Every business needs to know how much cash it has available, how much it owes to suppliers, and how much it’s due from customers. But as important as detailed records are, they don’t provide business leaders with the insights they need to improve performance, spot opportunities, and strategize for future growth. That requires financial visibility that static data lacks.

Obstacles to Financial Visibility

Despite collecting massive amounts of data, companies can struggle to achieve financial visibility for several reasons.

Fragmented data

Data is often stored in many different places. Most financial data will be in the accounting system, but some details may be managed in spreadsheets. Sales data will be in the CRM, while inventory data is in another system. And project tracking details may be stored on individual laptops.

Assembling data from these sources can be tedious. By the time data is pulled together and standardized, it’s often out of date and cannot provide timely, actionable insights.

Data errors

Having bad data is worse than having no data. Inaccuracies result in flawed analysis, mistaken conclusions, and bad decisions. While errors most often occur during data collection or entry, they can also be caused by decay—meaning certain types of information become out of date. Incomplete or inconsistent data is also a concern because it can lead to invalid conclusions.

Insufficient resources

With a tight labor market, finding qualified accountants to fill open positions is challenging. And when candidates are available, they tend to be snapped up quickly even if they lack some of the skills or experience a job requires.

Ineffective analytical tools

Using the wrong tools and lacking custom reporting are common with entry-level software. These limitations mean companies resort to spreadsheets for financial analysis. However, spreadsheets only work with static data, which prevents detailed analysis.

Improve Financial Visibility with NetSuite

NetSuite improves financial visibility with real-time data and embedded business intelligence tools that enable you to analyze performance in greater detail. A unified data model eliminates fragmentation by storing financial, operational, and statistical data in a centralized database, improving accuracy by standardizing data formats and minimizing duplicate data entry. Automating data capture and other core accounting processes also increases productivity.

With NetSuite’s powerful reporting and analytics capabilities, you can track KPIs in real time with role-based dashboards, gain new insights creating multidimensional reports, and track unique performance metrics to enable more-informed decisions.

To learn how your business data can achieve better results, talk to StellarGrade today !