MAKING THE CASE FOR CLOUD-BASED MODELING APPLICATIONS

In today’s business environment, finance executives are tasked with managing complex business plans, which means keeping close tabs on how business units are performing and forecasting the financial results with real-time input from business operations.

“There is a growing need to break out of the finance department and look beyond the budget to drive value in the business. Business leaders understand that they can make better business decisions by incorporating data from across the organization into their financial planning process,” said Brian Martell, Director of Product Marketing, Host Analytics, a leading innovator of cloud-based EPM.

Instant access to the most current and accurate data, sourced from the functional business leaders who know the numbers best, enables the finance team to partner with the business in a more meaningful way, conduct more thorough and insightful analysis, and help drive better strategic decisions.

The challenge lies in navigating the technical and cultural changes necessary to adopt a connected planning framework. Many users are set in their ways and consider offline spreadsheets, with their limitations and risks, a necessary evil. Others are simply unaware of available cloud-based software applications that are uniquely designed to solve these problems. A good first step is a willingness to go beyond the comfort zone of Microsoft Excel and evaluate the benefits of cloud-based modeling solutions.