Financial planning has always been vital to businesses in order to make sound, long-term decisions. Companies use forecasting to make critical investments, plan for covenant compliance, and even decide on future mergers and acquisitions (M&A) strategies. In the past few months, planning has changed – and it has changed dramatically. The way we perceive business […]
Covid-19 has had a hugely disruptive impact on operational finance. The term ‘operational finance’ encapsulates the critical activities associated with order to cash, procure to pay, fixed assets, close, consolidation, and reporting. Invariably, these activities have seen added stress in 2020. Not only have finance teams had to close companies’ books remotely, but they’ve also […]
There has been a steady increase in adoption of cloud-based enterprise resource planners (ERPs) these past few years, with the global cloud ERP market size expected to reach nearly $38bn by 2024, according to MarketsandMarkets. In a recent survey carried out by insightsoftware, which polled almost 500 financial professionals, just over 30% of respondents said […]
The outbreak of Covid-19 has resulted in the closure of many sectors of the economy. Governments around the world have had to act fast to support companies and employees through various schemes to attempt to avoid the immediate collapse of many businesses. While it is unclear at this point whether the global economy will suffer […]
Business intelligence (BI) tools are part of the furniture in many organisations, especially when it comes to sharing and visualising data. While BI tools serve many lines of business well and have their obvious merits, they often don’t hit the mark in finance. Finance teams’ reporting needs are too specialised for modern BI tools, so […]
The UK electorate voted for a large Conservative majority on 12 December 2019, but what does that result mean for businesses planning in 2020? The markets reacted enthusiastically to the result because it peeled back a level of uncertainty around Brexit. With a huge electoral mandate, Prime Minister Boris Johnson will be able to take […]
Chief Financial Officers and finance teams are no longer the ‘folks who do the figures’. Advances in technology and changing expectations from other business areas mean their roles are now shaped by data’s function in a business – and finance teams can now use data to become soundboards for significant decisions. Consequently, the way we […]
I know what you must be thinking. How does artificial intelligence (AI) fit into the daily number crunch? First of all, AI is a very broad term. But it often includes – and works alongside – the optimisation of everyday processes. Any individual working in a finance department, collecting and analysing thousands of data points, […]
The stresses of Brexit on international businesses are not insurmountable, but the lack of clarity coming out of Westminster is causing huge unrest within the business community. The only thing that’s certain is uncertainty itself At the time of writing, Theresa May’s third meaningful vote had been rejected, throwing more uncertainty into the air, and […]
The remit of modern finance teams is now expanding into the diversity and inclusion (D&I) space, with gender pay gap reporting. What can treasurers do to get on top of this rising trend? Having introduced gender pay legislation in 2017, the UK Government now requires companies with 250 or more employees to report on the […]