In the fast-paced world of today’s business, staying ahead of the curve often hinges on the ability to adapt and innovate. One critical aspect of this adaptability lies in financial planning and analysis (FP&A), a cornerstone of effective decision-making. However, traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, while invaluable for transactional data, fall short when it comes to complex data analysis.
Understanding ERP Systems
ERP systems are the backbone of any modern enterprise, efficiently handling transactions and storing vital data. ERPs are optimized for storing transactional data from order entry, order fulfillment, supply chain management and other core operational activities.
But they are not ideal for analyzing transactional data. In fact, they are not even remotely designed to facilitate the complex analysis that the Office of Finance wants, needs and cares about. This is why running financial analytics within an ERP is inefficient and painful.
The problem is that finance teams need to analyze data that is stored in an ERP. And not just stored in one ERP – most finance teams must analyze data in multiple different ERP systems. They also need to run queries and reports from multiple types of data sources – such as NetSuite, Salesforce, HR systems and more.
In fact, according to a recent study by Forrester, enterprises today draw data from an average of 320 different data sources that feed analytic and business intelligence (BI) applications. Over the next 12 months that number is expected to increase to 780 data sources.
One solution to this problem is to invest heavily in teams of highly skilled data engineers who manually stitch everything together. This is an expensive and slow process.
There’s a New Approach to Finance Analytics
A much better way to address this challenge is to have an Analytics Data Hub for Finance, such as the one from Incorta. Incorta enables the Office of Finance to access data in various ERPs, other software solutions, ETL pipelines and more. Incorta enables the Office of Finance to access 100% of operational and financial data to measure variances, eliminate errors and adjust forecasts quickly and accurately.
Learn more about how the Office of Finance can better access and analyze data from ERPs and other source systems. Download Leveling up Financial Planning & Analysis and Reporting with Agile Operational Analytics.