With the speed of business faster than it’s ever been, missed opportunities are costlier, customers have higher expectations, and any hiccups, tensions or failures in communication could be the difference between growth and failure. Today, we would like to discuss one consideration in communications that is often overlooked—the relationship between sales and finance—that is a key factor in the modern organization.

Why You Need to Keep Accounting and Finance “In the Loop”

While your sales and customer service people may not think that they need to “have finance on speed dial,” there are many occasions when a situation arises in which finance needs to respond immediately. This could include any non-routine transactions—clarifying policies, gathering missing information, resolving exceptions—which require finance’s input and expertise.

Now, imagine the current process in which one of these non-routine transactions takes place. Such a process would commonly start with an email from the salesperson to finance. The finance person would then need to go into the accounting software, dig through the information, and make the decision, jumping from application to application to get context and respond. The process is clumsy, laborious, and time-consuming, and occurs at a time when speed is the name of the game.

This is why we would like to discuss with you an easy way to connect finance with the rest of your organization, bringing them closer to the rest of the company and allowing them to approve, clarify, and make decisions within the ERP/accounting software.

How Sage Intacct Collaborate Bridges Organizational Communication Gaps

One of the biggest initiatives by Sage Intacct (then just Intacct) over the last decade was to find a new way to connect finance with the rest of the organization. In 2014, the company introduced Collaborate, a function built on Salesforce Chatter to create a secure social layer across all finance processes and across devices through the Salesforce1 Mobile App.

For Finance, Sales, and Services employees, this means they can now work collaboratively to keep processes efficient even in the face of snags due to requested exceptions, ambiguous data, or changing policies. For many organizations, this has not only led to product and service improvements, it has also led to shorter order-to-cash (O2C) times, reduced reliance on email to accomplish tasks, and faster flow of information.

Learn More

Sage Intacct Collaborate is just one of the many features of Sage Intacct that empowers finance to work smarter, not harder. Learn more about the Collaborate platform here, read about the benefits on the Sage Intacct Blog, and contact us to learn more.