Concise, Quality Financial Reporting: when Less is More

Data is valuable, but only when properly analyzed and presented. One of PikoHANA’s competencies is providing our clients with the reports they need to run their businesses. All too often we’ve witnessed finance managers, controllers, and even founders and CFOs make the mistake of producing extensive, overly detailed reports with unnecessary, mind-numbing information on the company’s financial and operational performance.  

The risk of such detailed, data-heavy reports is that no one will be interested to read them. What use is a wealth of data when it is not accessible to readers? Further, it will lead to a gap in knowledge between the company’s analysts and operations managers. Overly complicated reporting is a waste of time and can jeopardize communication across departments.  

Your operational reporting objective should be to produce a one- or two-page dashboard view of relevant metrics for each area of the business. Your management team can then use this easy-to-read graphic in their decision-making process. Although there are dozens of performance metrics, limit your uses of these measurements to only those that add value – don’t get carried away with useless information.  

Maximizing Efficiency and Effectiveness in Financial Reporting

Many businesses still use emails, spreadsheets, and reports to piece together data. With a single source of data truth, effective processes can bring down an organization, especially when it comes to budgeting.

Each department head typically creates the budget in Excel when management requires a company budget. The Finance department will then connect the template with the business budget. Compiling, integrating, and finishing many Excel workbooks may take significant time, depending on the number of departments involved. The ineffective way businesses create budgets is only one aspect of the issue; another is the data source.

Budgeting is not only challenging but also wrong without the effectiveness and clarity offered by ERP (ERP), Business Intelligence (BI), and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) tools.

Not all corporate processes suffer from a lack of automation, including budgeting. With ERP, BI, and CPM software, you may also increase the accuracy of general business reporting, market trends, and business productivity.

To improve your reporting’s effectiveness and efficiency, you must:

Automate Workflows – To save time on reporting, use CPM software’s workflows and consolidation features.

Easy Access to Data – Can resolve Communication issues by consolidating data in one place. When there is a solitary source of accurate data, decision-makers can access the most recent information.

Facilitate Data Sharing – Sharing site data enables better decision- and collaboration-making.

Compliance – Not keeping track of your regulatory efforts can limit your available resources.

When you can easily find the knowledge you require, life is excellent!

Our second piece of advice is you focus on current metrics: management teams are generally not interested in the historical performance of their business units. The more you can apply these ratios and performance measurements to forward-looking information, the better equipped your management team will be to make informed decisions about the future of your company.   

If this new method of operational reporting objective appeals to you, you’ve come to the right place. Part of PikoHANA’s Platform as a Service is a state-of-the-art reporting dashboard which gives you all the information you need to run your business. We call it ‘AO’ (meaning ‘enlightenment’ in Hawaiian). Customize AO with meaningful, user-friendly widgets to stay informed without getting bogged down in unnecessary details. With PikoHANA, you get the information you need to run your company. Contact us for a consultation today.