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Why you need ERP for your Finance Department

ERP for finance teams requires customization to solve team specific challenges and pain points. Find out how ERP can help your Finance Team.

Why ERP Is So Valuable for Finance Teams

What is ERP For Finance and Why Do I Need It?

An ERP for finance is an enterprise resource planning solution that organizations use to manage their comprehensive financial responsibilities. Finance ERP solutions streamline financial operations, provide centralized data storage, and automate workflows while also supplying the reporting, dashboards, and data analysis capabilities businesses need to succeed for today’s digital economy.

Your business, regardless of industry, relies on your financial team to gather insights and dispense wisdom regarding asset management, safety, and the overall health of the organization. It’s a big task, and if they don’t have the proper tools to accomplish it, then your business will suffer.

What is a Finance Specific ERP?

Finance-specific ERP solutions are designed to simplify complex financial management requirements, such as planning, investing, and compliance. Real-time, synchronized data from every department flows into the financial ERP software with key performance indicators (KPIs). The data is efficiently accessed by finance teams, who interpret the information, easily assessing the health of the organization in a glance and generating financial reports used in making business-enhancing decisions.

Without a single, integrated finance ERP solution, your team must manually extract and compile the data from multiple systems and departments, a time-intensive and error-prone process. A financial management solution allows finance teams to monitor business metrics as well as avert problems before they begin.

The benefits of embracing financial ERP software include:

Easily track profits and costs for forecasting
Improve productivity with automated billing, payment, and revenue processes
Gain real-time visibility into updated, accurate financial data
Integrate with other business systems
Eliminate paper files and increase security
Comply with laws, regulations, and industry standards using effective internal controls

All told, an ERP for finance is an end-to-end solution that provides companies, like yours, with the financial intelligence needed to successfully compete in today’s marketplace.

"For us, the power of the Acumatica system is in the WMS and shop floor data collection, the inventory management, the ability to deliver to a customer and to get things right."

Ben Leinster, CEO

AFF|group

How to Tell When Your Finance Team Needs ERP

Now that you know what a finance-specific ERP is and its benefits, deciding whether your finance team needs an ERP or not may seem a no brainer. In other words, there appears to be no downsides to implementing modern financial ERP software—unless your team isn’t ready.

If your finance team is set in its ways (e.g., they believe their multiple, disconnected systems and paper-based processes are sufficient), then you may face resistance to change. And, make no mistake, the change would be huge. Undergoing an ERP implementation is not a fast or inexpensive prospect.

However, if you handle the implementation well, including ensuring there is leadership support and communicating the “why” to your team before, during, and after the process, the result will be boosted productivity. And this benefit—one of many—leads to happy employees.

Which ERP Systems Are Best for Finance?

Finding the best ERP for finance for your specific needs doesn’t come without its own set of challenges, but there are ways to distinguish between solutions that will work for you and those that won’t. For example, setting a budget and an implementation timeframe will let you know whether you can afford a certain ERP as well as if an ERP vendor can meet your timeline.

You also want to include every member of your team in analyzing your business requirements, which ensures that your must-have, as well as your would-be-nice, features, are available in the ERP solution of your choice. An evaluation checklist can help by comparing features (under the categories of productivity, functionality, technology, value, and risk) of varying ERP vendors.

The features—and their benefits—are critical to your search, but it’s also important to know your hosting options. ERP solutions of the past were hosted on-premises, which means companies had to buy the hardware, install it in their own building(s), and manage any updates and upgrades, which included security protocols. Though this is still an option, cloud-based ERP solutions do not require hardware, the solution is accessible 24/7, and the cloud ERP vendor acts as your IT department.

If there are pros and cons for both on-premises and cloud ERP options, certain vendors provide a cloud solution in a private environment, or a hybrid option. Acumatica is one of them.

How Acumatica Can Help

With Acumatica Finance Cloud ERP, you can choose which hosting option is best for your business. With our comprehensive solution, you’ll receive real-time insights while controlling your financial management needs across multiple entities and lines of business—even if you’re operating in multiple countries. Designed for complex requirements but simple to use, our financial management software integrates seamlessly with every product edition, including commerce, distribution, construction, manufacturing, and field service.

As an SMB, you’ll be well served by the right financial ERP software. The single view of truth, automated workflows, and continuous compliance will simplify life and accelerate growth. Questions about Acumatica or wanting to set up a demonstration? Contact our experts at any time.

Featured resources

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IDC MarketScape: Worldwide SaaS and Cloud-Enabled Midmarket Finance and Accounting Applications 2020 Vendor Assessment

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