Why you need to manage your Financial Consolidation solution directly

Anyone who has ever scared themselves driving an automobile where the power output was more than vehicle could safely handle will know there are two aspects to performance. First there is the brute horsepower under the hood that produces the acceleration and raw speed. But equally important is the vehicle’s chassis and steering, which are key to delivering the agile handling needed to rapidly chop and change direction without having to constantly scrub speed.

So in anything other than a straight line race, it is the usually the automobile that has the best combination of speed and agility that wins the day. It’s exactly the same when it comes to financial systems, such as financial consolidation solutions.

Real-time for a faster close

If you are stuck with a solution that uses batch calculation, you will know the frustration of having to wait every time you do a journal entry or an intercompany elimination. Sure, there’s plenty of opportunity to meet up with colleagues around the water cooler, but it’s slowing down the close and compromising productivity at a time when finance teams are trying to do more with less.

Using a real-time solution such as Anaplan that instantly updates the status of the consolidation puts an end to all those interruptions as all the consolidation elements—intercompany reconciliations, currency conversions and journal entries – are done in real time in one system, giving you a faster and more reliable close.

Self-management for agility

Keeping consolidation models in step with changing organizational structures and shifting reporting requirements makes flexibility an important consideration too. There is little point in acquiring a real time financial consolidation solution that still leaves you reliant on specialist skills every time you need to make changes. Inevitably there will be delays while your ticket works its way up your IT department’s to-do list or external resource becomes available. So agile you most certainly are not; you are waiting for a mechanic to get you back on the highway.

Anaplan’s intelligent and flexible architecture was conceived and built for self-management, so you can update your consolidation model yourself, quickly creating new scenarios to see exactly what impact changes, such as acquisitions and disposals, have on financial results before committing to them.

Watch the video to see how Anaplan’s real time Financial Consolidation app gives you a robust and reliable close without having to wait while reports refresh or specialist support becomes available.