In previous blog posts, we’ve looked at several key issues facing companies and particularly finance leaders in the Office of the CFO, by covering topics such as Building Finance Innovation on a strong Compliance Foundation, Changing Roles and Responsibilities for the Office of the CFO, The Shift Toward Predictive Accounting, and Analytics is the New Face of Financial Transformation.

Companies operating in today’s diverse global environments face unprecedented challenges with regard to managing capital assets, especially cash accounts that are distributed throughout multiple operating entities in different countries.  These challenges are exacerbated within companies that have grown via merger and acquisition (M&A) strategies, which often results in trying to manage cash accounts across a variety of legacy financial systems.

CFOs and treasury departments need to optimize their companies’ cash agility amidst volatile foreign currency exchange (FX) environments while also complying with constantly changing regulatory environments and escalating global competitive pressures.

At the same time, many companies are realizing that leveraging new treasury-focused technologies and best practices in cash management can provide valuable benefits in terms of improving operating results, maximizing asset utilization and enhancing their ability to quickly respond to new opportunities.

Instituting strong enterprise-wide cash management is also saving valuable time and resources, thereby enabling finance staff to better contribute to high-value activities such as analysis, planning and decision support.

Bramasol, an SAP gold partner, is pleased to participate again this year at SAPPHIRE NOW® and ASUG Annual Conference being held May 7-9 in Orlando, Florida.

People are hard-wired to recognize and interpret faces with amazing speed, accuracy and attention to detail. Even as infants we quickly learn to know our own parents’ faces and to differentiate them from strangers’ faces. Throughout life, the ability to automatically pick up on subtle facial cues and to “read” the meaning behind them are critical factors for streamlining complex social interactions and enabling rapid decisions such as friend vs. foe, and cooperation vs. opposition.

Imagine if you met someone without a face. How would you even begin to interact with them?

Well, that’s how most CFOs and other C-level executives feel when they hear the term “Financial Transformation” without a way to clearly visualize what it means.

Accounting has traditionally been a backwards looking profession.  Let me be clear that I did not just call accountants backwards people, but in general their mandate has been to document, audit and verify what has already happened.

Some of the forces helping make these changes a reality are enterprise-wide integration of advanced analytics, unifying financial information in a single-source-of-truth, movement toward continuous-close processes and the rise of Machine Learning.

As companies grapple with accelerating changes across most global markets, they face critical challenges for staying ahead of competitors, sustaining growth, maximizing profitability, complying with regulatory requirements and establishing organizational agility to respond quickly to the unexpected.

Over recent years, companies throughout the world are experiencing a series of major changes in regulatory and compliance mandates that are disrupting existing accounting and business processes. 

We can all agree that any physical building needs to have a strong foundation to assure safety of the occupants and sufficient resilience to maintain structural integrity against external forces, such as wind, flood, earthquakes and other potentially damaging events.

If you think of today’s businesses as being like complex organisms, then it becomes easier to understand the critical role of advanced analytics in monitoring organizational health and supporting growth. Just as your body’s nervous system, immune responses and circulatory network provide continuous sensory feedback to identify problems and maintain healthy functioning, your company’s analytics processes are critical for organizational adaptation and survival.