Prophix sponsored two industry webinars related to the topic of financial consolidation. Prophix teamed up with FEI (Financial Executives International) and Proformative, and one of our valued customers, Steve Anderson, Controller at Spacesaver Corporation, to demonstrate how innovative, unified software allows your finance team to simplify the complex financial consolidation process.
Below is a recap and some key learnings from the events.
Hosted by Nicole Diceman, product manager for Prophix, the audience discovered how best-in-class organizations are using financial consolidation as the springboard to strategic financial analysis and better business decision making. Steve’s real-life example really illustrated this – Spacesaver saved time and valuable resources using Prophix for financial consolidation and they were “beginning to have intelligent discussions earlier in our close.”
Eliminate spreadsheets: While most companies start on their financial consolidation journey using spreadsheets, there is a growing need to eliminate the manual efforts of spreadsheets and move to an automated consolidation process for accuracy and time savings. Spreadsheets leave a lot to be desired when it comes to financial consolidation. They are prone to error, labor intensive, have limited reporting capabilities and difficult to track.
Four key stages to the consolidation process:
- Connect: bring all data together
- Unify: ensure all stakeholders are using common data
- Analyze: real-time analysis and insights
- Inform: provide valuable advice on business planning
Benefits Realized: Spacesaver Corporation & financial consolidation
Spacesaver had a number of challenges to address including: a new ERP system, lack of strong reporting capabilities, no budget template and a slow closing process.
The company wanted to get to a place where they have access to timely and better reports by minimizing risk and data discrepancies.
- Prophix was the mechanism for building the chart of accounts and setting up data in a logical way. Once budget process was built, the Spacesaver finance team felt they had their financials in order.
- Spacesaver used Prophix to automate the key financial processes that were essential to closing the books on time
- Today, Steve’s team can pull whatever data needed on-demand.
- Financial reporting is faster and more accurate.
- Finance now has a leadership role, can spot trends and offer value to guide where the organization needs to go.
Quantitative ROI
- Financials used to be a mystery until day 3 in a 4-day close. Now there can be intelligent discussion on the middle of day 2.
- Spacesaver used Prophix to analyze how much cost should be capitalized. The report is completely automated. It used to take 4 hours, now book that entry within 5 minutes and it’s accurate.
View the webinar
Financial Consolidation with Confidence
Featuring Steve Anderson, controller at Spacesaver Corporation click here