The following is an excerpt from SIIA’s Deciphering Finance, a publication cataloging finance strategies and best practices. The goal of the book is to provide solid guidance to help finance executives understand how these new technology trends can benefit finance departments by tapping into the minds of SIIA member executives.

Today’s post is brought to you by Jim Shepherd, VP Corporate Strategy and Product of PlexSystems.

Comprehensive Coverage Throughout the Enterprise

The manufacturing enterprise benefits from comprehensive, real-time financial tracking, analysis and reporting of accounts receivable, customer credit management, receipts and other activities. It’s a strong disadvantage if the organization uses stand-alone spreadsheet systems to track purchasing, receiving, shipping, accounts payable, collections and other areas.

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The following is an excerpt from SIIA’s Deciphering Finance, a publication cataloging finance strategies and best practices. The goal of the book is to provide solid guidance to help finance executives understand how these new technology trends can benefit finance departments by tapping into the minds of SIIA member executives.

Today’s post is brought to you by Lauren Kelley, CEO and Founder of OPEXEngine.

For years, CFO publications, conferences and networking events have trumpeted the need for CFOs to move from being the top accountants in a company, to playing a more strategic executive role in driving corporate performance.   “Strategic” implies both an ability to influence future performance, as well as a collaborative management role.  By contrast, the traditional CFO has focused on tracking performance that has already happened and at best, working towards cutting costs and expenses going forward.

Many CFOs have not played a fully strategic role in their company because by relying solely on internal data and accounting of past performance, they do not have the tools necessary to influence strategy adequately.  Often, the CFO’s voice is just one more voice in what can be a chaotic decision making process around determining the company’s budget and strategic performance goals.

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The following is an excerpt from SIIA’s Deciphering Finance, a publication cataloging finance strategies and best practices. The goal of the book is to provide solid guidance to help finance executives understand how these new technology trends can benefit finance departments by tapping into the minds of SIIA member executives.

Today’s post is brought to you by Robert Hull, Founder, President, and CFO of Adaptive Planning.

I continue to be shocked by the common notion that it is acceptable to manage FP&A processes today on spreadsheets.  Nearly two thirds of businesses still hold onto this idea despite the fact that spreadsheets do not support collaboration or aggregation, are prone to errors, and often create cumbersome and time-consuming formatting and version control issues.  Spreadsheets continue to impede collaboration and process efficiency, and thus mire finance professionals in low value data management tasks rather than freeing them for more strategic analysis and collaboration activities.

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The following is an excerpt from SIIA’s Deciphering Finance, a publication cataloging finance strategies and best practices. The goal of the book is to provide solid guidance to help finance executives understand how these new technology trends can benefit finance departments by tapping into the minds of SIIA member executives.

Today’s post is brought to you by Jim Emerich, CFO of Avangate.

Saving money can be a major motivator for making the transition to software as a service. But the savings that come with SaaS aren’t found only on the client side. Moving to the SaaS model can be a wise financial decision for software vendors as well as their customers. This article offers an in-depth exploration of the financial advantages of cloud services and resulting business practices, considering the savings and benefits for vendor and client alike.

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The following is an excerpt from SIIA’s Deciphering Finance, a publication cataloging finance strategies and best practices. The goal of the book is to provide solid guidance to help finance executives understand how these new technology trends can benefit finance departments by tapping into the minds of SIIA member executives.

Today’s post is brought to you by Morris Panner, General Manager of DICOM Grid.

Business models in the healthcare industry are continually evolving. With these changes comes the need for new information technology solutions. In order to move forward with the right business strategy, healthcare CFOs must take a role in IT in ways they have never done before.

Part of this is due to the ongoing changes in government regulation.  Whether healthcare reform continues in its current form, there is no doubt that Federal and State governments are becoming more active in attempting to rein in costs as well as find new incentive systems to improve quality.

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The following is an excerpt from SIIA’s Deciphering Finance, a publication cataloging finance strategies and best practices. The goal of the book is to provide solid guidance to help finance executives understand how these new technology trends can benefit finance departments by tapping into the minds of SIIA member executives.

Today’s post is brought to you by Tyler Sloat, CFO of Zuora.

Subscriptions are replacing the traditional product sales models, and are fundamentally changing the face of businesses, industries, and the job of the CFO in the process. I should know because I’ve gone through this transformation myself. CFOs long-accustomed to product-centric, single-purchase transaction businesses need to get smart on the shift to businesses built around long-term recurring revenue relationships that are becoming the hallmark of the 21st century.

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