reducing manual data entry and minimising human error. It also keeps your data up-to-date in real time, improving visibility compared to having to wait for month end closure. FP&A systems also provide data export and integration possibilities with downstream business intelligence (BI) and data analysis streams.
Two of the biggest problems with traditional spreadsheet-based planning systems are, 1. version control, and, 2. ensuring error-free updates between different models and users. FP&A software resolves both problems by providing an integrated planning and reporting model, accessed on rights-based rules. The benefits are consistent data from which to make collective decisions, and a single source of information which is available and updated automatically without manual effort. This increases productivity and facilitates faster decision-making at all levels.
The reporting and analytical functions in FP&A software are designed to be intuitive and easy to learn, minimising your training requirements and learning curve. This helps users of all experience levels communicate important information without the need for specialist knowledge. Reports populate automatically and adjust for changes in accounting and corporate structure, and are instantly available over any reported time period. This compares favourably to using Excel spreadsheets, in which self-serve production of ad hoc analyses and reports is difficult or impossible.
An increasingly important component in planning and performance management is the ability to re-forecast at quarterly or monthly intervals, and to run rolling 18 month – or longer – forecasts. Many organisations also need to run and compare multiple scenarios based on various key business drivers or strategic options, in order to identify and manage opportunities and risks. This is challenging to achieve using spreadsheets without specialist knowledge within a central team. However, FP&A software has the inbuilt capability of doing this. Each re-forecast, rolling forecast, or scenario can be stored and analysed/reanalysed against actual performance and budget, enabling a more agile approach to strategic scenario planning.
Change is the only constant in business, with new organisational structures, revisions to the chart of accounts, new product launches, services, customers, and market changes, all affecting the financial planning and accounting process. This is very difficult and cumbersome to incorporate into a spreadsheet model, involving various linked workbooks, macros, and complex formulae. In many organisations, the inner workings of a spreadsheet model are often known only to a single individual. This poses the risk of loss of knowledge, and requires a lot of resource to train other individuals to sustain the model.
FP&A software presents a far more efficient means of adapting your system for changes in your department or organisation. With its built-in multiple dimensions, planning, analysis and reporting functions, the platform adjusts for and integrates changes far more effectively than a spreadsheet model. Adding accounts and organisational changes is straightforward in FP&A software – everything, including reports, auto adjusts for you, saving time and ensuring the integrity of the model.
For these reasons, developing and deploying a new FP&A model involves far less work than a comparable spreadsheet model, as well as requiring less specialist knowledge and resources to maintain.
To find out more about Corporate Planner, our managed service plans, or to arrange a free software demo, please get in touch with Account-Ability today.
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