Financial business intelligence: Dashboards for CFOs and Controllers by Brad Blackmore

In today’s fiercely competitive economy, business leaders are turning to the finance group to do more than accounting. CFOs are being relied upon to help the company make more profitable decisions. Reporting actual versus target numbers is no longer enough; therefore, CFOs are turning to business intelligence solutions to do deeper analysis and to spot trends, so they can act quickly and capitalize on opportunities.

Business Intelligence (BI) is a broad term that describes the collection, storage and analysis of company data to make better informed decisions.  Financial BI takes a proactive approach to better reporting, analysis, and financial control of an organization. It takes operational reports produced by most accounting systems to the next level by looking beneath the top layer. The information is accessed through a console, known as a financial dashboard, which displays key performance metrics.  The dashboard combines the reporting capabilities of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system with the analysis functions of BI and delivers the results in a visual format that CFOs and controllers can digest quickly. 

The power of a financial dashboard is three-fold:

• It uses graphical indicators to tell you how you are doing compared to your targets and goals, in real time—including sales volume, profitability, productivity, operating expenses, and outstanding receivables as well as other key performance indicators (KPIs) that have an important impact on your corporate strategy.
  
  
• It offers drill through capabilities so that CFOs can easily navigate to a more tactical view to indentify and gain insight into specific areas and problems. It becomes a living, breathing, instantly updated piece of information that you can interact with and use to help form and prioritize your next business decision.
  
  
• It is used to analyze. You not only know what happened and why it happened, but with data mining, you can also spot trends that can be leveraged in your organization.

BI helps a company maximize revenue, manage employee performance, reduce costs, and increase profits, delivering high-value returns on many levels. A financial dashboard is simply a part of BI. You don’t have to buy expensive software to get started. A financial dashboard can even be created in Microsoft Excel.  If you are ready to move from reporting to analyzing, it’s a great place to start.

For more information on Financial BI, which is simply a part of a BI program, please visit www.socius1.com/bi.   

Contact Brad Blackmore, with Socius at bblackmore@socius1.com or 800.589.6614, ext. 4009.

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