Providing SaaS Solutions for Analytics and FP&A
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Key Takeaways
⇨ Organizations commonly struggle with their financial planning and analysis functions.
⇨ Third-party solutions like SimpleFi offer enterprise planning, consolidations, and analytics on managed platform.
⇨ Before deciding on an FP&A solution, companies should consider which deployment method best fits their needs.
In SAPinsider’s SAP S/4HANA Finance and Central Finance: State of the Market 2023 Research Report, financial planning and analysis was listed as the top pain point. Nearly half of all respondents said they struggled with their FP&A processes and 46% marked FP&A as an area for planned future investment across their financial team.
Planning is one of the most essential tasks any business should regularly accomplish to maintain a competitive advantage. Organizations must use every technology tool at their disposal to stay relevant, yet all too often companies struggle with legacy systems, manual methods, and outdated information. These issues can make it difficult to extract the data necessary to support decision-making processes with real-time insights.
PlaniFi
To help companies better manage their enterprise planning and analytics needs, SAP financial solutions provider SimpleFi provides its recently-introduced PlaniFi Platform Analytics offering. It is a SaaS solution that combines enterprise planning, consolidations, and analytics on one managed platform.
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The solution aims to help users automate and optimize their processes quickly. It is built on a technology stack used by thousands of other major companies for their FP&A functions.
PlaniFi can help automate important reporting information and generate vital business insights. By leveraging analytics and data modeling, it also delivers forecasts with improved accuracy while also increasing visibility.
Deployment
Organizations have differing priorities for how they want to deploy a given solution. Some opt for a greenfield approach, in which they use a totally new installation of the system. Others use a brownfield approach, which saves all previous data and settings.
Planifi can be managed by SimpleFi solutions to deliver monthly reporting via their fractional FP&A solutions. The company can also demonstrate how companies can manage their own platform in-house.
Conclusion
In today’s business climate, finance leaders are being asked to accomplish more and more, often with the same budgets as in years past. They are frequently tasked to participate more in strategic discussions, which requires crucial information that they often lack.
Organizations are constantly on the lookout for ways to improve insights. The SAPinsider finance research report found that 39% of respondents are increasing real-time visibility into finance and operations. This makes it the action most commonly taken by finance professionals to address their strategic priorities.
Companies need the ability to rapidly deploy these solutions. With solutions like SimpleFi, organizations can bolster their FP&A capabilities to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving business world.
