Going digital with variance analysis & commentary aggregation for today’s global businesses
Variance analysis is just not a process to relay facts, Finance teams use this exercise to deliver the right story to their stakeholders. Most of the large MNCs / Enterprise customers have multiple and complex reporting structures and hierarchies. Operating in such complexity brings in an additional layer of difficulty for the finance community to be able to analyse, review and assert confidently in relation to the performance of the business to various stakeholders.
Automation and replacement of legacy spreadsheets
The need for leveraging a comprehensive digital solution replacing spreadsheets is pertinent. Flexible customisable workflow engine to capture inputs and data from various sources within the organisation, allow users to be able to interact and collaborate within the platform is quite critical. A tool for aggregating explanations from the finance team to explain the performance of the business clearly leaving behind an audit trail while doing so is a very tangible requirement for users. The solution also requires ability and agility to be able to map complex organisational reporting hierarchies so that multiple finance users from different parts of the world will be able to give relevant and critical inputs converting data into meaningful information.
Seamless data integration and analysis
With data being the new oil, the users will require seamless integration with multiple sources of truth to increase and enhance the reliability of the underlying data. Alternatively, Enterprise customers and large multi-national business houses are also investing heavily in data warehousing related architectures and structures to allow seamless flow of information between multiple applications thereby reducing the lag and the loss in translation. Such data warehouses need little set up time for any tool given that information is centrally located and stored thereby significantly enhancing user adoptions rates. Flux or variance analysis is one very critical element in any finance close process and a solution which can cater to such diverse and complex requirements is not only critical but very essential to deliver the right story to stakeholders.
Kaushik Venkatraman is Co-founder and Head - Products at Consark.