“In God we trust. The rest must bring data” – W. Edwards Deming 
Numbers don’t lie and they do not mislead. Without the help of data, it is impossible to improve business outcomes and drive competitiveness in today’s challenging business environment. Organizations also need forward-looking and predictive insights that can help them make business decisions, shape business strategies, and improve day-to-day decision making with confidence. For this, they need to analyze historical as well as real-time data. 

The evolution of the finance department

The finance department, over the years, has now moved beyond its traditional role of providing a set of standard financial reports at the end of the year or merely look at compliance. This department today can bring tremendous value to a business with actionable and intelligent insights that can drive better business outcomes. There is a tremendous opportunity for the finance department and CFOs to influence the direction of a business and the organization. It is, also, a big challenge.
While data plays an important role as an enabler of the finance department and its capability to drive better organizational outcomes, data by itself, in isolation, can hardly deliver on the promise of increased business and organizational intelligence. For data to be of any value and for it to be able to provide value, it has to be deeply analyzed. 
Combining internal financial information, operational and organizational data with external data, and then applying financial analytics to it helps organizations address difficult, complex, and critical business questions with accelerated accuracy.

The ABC of financial analytics

We can consider financial analytics as a subset of business intelligence (BI). It has a critical role to play to drive enterprise performance and has the power to influence and impact every business aspect and answer every relevant business question while providing a peek at the future of the business.
Financial analytics becomes an important arsenal in the enterprise toolkit primarily because 
* Today’s fast-paced business environment demands timely information for adroit decision-making. 
* It supports prudent forecasting and financial planning
* It shapes up business goals and strategies
* It identifies and eliminates waste
* It helps discover opportunities for improvement
Financial analytics also takes a deep dive into the enterprise’s growth strategies and helps organizations identify new business opportunities and optimize investments by managing and measuring the use of business assets.
From increasing the functionalities of information systems, managing the investments of the organization better, and improving forecasting abilities, financial analytics helps organizations understand business performance and its influencers with greater clarity. Additionally, it can provide deep, valuable, and critical insights into the organizations’ financial health and status and identify avenues to improve cash flow, profitability, and business value.
Along with this, a focus on financial analytics brings in greater business value. Here is how organizations can amp up their financial projection capabilities by creating a single version of the truth – 

Strategic alignment

A robust financial analytics process needs the right data inputs. It is critical to observe all the influencers of business outcomes and connect them with the finance department using the right processes. It is imperative to look at this task as a strategic initiative as it includes aligning people, processes, and technology with the business strategy and vision.   
Dated financial processes and legacy systems and applications impede the ability of the organization to gain actionable insights that lie hidden in the valuable data. Financial processes need to thus be reimagined and redesigned to connect the right enterprise functions, processes, and departments seamlessly. Streamlined operations, organizational agility, and intelligence for decision-making emerge as a consequence of these initiatives.
Having a single view of truth also becomes essential to navigate the complex regulatory and compliance landscape. Given the stringent, complex, and evolving governance landscape, financial processes powered by financial analytics can drive compliance and gain a competitive advantage by reducing risk and managing regulatory reporting with dexterity while mapping financial planning with organizational goals.

Process transformation

The finance and accounting department has witnessed a sea of change and has become increasingly complicated owing to business complexities, evolving business models, and a changing regulatory landscape. 
While managing payables, receivables, and payroll remain the most primary functions of transaction accounting, the finance department also has to look at process gaps and loopholes in general accounting processes and evaluate asset performance and reporting formats from each department connected to finance and money.
MIS and business reporting have to also become more aligned with the finance department to make business reporting more robust and to capably design MIS formats that improve business and process efficiencies.
To improve business outcomes, increase organizational agility, boost innovation, and identify new business opportunities, organizations need to have robust processes that enable business discovery and provide deep business intelligence. Processes also have to ensure proper data management to drive intelligence insights from data analytics initiatives.
It thus becomes imperative to combine domain knowledge with technological dexterity to reimagine and redesign processes such that they drive business impact. 

Embed intelligence into the organizational DNA

Each process or every workflow has a story hidden in its fold. There is information in the social media conversations and every client interaction. It is important for any business to be omnipresent and have an ear to the ground to make sure no information slips through the gaps. 
However, to make sense of this data, it is important to unravel insights that lie hidden in structured and unstructured data in a language that business users understand. Weaving information using intuitive interfaces and creative visualizations makes this data more coherent and can be useful to drive critical decisions that support talent retention, sharpen productivity, improve sales, and drive compliance.
Analytical reporting, visualization, customer and marketing analytics, operational analytics, risk analytics, corporate performance management, forecasting, and predictive modeling, web intelligence, and social media monitoring all fall under the analytics umbrella and have the power to impact organizational outcomes. 
Therefore, it is important to understand how to connect the dots to create the right processes, include automation at the right places, and select the right tools and technologies to correctly put the data to work.

Being Future-Ready

It is essential to take the help of financial analytics when organizations want to retain their competitive edge and stay along the path to profitability.  However, for financial analytics to deliver value, it is important to get a single view of the financial truth. That can only be possible when financial and accounting processes are not operating in silos and are connected to the other, relevant, departments that influence finance and profitability. 
Improved financial reporting, better control and transparency of financial processes, accurate and timely information, reduced operating costs, and improved working capital all become natural outcomes of employing deep industry insights coupled with robust analytics and help in augmenting organizational efforts to drive better business results.
And for this to happen, your finance and accounting team needs to have a sound understanding of data analytics tools and technologies, apart from deep domain knowledge.