Financial control: why closing the books quicker improves company performance

Managing financial data efficiently is a critical aspect of business operations, accounting and finance processes. This can often be time-consuming and lead to errors. As such, many businesses – especially banks and insurers – face challenges in ensuring accurate and timely financial reporting. This underscores the need for an innovative solution that can streamline finance processes while reducing risks. Fioneer Financial Control is doing exactly that: in following the single source of truth concept, the solution is enhancing compliance, reducing errors, and providing real-time data and analysis. All with the goal of empowering finance functions to optimize their operations and make more informed decisions. 

In this blog post, we will delve into the various benefits of a streamlined solution and explore how it can help businesses transform their financial management practices. 

Speed matters

Closing the books fast and accurately is important for financial services institutions for several reasons. The faster the books are closed, the sooner the financial reports can be generated, and important financial information can be communicated to relevant stakeholders such as investors, regulators, and auditors. This helps to ensure that decision-makers have up-to-date and accurate information to base their decisions on. As research shows, over 60 percent of financial professionals would appreciate accelerated closing processes as it would give them more time to analyze data and uncover trends. Strategic planning and timely analysis of financial data helps institutions to identify areas of improvement and optimize their business operations, as well as build trust and confidence with possible investors and shareholders.  

On top of these reasons that result from general business acumen, timely financial reporting is mandatory in order to comply with various regulations and standards that apply to the financial services industry. Delayed or inaccurate financial reporting can lead to penalties, fines, and reputational damage. 

Clarity is key

When it comes to software solutions, financial institutions often face the choice between standard software and tailor-made solutions. The latter may seem attractive at first sight, because who wouldn’t want software that evolves with and therefore exactly fits the current needs of the organization. But in practice, tailor-made software oftentimes means numerous excel sheets, duplicate data in multiple locations and the need for very specific knowledge about the solution in the case of an issue. 

So on a closer look there are several reasons why it is often better for financial institutions to work with standard software solutions. They are not only typically faster to implement, support and maintain but also organizations can count on the support of experts at all times and be sure that the solutions are being updated regularly. This then ensures smooth processes and improvements over time that embrace changing or new compliance needs. On top of that, standard software is usually more scalable, allowing financial services organizations to focus on their actual business instead of the in-house extension of their tailor-made solutions. All this applies for Fioneer Financial Control, backed by the support of SAP Fioneer experts. 

Integration wins

SAP is one of the most widely used enterprise resource planning (ERP) software solutions in the world. As Fioneer Financial Control is based on the SAP HANA technology, the solution offers a seamless and easy-to-use mechanism for businesses that already use Financial Products Subleder (FPSL) and SAP HANA General Ledger. This connectivity has great value for institutions of the financial services industry and results in them not having to invest in new infrastructure, or excessive enabling costs to adopt Fioneer Financial Control. In addition to that and even more importantly: the financial data is already on the platform. 

Find out more about Financial Control here!  

Stay in the know

Never miss a Fioneer story - sign up for our newsletter.