The days of measuring profit and loss as a function of simple sales revenues are long gone; today's chief financial officers are faced with far greater challenges.
It's not that their job has ever been simply about counting beans - far from. It's just that today's board-level financial representatives face the daunting task of sourcing and assimilating monetary and other data in real-time from myriad business units and operations spread, sometimes, across the world. IT has long been employed to assist in tracking the financial progress of companies large and small.
But, according to divisional director for Africa at Sage Enterprise Solutions, Ashley Ellington, the dynamics of how that IT is used - and what's expected of it - are in the throes of serious change. "Four or five years ago the general trend was for financial applications in many small and mid-market companies to focus solely on the books - general ledger, debtors, creditors and the like," he says.
"Today, many companies have outgrown basic accounting packages. And they are recognising that their financial systems must integrate with the wider reaches of the business - from human resources to warehousing and manufacturing to the sales and customer relationship management [CRM] systems."
This trend has been termed by many a research organisation as part of an emerging 'integrated value chain': a top-down view of a company's enterprise business process. As a result, traditional large-scale enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have been steadily replaced by more focused, module-based, integrated business management systems (BMSs). And from local and international experience Ellington believes they can deliver significant value to a modern-day CFO.
"BMSs allow companies to consolidate the management of accounting and other key business processes previously seen as disparate entities. As a result, the entire chain of events [from manufacturing a product to delivering it as part of a solution to a customer] can be managed ... and financially evaluated," he explains.
"But it's more than that. An integrated BMS enables CFOs to access financial information from any aspect of the business at any point in time. And it's not raw data that's provided, rather customised reports that are pertinent to the CFO's specific query."
It's the quality of this intelligent information that is in part responsible for the growth of the BMS market. The ability to access the same information from anywhere is also a driver.
"Companies are realising the importance of bringing Web technologies into their business management systems," says Ellington.
"It's not the mad rush to get onto the Web witnessed during the dot.com boom. It's a more considered approach. A vast amount of financial reporting information is made available to CFOs via the Web; and select business processes and data are opened up to customers and partners in a secure Web-based environment."
While the CFOs of companies that have lengthy supply chains benefit from BMSs, they are not the only ones. Those that manage companies that work on a project or consulting basis are also reaping rewards.
"Many IT and consulting firms bill for the hours they spend on a project; while this can be a profitable way of doing business, it's hard to track. It's also hard to integrate this sporadic billing information back into the greater BMS, as well as financial projections and reports. This is one of the areas in which we have developed a number of modular-based solutions."
For CFOs, length and breadth of BMS functionality are the key driving forces. "CFOs must be able to access information from wherever they are and present it in a format most suited to their audience. Whether it means accessing production, HR, sales data or any financial information for that matter, business management systems are some of the most efficient and cost-effective tools for the job," concludes Ellington.
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