data driven

How Financial Leaders Can Become More Data Driven

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As we head into the next decade, financial leaders of fast-growing companies are focused on how they can better drive decisions based on real-time data. Having access to financial and operational metrics in real-time can influence strategic company decisions. Below are some ways the tech-savvy leader can continue to evolve.

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1)    Eliminating manual work through technology – The top way that financial leaders can become more data-driven is by eliminating manual work by modernizing technology. Companies that are taking advantage of integrated solutions and automation have shorter month-end close cycles, streamlined processes and reliable, real-time information.  By moving to the right cloud-based financial solution, finance departments gain the ability to use seamless API’s connecting multiple systems in one low maintenance ERP solution. Open API allows organizations to choose the systems that work best for them.  Having integrated systems eliminates duplicate entry, reduces the risk of human error and improves job satisfaction. Utilizing cloud technology allows leaders to have visibility to critical data and attain real-time insights.

2)    Shift the direction of the finance department to value-add analysis – Once manual work has been eliminated, your team can now focus on understanding the story the data is telling and predicting the future. By reducing the amount of time spent recording transactions, resources can be redirected to support organizational initiatives such as cost savings, growth, and pursuing your organization’s strategic mission.

3)    Use financial data to create strategic goals – Financial leaders are in a prime position to drive company goals, set KPI’s and achieve measurable results when they have accurate and timely data.  Key performance metrics may include those related to revenue, margins, sales cycle, or other operational measures of success.  A fully integrated, flexible, cloud-based ERP system allows Finance Leaders the ability to quickly model scenarios and analyze the impacts on revenue, profits and cash flow.

Make this decade one of distinguishing your organization’s strategic vision and differentiate yourself as a leader who adds value, drives growth and sets your CEO up for success.  How? Make technology a priority and move to the cloud. It is the first step in driving your company forward and becoming a data-driven financial leader.

 

Contact rinehimerbaker at accounting@rinehimerbaker.com  to find out how you can become more data-driven. 


1000 North Case Study

Hospitality Finance Departments Save Big with Cloud ERP Solution

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Hospitality Finance departments have been able to save money, and time by moving their ERP solution to the cloud. The cloud gives finance employees access anywhere anytime with easy to create reports that help cut close times every month. Below you will find examples of how companies have saved big by moving to the cloud. If you want to find out more about how they were able to get these results sign up for our webinar on October 30th at 1 pm Eastern.

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hospitality finance


Franchise Management

Franchise Management with Sage Intacct

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Sage Intacct is the leading cloud-based ERP solution for franchise management. Franchise owners can easily manage multiple locations, access in real time data, and gain insights into each location’s performance without sacrificing roll-up reporting capabilities. All of this is made possible by Intacct’s best-in-class multi-entity management / consolidation capabilities and open API. Intacct relieves business owners of IT worries, all while eliminating cumbersome consolidations and manual reporting. Franchise finance and accounting teams can become proactive team players by refocusing their time on high value analytic tasks. Below are a few recommendations of how Sage Intacct can provide the boost your franchise’s finance team has been looking for:

Multi Location Reporting

Managing multiple entities or locations can be overwhelming with the wrong software. With Sage Intacct you can quickly see each individual location’s financial data, as well as the financial health of your entire franchise. The high configurability of Intacct makes roll up reporting for the executive team a breeze. Now decision makes can quickly analyze their total business with real-time data and seize time sensitive opportunities, both on the franchise and individual store levels.

Secure, Granular Permissions

Sage Intacct’s user permissions allow you to easily assign and update user permissions, giving each person access to only the location(s), reports, and financial data necessary to their role within your organization. With their own login, managers can see their store(s) financial information without sacrificing the security of other franchise financial data or them having to wait to receive manual reports from the corporate finance team. Now franchises can structure their accounting system to fit their organizational structure, instead of modifying employees’ roles to fit the accounting system’s capabilities.

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Streamlined Tech Stack

Sage Intacct has a fully open API for seamlessly connection to your franchises’ other systems, such as your POS, HR management, and business intelligence software. Being able to connect all of your business tools to Sage Intacct means you can now pull data from disparate systems into one place for expedited review. Imagine having a dashboard showing sales from your POS, headcount from your HR system, and comparative report showing revenue by headcount across all your locations.

Hassle Free Expansion

Adding a new store location in Intacct can be done in a matter of hours, not days or weeks. Intacct was designed for rapidly expanding businesses, meaning your new franchise location or holding company can be added quickly without any IT resources or reconfiguration of existing locations.

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Benchmarking and KPI’s

Benchmarking is made easier with Sage Intacct’s ability to consolidate and report information. Business owners can quickly see how each location is performing against their KPI’s and against other locations. This means owners and their management team can quickly identify performance issues. Also, through

Sage Intacct’s dashboards management can dive deeper into the numbers and understand the drivers of each locations’ performance.

Negotiate Pricing

Sage Intacct’s numerous reporting tools allow your team to tailor reports that slice and dice data to your company’s individual needs. With this ability, data can easily be analyzed to show how much your franchise is spending with each vendor, at each location, and what types of goods are being purchased. Management can easily leverage this data to negotiate pricing with vendors and identify opportunities to streamline operational expenditures. Sage Intacct effortlessly provides opportunities to your franchise managers for increased insight and control of operations, driving increased profitability for your entire franchise.

To scale your franchise’s growth, you need a solution that provides meaningful capabilities. Find out more about how rinehimerbaker can help you implement Sage Intacct and achieve success with your franchise. Check out this case study where rinehimerbaker leveraged Sage Intacct to drive success in a high-growth franchise.


Closing the automation gap

Closing the Automation Gap in Finance

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Closing the automation gap in finance is key to running an efficient business capable of scaling. Growth in your business, by product diversification or acquisition, creates additional work on your team. If the system is designed around manual tasks and spreadsheets, your company won’t reap the rewards or experience the profit growth you expect. Closing the gap allows finance teams to transform from error-prone clerical workers to strategic advisors capable of providing data and insight in real-time. 

What is the automation gap? 

The automation gap is the space between what can be automated within your current system and the actual processes your staff is executing.  The gap essentially represents the manual processes your team completes in order to run your business effectively.  As companies experience growth, the automation gap generally increases and can overrun a finance department. 

A great example of how the right system can close the automation gap is Sage Intacct’s multi-entity management capabilities. By automatically consolidating multiple companies and automating closing entries, when you grow by acquisition you no longer need to manually track the activity in spreadsheets and manually consolidate the books! With Sage Intacct, finance teams can rapidly close the books and reduce errors along the way allowing them to provide meaningful information to your management team faster. 

 

Growing through product diversification is great but that also means companies need to understand how that impacts their compliance standards such as ASC 606. Once you understand your compliance requirements, you then need systems in place to uphold them. 

When your current software doesn’t automate this for you, companies typically lean toward a spreadsheet as their process. Managing compliance in a spreadsheet is not sustainable over the long term as you experience continued growth and create new products. 

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Processes built around spreadsheets are extremely manual and the responsibility of managing and maintaining them typically falls on one or two employees who truly understand how the document works. We often find that the documentation and instructions of the process are nonexistent meaning all of that process knowledge leaves the company when the employees leave your organization. 

Managing complex processes using spreadsheets is not without risk. It’s not a question of “if” there is an error, it’s a question of “when” the error is going to occur and how big of an impact is it going to cause. 

Companies are trying to close the automation gap by hiring talent. However, hiring high-level talent that can create and understand complex spreadsheets comes at a premium. Continuing to hire employees at top salaries to perform these tasks is not sustainable over the long term. This also contributes to creating a company culture where the focus is on clerical work rather than strategic work. 

Watch the Webinar: Closing the Automation Gap Now

Why is closing the gap important? 

90% of the decision-makers are under pressure to make decisions faster but only 28% trust the data in their reports. This is largely due to the almost guaranteed mistakes that happen when a company relies on manual processes instead of working with a system that closes its automation gap. 

Current CFO’s have more responsibilities than ever to strategically lead their companies with real-time data. Reacting on three-week-old data that is almost guaranteed to have some error within the report is no longer acceptable or the norm. 

Are you unsure of how to discover your automation gap and implement a solution to close it? The rinehimerbaker team can help you evaluate your current processes, identifies your opportunities, and build a plan on how to close your automation gap. 

If you would like to find out more, click here to watch the full Closing the Automation Gap Webinar. If you are ready to discuss closing your own gap, please fill out the form below to speak with a representative at rinehimerbaker.  

 


Managing a Cultural Shift in the Cloud

Company Culture’s Role in Successful Cloud-Based Software Adoption Part 2: Leading the Charge

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“Company culture is either the number one catalyst or inhibitor to progress.” This according to Brian Solis, who has been a leader in the digital transformation movement, is one of the biggest reasons that you need to change the way your people think if you hope to have a successful cloud journey.

In the first part of this blog, we explored the connection between culture and cloud readiness. Today, we would like to look at some of the steps you need to take to lead your change initiative as you work to transform your business.

Managing a Commitment to Change

Influencing—and inspiring—culture change across your organization requires a concerted effort amongst company leaders to adapt their communications to align with the transparency, flexibility, and agility afforded by your new technology. Before managers can help employees/users learn their new responsibilities, processes and procedures, they have to participate in a “global” initiative to set a positive tone and trajectory for the technology project—and keep the momentum going.

Here are best practices to consider as you take your journey of digital (and cultural) transformation:

Set and share a clear vision. What values do you want your employees to embrace—and personify—as they adopt new technology tools and resources? Formalizing your intentions to serve as a guide will prepare your leadership team, and eventually employees, to embody an innovative, tech-driven culture.

Start from the top. Support from the C-suite is critical—and not only because you need their sign-off to purchase your new technology. Their ongoing partnership is essential to creating a culture that values technology, is willing to evolve with changes, and looks forward to learning new ways of working.

Establish a multi-departmental team. While selecting technology solutions and preparing for the change—not to mention rolling out the changes—it’s helpful to depend on the talents and influence of leaders and power users across the company. These “champions” can help you anticipate areas of potential resistance, collect feedback, and communicate changes and project updates with their respective teams, making for a smoother transition for everyone.

Select the right solution(s). If you implement a solution that doesn’t match your requirements, any enthusiasm you’ve built up around the change will fall flat. It’s so important to get the technology “right” from the very beginning—and working with a trusted technology consultancy is often your best route to success.

Send frequent communications. Keep employees informed on organizational goals and technology project timelines and milestones. Depending on the communications preferences of your workforce, share information with them over different channels and formats so you’re sure to effectively connect with everyone. Your messaging should lead with benefits (e.g. increased productivity, 24/7 system access and mobility, enhanced collaboration) and always provide next steps for learning more or providing feedback.

Depend on your implementation partners. When it comes to securing training materials, user support, and all of the other resources you’ll need to drive ongoing change, your third-party partners will have you covered. Experts in the technology you’re implementing and experienced with deployments, they can help you and your entire workforce stay the course—and always moving forward.

At rinehimerbaker, we know what it takes to successfully introduce game-changing technology and bring your company culture along for the exciting ride. Contact us to learn more.

Don’t miss:

3 Things Keeping Your Finance Team From Unlocking Their Potential

Meet the Expectations of Top Financial Talent with Cloud-Based Software

Building a Cloud Focused Culture

Company Culture’s Role in Successful Cloud-Based Software Adoption Part 1: Understanding the Cloud Culture Connection

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If your organization’s digital transformation includes introducing your employees to a cloud-based business software solution, you can’t afford to underestimate the role company culture plays in the process. Take it from Brian Solis, who claims “company culture is either the number one catalyst or inhibitor to progress.” By now, the cloud-culture connection is practically conventional wisdom, as digital innovation and success go hand-in hand.

Business leaders are eager to practice culture-change management alongside technology implementation—but no one says it’s easy. In fact, Gartner’s recent Chief Data Officer Survey reveals that “cultural challenges to accept change” is the top internal roadblock to the success of chief data officers today. It’s a roadblock that can most certainly be overcome.

While you can implement a cloud-based business system without addressing company culture, why not take the opportunity to do so? Read on for insights and best practices for achieving employee buy-in, successful uptake of new technology, and other indicators of a successful technology-inspired culture change, whatever these might be for your organization. In part two, we will explore the process for managing change as you head to the cloud.

Understanding the Cloud-Culture Connection

On the surface, introducing new technologies to your workforce might look like a simple shift toward automation, cost-savings, and increased productivity—and it is! Consider the far-reaching impacts of adopting a cloud-based financial management and accounting solution. But it also represents a new approach to data management, a new approach to decision-making, a new approach to achieving a competitive position in the marketplace, a new approach to customer service, and a new approach to managing employees and their responsibilities—and this is just for starters.

Introducing new technologies sends a clear message to employees—it tells them you’re committed to business growth through digital innovation—and your new approach requires new thinking: a new mindset for everyone from the C-Suite and beyond. If “innovation” my means of technology isn’t already one of your company’s core values, it’s time to undertake a culture change.

Consider how the Institute for Digital Transformation describes the result of a culture change:

  • A culture of an empowered team passionately engaged and invested in the long-term success of the business.
  • Everyone is focused on pro-actively eliminating non-value-added activities and their costs on an ongoing basis.
  • The vision and direction of the organization are clear to all, and every individual understands how to best contribute to the achievement of the goals of the organization and is empowered to act.
  • Every employee is engaged in watching the startup community, other industries, your customers, and your competition for new developments or uses of technology that might be adapted by or against your business.

Indeed, your new cloud-based business software (and other technology) is going to contribute to the long-term success of your business—but there’s a learning curve that needs to be addressed first. Your employees need to become “one” in a mindset that drives the progress-yielding behavior change. Everyone needs to understand why change is necessary, how it will be introduced, and what the new approach asks of them. In other words, simply having the technology and processes in place isn’t necessarily going to lead to the results you’re hoping for.

When It Comes to the Cloud, Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

Bringing your business into the cloud is a challenging process, no matter how many benefits exist. As you make the move to the cloud, it’s important to lead the charge at your organization with an effective plan. In part two, we will discuss the process of managing change, offering advice on how to lead a cultural shift.

Workforce Go! Product Spotlight

Product Spotlight: Workforce GO! Human Capital Management

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At rinehimerbaker, we are committed to helping growing businesses do more work while doing less labor. As a leading accounting firm, technology consultant, and provider of services that help you get the job done, we like to shine the spotlight each month on some of the software that we recommend for our clients. Today’s software is a leading human capital management platform that integrates with Sage Intacct to provide one click transaction entry, bidirectional data entry, and complete functionality to make the HCM process easier. This platform is called Workforce Go! and you can learn more below.

Workforce Go! Human Capital Management

Designed to connect best in class financials with a best in class human capital management system, Workforce Go! works with Sage Intacct to provide customers and end users an easy to implement, easy to use, and easy to configure platform that syncs with multiple modules within the Sage Intacct platform.

By connecting the two, customers can easily generate and access reports designed with the end user in mind, tackling compliance issues, complex hours tracking requirements, and costs. This web based solution features multiple modules designed to simplify HR processes as your business grows.

Human Resources Solution

From applicant tracking to onboarding and throughout the employment of your team members, Workforce Go! makes it easy for everyone to get the information they need and reduce the manual processes getting it.

Why Workforce Go! for Human Resources?

While most small and midsize companies have processes, policies, and strategies in place for HR management, these activities tend to be time-consuming and inefficient and don’t scale well as your business grows. Workforce Go! provides a robust HR application that enables you to streamline and automate these HR tasks efficiently and effectively. Self-service functionality takes it one step further by empowering your employees to handle many of their own HR-related tasks.

Key Features

The application features selfservice workflows, allowing employees, managers, and HR administrators to directly manage many of their tasks across the functional spectrum.

  • Applicant Tracking allows managers to perform online applicant searches and track job applicant candidates throughout the hiring process. Candidates have the ability to directly apply for a specific position online.
  • Onboarding Checklists help you electronically submit W-4 and I-9 forms, conduct open enrollment with employee self-service, and manage automated payroll deductions.
  • Performance Management provides an automated method for managers to review employees and for employees to review their own performance through a multi-tier review process. Performance reviews are measured through competencies, goals, and core values, providing you with a fast, comprehensive way to track employee performance.
  • Compliance is a breeze with reports for new hires, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Vets 100. Built-in workflows for filing forms such as I-9s and W-4s make the submission process faster. All data are stored online and can be accessed and printed when needed.

With so much more available, we welcome you to check out the entire platform by reading their brochure.

Workforce Management

With so many employee management pitfalls pertaining to hourly tracking, payroll concerns, and inaccuracies, having a solution that can automate the process and reduce the work managing your workforce can improve productivity and reduce costs.

Taking Control of Labor Costs without Spending Money Tracking It

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, labor costs represent 28 percent of annual revenue for U.S. companies. In managing your workforce, you need a solution that will help you reduce labor costs, promote worker productivity, and hire the talent that will help grow your business in the future. Our powerful workforce management suite can help your organization transform how you find, manage, grow, and retain your workforce.

The Workforce Go! workforce management suite, composed of time and labor management, human resources, and payroll, makes it possible for you to accurately manage all aspects of your workforce through one web-based application. By automating many of the manual, time-consuming processes associated with managing your workforce, our workforce management suite helps you improve operational processes and grow your business while easing compliance and saving you time and money

Key Features and Benefits

  • Access your system anytime, anywhere. Whether you’re traveling, working remotely, or out sick, you have 24/7/365 access to the applications. All you need is a web browser or mobile device. You remain in constant control of your business information.
  • Get in-the-moment access to real-time data. The suite effectively eliminates the guesswork of labor expenses by seamlessly integrating HR, payroll, and time and labor management, allowing data to be viewed and analyzed in real time. This enables you to see the full picture of your operations whenever you need to.
  • Address additional workforce management needs. The Marketplace is a one-stop shop featuring tightly integrated, complementary products and services from accredited third-party vendors as well as internally developed offerings in a broad range of functional categories.

Learn more about the entire Workforce Go! suite by reading their brochure.

Run Your Business with the Help of rinehimerbaker

At rinehimerbaker, our goal is to help you do more with less. From our outsourced accounting services to our newly announced recruiting services, to our technology consulting, recommendation, and implementation services, we can help you to thrive. Learn more about our work and get in contact with us to learn more.

Exploring the Reasons to Use Cloud Accounting

3 Sure Signs You Need A Cloud-Based Financial Management and Accounting Solution

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If you suspect your existing financial management and accounting system doesn’t have what it takes to sustain your company’s growth, you’re probably right. Even if you’ve already graduated from homegrown spreadsheets to desktop software, your on-premise solution it simply might not be powerful enough to meet your evolving needs. Consider these 3 signs that it’s time to migrate your data and systems to the cloud: Read more

Lure the right talent with cloud ERP

Meet the Expectations of Top Financial Talent with Cloud-Based Software

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The benefits of cloud-based software are usually cited as lower costs, process and workflow optimization, and scalability. But the attraction and retention of key finance and accounting department personnel is another benefit of implementing the best-in-class technology—one that’s not included in the “top 5 benefits” lists, but should be. The reality is that today’s top financial talent—and tomorrow’s leaders—operate in a digital world, where 24/7 access, insight, and productivity reign. Read more

Three Tips for Smarter Cloud Cybersecurity

Three Tips for Making the Most of the Cloud’s Cybersecurity

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It has been well documented that cloud providers work hard to protect your data, and generally offer more security, innovation, and data protection than you could justify spending—it’s just what happens when a company is managing more data than an average enterprise handles, and would go out of business if it was ever discovered that they were lax in security.

However, you can’t just put all of your data up in the cloud and call it safe. Recently, the Small Business Center of Excellence held a webcast on small business cybersecurity strategies, inviting a leader in the cybersecurity arena, Jerry Irvine, CIO of Prescient Solutions, to speak on important strategies for embracing cybersecurity. While he spoke of many things, one thing that resonated with us was this: While cloud providers do great work to lock down your data from their end, many businesses are still getting some of the most basic user-side security practices incorrect.

Three Tips for Locking Down the End-User Side of the Cloud Security Equation

Using one example, Mr. Irvine explained that just because a cloud provider has enterprise-level security, they also allow you to make poor security decisions such as declining multi-factor authentication, giving some people more access than they need, or failing to monitor logins. In this, many businesses still run the risk of user-side weaknesses in the event of business email compromise/phishing/spear phishing, business process compromise, and more.

Multi-Factor Authentication

In something that is surprisingly an option for many cloud vendors—as opposed to a standard feature—offer multi-factor authentication as an option. While one may think that this is a convenience issue, failing to enforce 2FA or MFA is a security issue.

What Is Multi-Factor Authentication?

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a method of computer access control in which a user is granted access only after successfully presenting several separate pieces of evidence to an authentication mechanism – typically at least two of the following categories: knowledge (something they know), possession (something they have), and inherence (something they are).

How to Embrace This

Most cloud providers will require two- or multi-factor authentication. However, if they are leaving it as an option, you as a business leader need to enforce it. We recommend developing a policy within your organization to require any employee with access to company data—especially when it’s in the cloud—to use this to protect data.

Smarter Permissions Management

It’s a fact: Not everyone needs access to everything. One of the biggest weak points that could occur is when someone has access to something that they shouldn’t. IT departments often give non-technical executives (e.g. VP of Sales, CEOs, CFOs, etc.) broad privilege inside corporate applications, figuring it is better to give too much freedom to upper management than get yelled at when someone can’t create a report.

 

Many of the most avoidable breaches occur when someone with more access than they should falls for a phishing email, logs into the fake login page, and passes their information off to a hacker.

How to Address This

This one is a relatively simple fix: Only give broad permission to the ones that need it most. The fewer people who can fall for a scam or have their information (and the company’s information) compromised, the better.

Smarter Access

Public Wi-Fi is not secure. Hackers can get access to the Wi-Fi server relatively easily, look for logins, and in turn use them as their own. In addition to this, those who are trying to get into your data are usually coming from a less-than-credible IP address.

How to Address This

If employees are working remotely, one of the first steps you need to take is to make them use a VPN, denying access to cloud applications if they are using a public Wi-Fi hotspot. In addition to this, it’s vital to manage the IP addresses from which someone can log into an application. For instance, you can prevent certain ranges of IP addresses from accessing an application at all, and flag those which may be unsafe or untrusted.

Conclusion

Businesses are leveraging the cloud for its easy access, speed, and security, but sometimes, it pays to take a step back and make sure that you’re doing the basics right. From forcing strong passwords to the tips listed above, know that there is value in security. If you’re looking to move your applications to the cloud, we’d love to help. Learn more about rinehimerbaker and our services, and contact us today.