Tableau Software : 3 resolutions for finance leaders in 2019

Everything from internal audit functions to FP&A to reporting can benefit from the integration of technologies. This shifts finance staff from doing manual, time-consuming reporting, to focusing on strategic forecasting, planning, and uncovering fraud. According to KPMG, having advanced analytics in place means financial analysts can more quickly share insights with business partners. To take action before their budgets and financial statements are negatively affected provides greater value to your business.

A major challenge is connecting disparate data across systems, such as ERPs, Banking Statements, Procurement, HR, and Travel and Expense. It's likely that your accountants are exporting large amounts of data from these various sources into Excel, which does not indicate connection to a live data source. During open accounting periods, your data is changing often, and being reviewed and analyzed by various people simultaneously. To maintain accurate and current data, focus on business intelligence solutions to create validated, current, and secure financial data-a single source of truth for the office of finance. Look for technical platforms that allow you to:

• Connect to multiple data sources (e.g., NetSuite, Salesforce, Concur, Anaplan, etc.).
• Allow for data blending and cross-database joins.
• Automate recurring processes.
• Connect to a live data source.
• Maintain data governance and security.
• Create alerts and subscriptions for different levels of access.

A single source of truth for every finance function saves your staff valuable time and energy, because they don't have to check which data source is correct or secure. Now your team can create reports and dashboards from validated, trusted data for stakeholders to view on their own. Self-service dashboards alleviate additional demands on your finance team, facilitating improved predictions and forecasting of trends. Imagine being able to access information from systems such as Travel, Expense, Procurement and Banking statements at the same level of detail as your General Ledger. Learn how the Tableau Finance Analytics team does this, along with ad-hoc analytics, to create data-rich, self-service dashboards for their stakeholders with this webinar.