Manual processes can make planning and reporting full-time jobs, especially when the business is demanding customised reports or real-time updates. When your team is spending more time juggling data than driving strategic initiatives, your entire decision-making process can be compromised.

Every organisation has a different business model, risks, and operating conditions. Despite this, every company has to map its strategy, plan for the future, execute these plans, and then report on their success or failure.

Without the information to understand business drivers and predict performance, it becomes hard to steer business actions and outcomes to desired results. Many organisations find that they lack real-time visibility into key performance metrics and financial data, making it harder to monitor performance, identify trends, and mitigate risks proactively. Without access to timely, accurate, and actionable insights, decision-makers can’t make the informed choices they need to drive business growth, optimise resource allocation, and capitalise on emerging opportunities.

Predictability is as important as performance

A senior executive’s ability to predict future business execution accurately and explain past performance is just as important as achieving the results themselves, but most CEOs and CFOs say they have only part of the information needed to run their businesses and accurately predict results. In fact, research has found that not only do decision makers have insufficient information, most have identified issues with the information they have.

Managers are often only given incomplete information, and in some cases, they get conflicting information. More importantly, the data that organisations run on is rarely integrated into a framework that allows management to see and understand what is occurring in real time, and make accurate forecasts and predictions as a result.

Fragmented IT systems and data scattered across multiple spreadsheets are the two most common causes of this lack of visibility, despite the fact that a solution is easily available in the form of a comprehensive EPM system. By consolidating data from across the business and automating routine tasks such as budgeting, forecasting, and reporting, EPM helps streamline processes, reduce manual errors, and improve efficiency across the organisation, allowing business leaders to gain a real-time and comprehensive view of business drivers and financial performance.

Building an agile business

Current economic conditions are a stark reminder that organisations must be ready to respond to new market opportunities and threats more quickly than ever before. However, while the increasing pace of change is putting more pressure on finance teams, many are taking steps to increase agility and improve decision making by innovating beyond static financial cycles. They are focusing on more agile budgeting and forecasting methods and the detailed business drivers and operational plans that are leading indicators of financial performance.

Those finance teams that still rely on disconnected legacy applications and point solutions are going to keep struggling with the challenge of poor visibility leading to poor decisions. As the pace of market changes increases, and does so at an accelerated pace, finance teams need to shift their focus from data gathering, reconciling data and managing key integration points to collaborating with line of business partners and providing better, faster insights to support decision-making.

Organisations looking to enhance their performance management capabilities and drive data-driven decision-making should look at implementing an EPM solution that will help them streamline processes and achieve their strategic objectives more effectively. A powerful tool for any organisation, EPM enables the real-time insights companies need to stay ahead in today’s competitive landscape.