Accounting and CPM software: A dynamic duo for your finance team

Like chocolate and peanut butter or salt and pepper, accounting and corporate performance management software go hand in hand. The relationship may not seem obvious on the surface, though, because of the key differences in the specific tasks they perform:

• Accountants usually keep track of revenue, billings, and profits, among other numbers, by using traditional tools such as Excel and QuickBooks. The associated processes are often manual, time-consuming, and error-prone, due to the severe limitations of these legacy systems.
• Meanwhile, finance teams cast a much wider net with CPM software, which are used for budgeting, forecasting, and planning. These solutions have evolved over time to become more user-friendly to the entire organization, not just to the finance department.

Still, these two types of software are on similar tracks. In accounting as well as CPM, old-fashioned tools remain in widespread use, even as there's an ongoing influx of more modern solutions supported by cloud infrastructure, integrated with other platforms such as Salesforce and designed to handle many complex scenarios.

"SMBs have many incentives to move on from their outdated processes."

SMBs have many incentives to move on from their outdated processes and take up both cloud accounting and budgeting and forecasting software. The transition is not as difficult as it might seem, as there are excellent options - such as Intacct and the Adaptive Suite - available, along with experienced implementation partners like Arxis.

How you can reduce risk and boost performance with cloud solutions

Manual processes for anything from quote-to-cash to revenue recognition can have widespread effects on your efficiency. For starters, they raise the costs of audits required under regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Errors that lead to major discrepancies in company books - in the range of hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases - can be triggered by something as simple as a broken Excel formula.

Many organizations are held back by manual financial processes.

On the planning side, such processes are time-consuming and poorly suited to risk management. The solution is to move on to something better than spreadsheets and legacy desktop software. Using Intacct and Adaptive Insights in tandem opens up many opportunities for improvement, including:

• Centralization of payables and receivables and easy sharing of vendors, customers, and item lists across entities.
• User-defined dashboards and reports that can be based on an unlimited number of dimensions - including project, date, and location - to improve insights.
• Superior project accounting, revenue management, and integrations with other applications, which help bring together disjointed processes.
• Continuous planning and rolling forecasts to streamline the budgeting process and reduce costly cycle times.
• Modern interfaces that enable access from any web browser or device; plus, software is always up-to-date thanks to its supporting infrastructure in the cloud.

By pairing cloud-based financial solutions such as Intacct and Adaptive Insights, organizations everywhere can get on a path toward sustainable accounting, budgeting, and forecasting. RKL is here to understand your specific situation and requirements and create a roadmap to ensure your project's success. We help with discovery, solution evaluation, ongoing education, and much more...